SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 12: Two confessed members of a Silicon Valley terrorist cell say they brought Osama bin Laden’s top aide, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to the Silicon Valley several years ago to raise money for terror attacks, according to documents and interviews, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Thursday.

The Chronicle said authorities learned of al-Zawahiri’s fund raising in the Silicon Valley from Ali Mohamed, 48, and Khalid Abu-al-Dahab, 37, Egyptian-born US citizens who have confessed that they served for a decade as Islamic Jihad operatives while living in Silicon Valley.

Mohamed is a former US Army sergeant who has been identified as Osama’s “California connection” and a trainer of his bodyguards. Last year, he pleaded guilty in US District Court in New York to conspiracy charges for helping Osama bin Laden and al-Zawahiri plot the US Embassy bombings that killed more than 200 people.

The paper said that Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is Osama’s chief deputy and a suspect in a long list of terrorist crimes that includes planning last month’s attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, visited the United States in the 1990s on covert fund-raising trips, the two men have told authorities.

Travelling with a stolen passport supplied by the local contacts and using a fake name, al-Zawahiri, visited mosques in Santa Clara, Stockton and Sacramento as part of a coast-to-coast fund-raising mission, according to these accounts, the Chronicle said.