Search for attack suspects narrows

After nearly three weeks of an intense global investigation, the FBI believes the plotting, financing and assistance was conducted by Osama bin Laden sympathizers in England, Germany and the United Arab Emirates, the officials told The Associated Press.

Authorities believe they may have some of the collaborators in custody, including an Algerian pilot whom British prosecutors identified Friday as the primary instructor for some of the airplane hijackers.

The FBI found his name on a document in a car left by the hijackers at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, said officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Other suspected plotters remain at large and are the subject of an FBI-led manhunt, the officials said. Among the groups being investigated are various cells of the Algerian-based Armed Islamic Group that has aligned itself with bin Laden's Al-Qaida network, the officials said.

"One should not focus on one individual, but focus one's attention on a series of networks across the world,'' FBI Director Robert Mueller said Friday.

The FBI, CIA and other U.S. agencies have painstakingly recreated the travels of the 19 hijackers over years through Germany, Afghanistan, Spain and London. They've recreated hotel visits and car rentals and identified tens of thousands of dollars funneled to the attackers to aid their travel, pilot training and activities, officials said.

One of those still being sought is a man in the United Arab Emirates who was mailed a package by Mohamed Atta, a suspected leader of the hijacking teams, one official said. The package contained leftover money and documents and was mailed by Atta a few days before he hijacked a plane in Boston and flew it into the World Trade Center in New York.

The new details about the origins of the hijacking plot emerged as the Justice Department announced Friday that more than 480 people have been arrested or detained in the probe.

Evidence is growing that the plot was hatched, funded and assisted by several bin Laden sympathizers who gave instruction and support from Europe and the Middle East, officials told AP.

British authorities said Friday they had detained one such man. Lotfi Raissi, 27, an Algerian pilot, was "a lead instructor'' of some of the hijackers who crashed an airliner into the Pentagon, prosecutors in London said.

Raissi made several trips to the United States this summer, and flew with one of the suspected hijackers on June 23 from Las Vegas to Arizona.

Records show Raissi lived in Arizona in the late 1990s. Former employees at the Sawyer Aviation flight school in Phoenix remember him using a flight simulator as recently as 1999 to instruct others, including at least one other person identified as a terrorist by the FBI.

Richard Egan, Raissi's lawyer, said his client "adamantly denies any involvement in the recent appalling tragedies.''

A law enforcement source said as the plot becomes more clear from the evidence U.S. authorities are increasingly convinced that this terrorist plot involved a marked change in tactics from prior attacks.