The London Telegraph reports that the last of Mohammed Atta's Hamburg al-Qaeda cell to be alive and outside of custody has surfaced long enough to e-mail his wife in Germany, prompting a new effort to track him down:

Said Bahaji, 29, a German of Moroccan origin who is alleged to have been the link between the Hamburg al-Qaeda cell - which masterminded the attacks - and Osama bin Laden, is believed to have been hiding in Pakistan and Afghanistan ever since the attacks.

In an email to his wife, Nese, who still lives in Germany, Bahaji revealed that he was being well looked after despite being on the run. Addressing her as "My Rose", Bahaji wrote: "The people here love Arabs. The simplest of people welcome us. Their wives can't wait to cook and do our laundry for us."

German Federal Police (BKA) revealed last week that they have intercepted 14 emails and a number of telephone conversations between Bahaji, his wife, and other friends and relatives.

Hopefully Bahaji can be found quickly, but forgive me if I hope he winds up in our custody rather than Germany's. Germany couldn't prosecute the one AQ member they tried, allowing the defendant to be sprung due to a lack of evidence. Perhaps it is this track record that inspired Bahaji's wife to beseech the terrorist to turn himself in to Germany, but he has refused to allow "infidels" to humiliate him.

Pakistani authorities say that terrorists are using satellite phones to make their calls from the mountainous border regions, which should allow intelligence services to track them down. However, the internet connections for the e-mails originated in Lahore and Islamabad, which indicates that Bahaji and his cohorts move around Pakistan fairly easily. That might indicate that Pakistani security forces may not be as enthusiastic about chasing Bahaji down as we'd like.

At any rate, we now know he's alive and hiding with the rest of the AQ gang.

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