Bin Laden spiritual leader is arrested

WASHINGTON — U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Tuesday that the self-proclaimed spiritual leader of Osama bin Laden, who was also one of bin Laden's major financiers, was arrested quietly two months ago in an FBI sting in Germany.

That came in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which Ashcroft said that arrest and other arrests have been made possible by a law sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, giving law enforcement more tools against terrorism. Ashcroft said even more tools are needed. But some Democrats said adding more tools may curb civil rights too much.

Ashcroft said Mohammed Al Hasan Al-Moayad, 54, of Yemen, and an assistant, Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed, 29, were arrested on Jan. 10 in Frankfurt by German authorities at the request of the FBI.

Ashcroft said the pair flew there to meet with a man they thought was a terrorist sympathizer who wanted to fund al-Qaida and Hamas terrorist groups. They expected to obtain $2 million from the man, but he was actually an undercover FBI informant, and the pair were arrested instead.

Ashcroft said the FBI informant had met numerous times previously with Al-Moayad and developed information showing he had personally handed Osama bin Laden $20 million from his terrorist fund-raising network, with much of it coming from a mosque in Brooklyn.

"Al Moayad also claimed to be Osama bin Laden's spiritual adviser," Ashcroft said. Al Moayad is the imam, or spiritual leader, of the al-Ihsan Mosque in Sanaa, Yemen, and is also an official in the Islah political party in Yemen.

Ashcroft said the complaints against the pair were unsealed Tuesday, as the U.S. government is seeking their extradition from Germany as soon as possible.

Ashcroft said the arrest — plus the high profile arrest in Pakistan over the weekend of al Qaida's No. 2 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — have come largely with the help of extra law enforcement tools through passage of the "Patriot Act," which Hatch shepherded through Congress.

It did such things as remove barriers that had prevented intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency, from sharing information with law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI. It also makes it easier to obtain permission to wiretap suspected terrorists, and to obtain search warrants.