The former chief of the Czech Republic intelligence service last week said that he stands by reports that 9/11 attack leader Mohammad Atta met in Prague with Iraqi intelligence official Ahmad Ani, working undercover as a consul at the Iraqi embassy in Prague.
Jiri Ruzek, the former head of the BIS counterintelligence service, told reporters in Prague that the information gathered in October 2001 is accurate, despite claims to the contrary.
"The person who differentiated Asian and Arab faces very well came to the conclusion that it could have been that person [Atta]," Ruzek said.
The information came from BIS surveillance of the Iraqi embassy where officials were suspected of planning an attack on the Radio Free Europe building in Prague's Wenceslas Square.
As part of the surveillance, the BIS recruited an informant from within the embassy. On April 9, 2001, the agent witnessed Ani getting in a car with an unknown Arab, Ruzek said.
The Iraqi embassy source saw Atta�s photo five months after the September 11 attacks and recognized him as the man who met Ani in Prague in April.
Ruzek did not respond directly to how reliable the informant was. �I can say that we had an indication that this could have been the case. This hypothesis is still open. It has neither been confirmed nor refuted," said Ruzek.
Ruzek said the facts about Ani�s activities in Prague would be found in Iraqi intelligence documents.
After news of the meeting was leaked, press reports sought to cast doubt on the reliability of the Iraqi information who they described as an untrustworthy drunk, an assertion Ruzek said was false.
He said the FBI gauged the reliability of the information as 70 percent. Ani denied meeting Atta after he was arrested in 2003 in Baghdad.
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