Among a pile of documents, photographs, weapons and computers seen by The Independent yesterday in Waziristan, is a German passport belonging to Said Bahaji, the logistical expert of the notorious German terror cell that orchestrated the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Bahaji, 34, who is of Moroccan descent, obtained the passport just days before September 11 and used it to travel to Pakistan according to the information stamped in the document.

It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the passports, nor to establish the fate of their apparent holders. If they are authentic, the documents would prove that South Waziristan, a bastion of the Pakistani Taliban, has also been a sanctuary for foreign Jihadists and key al-Qa’ida figures in Pakistan. Major General Athar Abbas, the military’s chief spokesman said the documents were being made public to demonstrate the presence of foreign militants in South Waziristan which borders Afghanistan.

A Spanish passport, also recovered, purportedly belonged to Raquel Burgos Garcia. According to a student card, she is the wife of Amir Azizi, a Moroccan terrorist suspect who has been linked to both the September 11 attacks and the Madrid bombings.

The documents were apparently found after the capture of the village of Sherwangai on 20 October. The take- over came after three days of intense fighting in the dusty, barren and expansive Waziristan wilderness, at the start of an anti-Taliban offensive launched under intense political pressure from the United States. “We moved in as a battalion at night to take the terrorists by surprise,” Lieutenant Colonel Inam Tarar said yesterday. As he spoke, mortar shells were being blasted into a village across a gorge nearby.

The Pakistan army would not say whether the apparent holders of the passports had been killed in the current offensive, had died earlier, or escaped. The German passport, number L 8642163, was issued in Hamburg on 2 August 2001. It matches that on an Interpol-United Nations Security Council Special notice with the exception of the first digit. The photograph in the passport matches that on the notice as well, but was not laminated.

The document indicates that Bahaji was issued with a tourist visa to Pakistan, by the Pakistani consulate in Hamburg, valid for 90 days. On 4 September 2001, he arrived in Karachi, the passport shows. There is no sign of further travel.

Burgos Garcia, also 34, has been described in the Spanish press as having joined al-Qa’ida after a conversion to Islam. The Spanish passport, number P099823, did not bear any Pakistani stamps. Her passport was also issued just weeks before the September 11 attacks, on 1 August 2001.

Stamps in the documents apparently show regular travel to Morocco, her husband’s country. There is also an Iranian visa, where Azizi is reported to have fled after Spanish authorities issued an arrest warrant for him after the September 2001 attacks. There is an Indian visa, but it was apparently not used for travel.

Bahaji and Burgos Garcia have been linked to Mohammed Atta, the leader of the four hijack teams that crashed planes into New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon in Washington. Bahaji, who may also have met Osama bin Laden, is said to have been a previous roommate of Atta’s in Hamburg.

Members of the Hamburg cell which ultimately mounted the 9/11 atrocities are thought to have attended Bahaji’s wedding at a Hamburg mosque in 1999. Among those present was the Lebanese hijacker, Ziad Jarrah.

Burgos Garcia’s husband, Azizi, is widely suspected to have been crucial to Atta’s July 2001 meeting with fellow Hamburg cell member, Ramzi Binalshibh in Spain to finalise plans for the attack. Binalshibh is a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay, and has been described by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence as a “key facilitator for the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.” He was captured in Karachi a year after the September 11 attacks after a shootout with Pakistani security services.

As the army revealed the passports yesterday, Hillary Clinton issued an unusual expression of dismay at Pakistan’s failure to track down members of al-Qa’ida. “I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to,” she said.

From 9/11 to Waziristan: The evidence

* Said Bahaji, whose passport has apparently been found in South Waziristan, left, is well known to Western intelligence agencies. Half-German, half-Moroccan, he is believed to be an electronics and IT expert who was a key member of the so-called Hamburg Cell which laid the groundwork for the 9/11 attacks. A close associate of Mohammed Atta, the September 11 ringleader, Bahaji is also thought to have met Osama Bin Laden. Intelligence sources believe he travelled to Chechnya and Afghanistan and travelled to Pakistan on September 4 2001 via Turkey. Pakistani sources say there is no evidence he spent any time in Britain although intercepts show email and phone contact with individuals in the UK.

* Raquel Burgos Garcia is the wife of Amir Azizi, a Moroccan national who has been linked to the Madrid train bombings of 2004. She is not believed to have taken direct part in any terror activities but has been used as a courier. She is thought to be the holder of a number of other passports.

A newly launched Chinese police website is aimed at reuniting scores of children found during a recent police crackdown on the trade.

“It’s the first time the Ministry of Public Security has published data about children whose parents couldn’t be found through the national DNA database,” lawyer Zhang Zhiwei, who volunteers with a non-governmental organisation called Baby Come Home, told the China Daily newspaper.

The latest police campaign, prompted by widespread anger at poor enforcement of often lax trafficking laws, has rescued more than 2,000 missing children since 9 April.

The ministry hopes the website, called “Babies Looking for Home”, will help them track down the relatives of some 60 rescued children they have yet to reunite with their families.

The main impetus behind the trade is China’s traditional preference for male children. But girls and women are also seized, partly to feed the demand of unmarried sons for brides, but also to work as labourers. Some children are snatched to serve as props for beggars, while women are kidnapped and sold into prostitution. Some poor rural families sell their girls so they can try for a boy, getting around the one -child policy.

The ministry reports that between 30,000 and 60,000 children are reported missing in China every year, but it is impossible to know with any certainty how many of those are caught up in trafficking. The national database only has records of around 30,000 in total.

Babies are not the only victims: older children are also taken. Some boys are sold to work in illegal brick kilns in the Chinese heartland. Many of the hundreds rescued in the past two years were still wearing their school uniforms at the time.

The database has plenty of information about the children – DNA provided by the children’s parents is shared among the 236 laboratories in China that are equipped to test it. Any children whom the authorities suspect of having been abducted, or children whose history is unclear, are also tested.

Last week, 42 suspected traffickers were picked up for allegedly selling 52 children in the north of China.

But despite the best efforts of police, reuniting the children can be difficult: often they do not know where theycome from, or the names of their parents, and in many cases the children have formed bonds with their new parents, further complicating the task of reuniting them with their families. But the website is a first step.

Tang Weihua, a mother who lost her five-year-old son in 1999, told local media, “Even if I can’t find my boy’s photo on the website today, it’s a blessing for desperate parents like us who have nearly lost hope.”