German police arrest suspected al-Qaida member and search for two other possible suspects

By DAVID RISING
Associated Press Writer

BERLIN – Investigators in western Germany have ruled out any link to the al-Qaida network of a man they arrested on a tip that he was a member of the terrorist organization, authorities said Sunday.

Heinz Jurgen Vitz, a prosecutor for the city of Moenchengladbach, said the man remains in custody on a charge of carrying false papers but there is no evidence he has anything to do with Osama bin Laden's organization.

The man was arrested late Saturday at a hotel in the city 25 miles west of Dusseldorf. Police did not release his name, in accordance with German law.

But the lead investigator said the man was a 27-year-old Lebanese national who has been living in the area since 1992. He is married with a 3-year-old child and has a criminal record for robbery and assault and battery, said the investigator, Georg Schubert.

Some 100 officers raided the Dorint hotel, alerted by the Bundeskriminalamt, the German equivalent of the FBI. The Bundeskriminalamt had received word from a "foreign intelligence service" that an al-Qaida member named Bertoldi and two other terrorists were planning to meet at the hotel, Schubert said.

The tip probably originated with someone who was trying to set the man up, Schubert said. The man was carrying fake Italian papers identifying him as 40-year-old Mario Bertoldi as well as a large amount of money.

Several of the Sept. 11 hijackers lived in Hamburg, but only one arrest in connection with the al-Qaida-linked attacks has been made in Germany.

Mounir El Motassadeq, 27, was arrested at his Hamburg apartment on Nov. 28 on charges he ran a bank account used by Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, who were among the hijackers on Sept. 11.

Hamburg was also home to hijacker Ziad Jarrah and three men believed to have helped plot the attacks. Ramsi Binalshibh of Yemen, Said Bahaji, a German national, and Zakariya Essabar of Morocco are all being sought on international arrest warrants.

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