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On October 4, 2001, ten to fifteen agents arrived at Storage USA self-storage unit in Northboro, Massachussetts rented near where one of the officials of Care International lived. Care International was incorporated in Massachussetts after a weekly newsmagazine drew a connection between Al Kifah and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. The search of the storage unit was a covert operation. Agents brought translators and a photocopying machine so they could leave documents where they found them. They came prepared to copy computer hard drivesand disks rather than seize them. At 5 p.m., they hung a sign on the outside gate saying that it was broken so they could work uninterrupted. They didn't finish until 3 a.m. Later, at the trial of the Boston Care International and various of its former officers, prosecutors introduced an April 1998 email from Azzam Publications giving instructions on how to deliver money to mujahideen in Kosovo. The agent testifying about the search in early October 2001 explained his job as “mostly intelligence, connecting the dots, looking for relationships and patterns.” Abdullah Azzam founded the Alkifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn. The government points to a report by Dr. Abdullah Azzam titled "Journey of Maktab Khadamat Al-Mujahideen" which discusses issues relating to the organization including publishing its "Al Jihad" magazine and providing support for the fighters. It concludes noting that the "Islamic foundations contributed in the Jihadist area through the financial support of the fronts and of the Arab lions in the Maktab Al-Khadamat." In 1993, Al Kifah announced it was switching its operations to Bosnia, and Al Kifah reincorporated under the name of the nonprofit Care International. Federal prosecutors allege that Care sent money to several organizations that have been designated as terrorist or terrorist-supporting organizations by the U.S. Treasury Department after September 11, 2001, to include Global Relief Foundation, Benevolence International Foundation, Help the Needy and the Holy Land Foundation. The FBI raided Care International storage unit at the Northboro storage facility again in April 2003 and confiscated the original hard copies of more than 18,000 pages of material, 40 videotapes, four computer hard drives and 100 computer diskettes, among other evidence. According to the FBI, a publication of Care's newsletter Al-Hussam claimed that Mr. Azzam himself founded Care. (Azzam founded Al Kifah, Care's predecessor -- he could not formally have founded Care four years after he was killed by a car bomb). Its newletter promoted Azzam's views and anyone active in the field knew of Azzam's connection to Bin Laden. One Defendant told a federal immigration officer that he traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan seven times between March 1993 and November 1997, including a month-long to Pakistan and Afghanistan from December 1994 to January 1995. In 2007, jury members heard wiretaps in which two successive presidents of Care International from 1993 through 1998, speak with Kifah Jayoussi and Adham Hassoun. Jayoussi and Hassoun were convicted in 2007, having been charged with belonging to a North American terrorism support cell that provided money, recruits and supplies to Islamic extremists around the world. About three dozen wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act were introduced to the jury -- authorities intercepted many tens of thousands of conversations involving Hassoun. In an August 3, 1998, intercept, Mr. Jayoussi spoke to one of the Care defendants about raising money for the wife of a man who had been chairman of a defense committee for Nosair, the man charged with murdering Jewish militant Rabbi Meir Kahane on Nov. 5, 1990, and who “joined the group of the skyscraper in N.Y.” The Care official instructed Jayoussi “to send me a letter saying that this is a request to help a family or some poor people or something like that.” He cautioned Jayoussi that he should conceal its real purpose given that Care International incorporated to sponsor widows and orphans affected by overseas wars. Mr. Daher, an associate of Florida cell defendants Hassoun and Jayyousi, was also on some of the intercepts. A February 1997 conversation between Hassoun and one of the Care defendants concerns the jihad situation in Afghanistan. One of the Care defenants used to hug Boston cab driver Bassam Kanj, an associate and friend of Boston cab drivers al-Marabh and Elzahabi, when Kanj visited the Care office in Boston. Mr. Kanj died in 2005 but al-Marabh and Elzahabi remained of keen interest to authorities. Global Relief Foundation and Benevolence International Foundation On December 14, 2001, in the afternoon, three immigration agents arrested Rabih Haddad, head of Global Relief Foundation, at his Ann Arbor home on a minor immigration violation. Related raids of BIF offices were also conducted abroad in connection with the search for evidence that Bin Laden was planning further attacks in the US and abroad -- and for evidence Bin Laden was developing weapons of mass destruction, including the weaponization of anthrax. United States Attorney Fitzgerald's original plan did not call for searches of the GRF or BIF offices in the US. Instead, the 9/11 Commission found, the FBI had intended to listen using electronic intercepts to the reaction to the searches by the charity personnel. Their hand was forced, however, by a reporter's call to Global Relief Foundation. The mid-December 2001 searches in New Jersey and Illinois -- after Cheney was briefed on the documents found in Afghanistan discussing how charities and universities were going to be used to weaponize anthrax -- were conducted pursuant to the emergency search provisions under FISA. Subsequently a FISA warrant was obtained. The Newark, NJ BIF office was searched in mid-December 2001 at the same time the BIF and Global Relief Foundation offices in Illinois were searched. The hydra-headed charity investigation remained shrouded in secrecy until June 2002 when a helicopter emerged out of the clouds circling about Adham Hassoun's car not not far from his residence in Sunrise, Florida. "They thought I was somebody important. They thought they hit the jackpot." FBI agents questioned him initially when it was discovered that he had been the American representative for the publication Nida'ul Islam. "Brother Adham Hassoun" was listed as the publication's subscription officer. Hassoun explained "I called these people and told them, 'Take my name off there'." Hassoun was the founder of BIF in the US, in Plantation, Florida in 1992 before it was moved to Chicago. The government alleged that Adham Hassoun, a computer programmer, had allegedly planned an assassination, provided material support to terrorist groups, and was a member of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman's Islamic Group. Hassoun, a Palestinian of Sunrise, Florida born in Lebanon, allegedly tried to recruit Egyptian Mohammed Yousseff, a friend of Padilla's. Hassoun had ties to charitable groups with alleged links to terrorist groups. The authorities did not want to arrest him and instead wanted to see where he might lead them. Once again, their hand was forced when a Miami reporter called him to ask him about Padilla and they thought he might flee. It is suspected that Hassoun was among those who would be assisting Zacarias Moussaoui in a separate mission, totally separatefrom 9/11. Mohammad Javed Qureshi, a Muslim from Pakistan and founder of the School of Islamic Studies in Sunrise, was Padilla's former boss. As manager of a Taco Bell he hired Padilla to make Tacos about the time Padilla converted to Islam. ''With this latest arrest it leads me to believe that there is a cell or organization recruiting Muslims for terrorist activities,'' Javed told a local newspaper upon news of Padilla's detention. ''We need to look into Egypt and see where he went,'' he told New York Times, ``and then put the two and two together. Are there recruiters here? Yes. Have I met them? No. But .. the recruiters are out there. I'm trying to find them myself.'' The FBI investigation of Mr. Hassoun began after the arrest of supporters of the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman in Brooklyn revealed the existence of a network in North American supporting Islamic fighters worldwide. Thousands of telephone calls between those charged in the Miami case were monitored by the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies over more than a decade. No one was arrested until June 2002 and no charges were brought until October 2004. Phone calls related to financial support of individuals willing to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Eritrea and Somalia. A November 2005 indictment details numerous checks payable to Global Relief Foundation to fund "tourists" from 1998 - 2001. According to court papers, Hassoun had been under FBI investigation since a January 1993 telephone call between Hassoun and the blind sheik. The federal government charged that Adham Hassoun recruited Padilla into Islam and possibly into al Qaeda. Padilla started studying Islam at the Darul Uloom Islamic Institute and the al-Iman mosque. An outspoken Palestinian activist living in the area, Hassoun had quit his job as a computer programmer to oversee the opening of a Muslim charity, Benevolence International Foundation, in Plantation. Although only recently incorporated in the U.S., the charity had existed for a couple of years in previous incarnations — with branches in Pakistan, the Sudan, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines. The group can be traced back to the wealthy Saudis who founded its predecessor groups, two sheiks with strong ties to Osama bin Laden. The same two sheiks underlie the views espoused by the Islamic Assembly of North American formed in 1993. One of the two sheiks, al-Hawali, was in touch with Al-Timimi in fall 2001 in connection with having his views heard and understood by the US Congress. CBS reported that "US officials describe Hassoun as an important link not only to the Padilla investigation, but possibly to a suspected US-based al-Qaeda network awaiting orders for future attacks. Sources said domestic intelligence intercepts have now convinced officials that such a network of al-Qaeda fund-raisers and operatives exist in the United States." Senator Richard Shelby (Republican, Ranking Member, Intelligence Committee) said: "I--I fear that it's a lot more widespread than we originally thought, and there are probably other terrorist cells that could be affiliated with them, other groups besides al-Qaeda." BIF Canada was founded by Mahammed Khatib, an employee of the International Islamic Relief Organization. International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) is a Saudi charity that Canadian agents allege was involved in financing Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The Manila office of the IIRO was headed by Khalifa, bin Laden's brother-in-law. Muslim World League and IIRO had an office at 360 Washington, the location of Al-Timimi's Dar Arqam. The Canadian BIF chapter shared an office in Toronto with IIRO's parent organization, Muslim World League, and both Canadian groups were run by the same man. The most telling evidence often is documentary evidence. In the trial of United States v. Mohammed Salameh, Government Exhibit 2800-A consisted of a picture worth a 1,000 words. Bomb-making manuals taken to the WTC 1993 plotters were in an envelope marked with the letter of Lajnat Al-Birr Al-Islamiyya (BIF). Dating back to its founding, BIF is connected to World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) in Falls Church, Virginia, which was run by Bin Laden’s nephew. The original founder of BIF also was the founder of WAMY. The terrorism manual, with the Al Qaeda logo on the cover, taken from the man involved in the WTC bombing was in an official charity envelope. 50 FBI agents raided WAMY offices in late May 2004. The Washington Post explained: “Sources said the raid was part of an investigation into whether the group’s operations around the world have financial and other ties to terrorists, but the scope of the probe could not be learned because the case is under court seal.” Abdullah bin Laden incorporated WAMY’s U.S. branch in Falls Church in 1992, became president and was listed on forms until at least 1998. A volunteer board member who had just received his computer sciences doctorate from George Mason University was arrested on immigration charges. He was expert and had published on computer security protocols. The WAMY official and newly minted GMU computer security PhD left for Saudi Arabia in July 2004 under a plea agreement.
Hassoun helped distribute the Islam Report in South Florida. The newslettter was published by his Detroit-based associate Jayyousi, whose group was called the American Islamic group. The newsletter sought to recruit young men willing to become mujahidin to fight overseas for extremist Muslim causes. Like Hassoun, Jayyousi, a Jordanian national and naturalized U.S. citizen, was a strong supporter of Abdel- Rahman. Jayyousi was an adjunct professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. He supervised facilities in Detroit schools and then District of Columbia schools. Jayyousi frequently spoke with the jailed sheik Abdel-Rahman by telephone in 1994 and 1995. Shortly after Rahman's arrest, Jayyousi (aka Abu Mohammed) founded the American Islamic Group, which published the Islam Report. The newsletter carried news about the sheik and recounted the exploits of jihadists around the world. Authorities began wiretapping Dr. Jayyousi's calls and Hassoun in Florida in 1993. 300,000 calls were intercepted for which summaries of translations of 15,000 were prepared. For example, in 1996, Dr. Jayyousi was heard complaining to the representative of a satellite phone company about disconnection of phone service at the request of the Russians because one of the phones was being used in the armed conflict in Chechnya. 285,000 tapes remained in an FBI vault untranslated while the FBI honed its Kappa Kappa Gamma theory of motivation relating to USAMRIID scientist Bruce Ivins. Jayyousi, who lived in San Diego, Detroit, Baltimore and Egypt during the probe, also used the Islam Report to raise money for Muslim extremists through nonprofit organizations to include Save Bosnia Now, later renamed to American Worldwide Relief. Jayyousi was interviewed by FBI agents eight times between 1995 and 2003 about his activities but was not charged until April 2005. He was released on bail -- the only defendant in the Miami case to win pretrial release. Jayyousi was dismissed from his job as Assistant Superintendent of DC Public Schools in the Spring of 2001. Co-defendant Kassem Daher, another follower of Sheik Rahman, lived in Le Duc, Canada and helped distribute Jayyousi's Islam Report in Canada. According to the FBI, Daher left Canada for Lebanon in May 1998 and was detained there in 2000. According to the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, Daher had contact with Vanguards of Conquest member Jaballah and involvement with EIJ activities. After coming to Canada in 1996, Jaballah would contact Ayman regularly on Ayman's Inmarsat satellite phone. After 9/11, an article in the Arabic newspaper Sharq al Awsat reported that Lebanon had received a request from Canada through Interpol for information on eight people, including a man described as a "partner of Daher's" -- Ahmad Khadr ("al-Kanadi"). Thus, there appears to have been a coordination between the "al-Kanadi" and Florida networks. The "Florida cell" had connections to Jaballah in Toronto and would have been concerned over his detention to a security certificate, along with EIJ member Mahmoud Mahjoub. Kifah Wael Jayoussi was born in 1961 in Gaza, Palestine. He emigrated to the US in 1979. He attended the State University of New York at Buffalo graduating in 1983 with a B.S. in mechanical engineering. He enlisted and spent 3 years on active duty in the US Navy specializing in power plant operations (Boiler and Engine Room) from 1985 to 1988. Upon leaving the Navy, he worked as a contractor in the ship building and industrial construction business from 1988 to 1991. He then worked as a campus engineer and project manager at the University of California system at San Diego and Irvine campuses from 1991 to 1997. He attended evening classes at San Diego State University and earned an M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1997. Moving to Detroit, he pursued the construction management PhD degree program at Wayne State University and received a second M.S, in Civil Engineering in 2000. He then served as the assistant superintendent of facilities management at Detroit Public Schools (1997-1999) left in the midst of political wrangling and controversy over contracting and political contributions, and then served as Chief Facilities Officer of DC Public Schools (1999-2001). Rafih Jayyousi in 2001 was an adjunct faculty and Research Associate at Wayne State University. By 2001, Kifah Wael Jayyousi and his wife had five children. In mid-summer 2001, he dedicated his thesis to his father, "Who taught me to struggle For What is right." Up until at least July 1, 1999, he was Assistant Superintendent, Facilities Management and Capital Improvements for the Detroit Public Schools. Dr. Jayyousi then served as the chief facilities officer the Washington DC School Board, from July 1999 until April 2001. In April 2001, he was escorted out of school by a security officer after being fired for allegedly not controlling exposure of staff and students to asbestos during a renovation. School officials and parents had credited Mr. Jayyousi with cutting the backlog of work repair orders from 20,000 last year to less than 2,500. Some school district officials speculated that the Superintendent took the action in order to put his own people in place. Others speculated that Jayyousi is being made the scapegoat in an attempt to ward off any takeover of the department by the mayor. In any event, he was very gracious in his remarks to the press upon leaving. In June 2001, he was named senior facilities officer for Central Michigan University. The next month, however, the job offer was rescinded after the student newspaper reported his termination from the District of Columbia School District. He was arrested on March 2005 when he returned to the country to visit his ailing father. Dr. Jayyousi has never met or spoken to Jose Padilla before being charged as a co-defendant. Dr. Jayyousi has maintained his innocence, noting that all he did was publish a newsletter that was critical of US foreign policies. Ann Arbor-based Islamic Assembly of North America (under construction) i. "Steeds of War" : BIF And Its Connection To Bin Laden, Atef And Gulbuddin Hekmatyar One of the founders of the Benevolence International Foundation ("BIF") in 1987 was Bin Laden's late brother-in-law, the late Jamal Khalifa. BIF had long been of keen interest to the FBI in connection with its investigation of the threat of biological, chemical or radiological terrorism. In 1992, Bin Laden sent Jamal al-Fadl from Bin Laden’s headquarters in Sudan to Zagreb, Croatia, to gather information about the prospects of jihad in Bosnia. In Croatia, he met with Enaam Arnaout (who the next year would become the head of the BIF in the US), and al-Qaeda operative Abu Abdel Aziz Barbaros (a.k.a. Abdel Rahman al Dosari). Barbaros would speak alongside Al-Timimi at IANA conferences. The meeting was held in BIF's Zagreb office. BIF was focused on the logistical support of mujahideen and had set up in Sudan when Al Qaeda moved there in about 1991. In late 1993 Bin Laden notified his senior lieutenants that BIF was being used "to move funds to areas where al Qaeda was carrying out operations." Documents taken from BIF's United States offices in December 2001 included handwritten Arabic notations explaining that its headquarters in Croatia was established for "relief operations and support of jihad in Bosnia-Herzegovina. *** Contribute with our mujahideen brothers to repel the Crusader-Zionist attack on Muslim lands. A handwritten note found in Illinois explained BIF's supreme "unwritten law" -- "no matter how poor/sick -- first priority is the mujahideen." With the blind sheik's services organization publicly associated with the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the militants had needed different charity vehicles. One charity created in 1993 was the Islamic Assembly of North America ("IANA"). In December 1993, Abu Abdel Aziz Barbaros spoke alongside Ali-Al-Timimi at the first annual IANA conference. In his lectures, he publicly urged what he had told Fadl -- that Bosnia was just a staging ground to spread jihad to the US and abroad. The BIF employee, Hassan Faraj, from that small Zagreb office in 1993 apparently lived less than a tenth of a mile from Ali-Al-Timimi in Falls Church, Virginia in 1999 on Seminary Road. The former BIF employee moved to Brooklyn and lied his way into a medical internship at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, where Lenox Hill employee Kathy Nguyen mysteriously died of anthrax exposure. At the same time, Ali Al-Timimi applied to work in the same department as famed Russian bioweaponeer Ken Alibek. Alibek was quoted in an article found in BIF trash in March 1999 by the FBI -- underlined were the words that the U S was unprepared for a biological attack. When the government charged the doctor with immigration fraud, he was represented by Stanley Cohen, the partner of Lynne Stewart, the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman attorney. Cohen has represented one of the WTC bombers, a GRF co-founder, the leader of the "Virginia Paintball" defendants, a senior Hamas political leader and fundraiser based in Falls Church and many other militants. In 1994, when Bin Laden's brother-in-law Khalifa was arrested in northern California where he was visiting, he was traveling with BIF President Mohammed Loay Bayazid. Bayazid reportedly was looking to buy enriched uranium. Bayazid listed BIF’s Chicago-area office as his residence. Years earlier, Bayazid had left Kansas City to go to Pakistan and then Afghanistan. Like the Lenox Hill doctor, Bayazid was Syrian. He was one of the founders of both Al Qaeda and BIF. He was at the meeting at which Al Qaeda was founded. Khalifa's personal organizer had the numbers for Khalid Mohammed, regional Al Qaeda operative Hambali, and the 1993 WTC bomber Ramzi Yousef. Khalifa's name was also written on a bomb making manual in the possession of one of the WTC 1993 bombers. Egyptian Ayman Zawahiri visited the area the next month on a charity fundraising trip. Thus, authorities have long alleged that Al Qaeda has sought to develop weapons of mass destruction -- and charities like the Benevolence International Foundation have been at the center of such allegations for years. When the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman was arrested, he had Khalifa's business card along with $62,000 in cash in a suitcase. One idea the Bojinka plotters had, as evidenced by draft letters on Ramzi Yousef's laptop, was to attempt to free an imprisoned brother by threatening a chemical or poisonous gas attack. When Al Qaeda gets what it thinks is a good idea, they tend to stick with it. Barbaros spoke alongside Ali Ali Al-Timimi at IANA conferences in the mid-1990s in exhorting young men to jihad. A Justice Department indictment explains that Barbaros told Fadl that “al-Qaeda’s goal in Bosnia was to establish a base for operations in Europe against al-Qaeda’s true enemy, the United States.” Around this time, BIF began providing food, clothing, money and communications equipment to fighters in Bosnia. The blind sheik’s son, who would serve on the 3-member Al Qaeda WMD committee, spoke alongside Al-Timimi in 1993 and again in 1996. In 1996, al-Fadl, who had been involved in an earlier attempt to buy uranium for Bin Laden along with Bayazid, defected from al-Qaeda. There are 900 pages of transcripts of conversations in videotaped teleconferences. The FBI agents and prosecutor Fitzgerald did not realize the marshals who set up the video teleconferences were taping. An FBI Special Agent in an affidavit in the prosecution of the BIF head, Arnaout, alleged that Arnaout “has a relationship with Usama Bin Laden and many of his key associates dating back more than a decade, as evidenced by cooperating witnesses and seized documents.” He continued “various persons involved in terrorist activists — specifically including persons trying to obtain chemical and nuclear weapons on behalf of al Qaeda — have had contacts with BIF offices and personnel.” The agent opined that Arnaout was a trusted associate of Bin Laden and also Gubuddin Hekmatyar and once involved with Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami organization. For a time, the BIF head administered funds for Bin Laden but later had a personality conflict with Al Qaeda military commander, Egyptian Mohammed Atef. Atef came to head the plans to weaponize anthrax. BIF worked closely with several other charities, including the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, Muslim World League, International Islamic Relief Organization, and Al Haramain Foundation in connection with helping further al Qaeda's activities. When a dispute broke out in late 1988 between the founder of BIF and Khadr of Canada, it was arbitrated by a member of Al Qaeda's fatwa committee and Dr. Sharif, the spiritual guide for Zawahiri's organization and Ayman's close and long-time ally. The FBI affidavit in support of the arrest of the BIF head alleges that Arnaout was a "close associate of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar" and that BIF was associated with Hezb e Islami, a military group led by Hekmatyar. For example, the BIF Baku representative was also a senior representative in Azerbaijan of Hezb-e-Islami of Afghanistan. Hekmatyar and the Hezb-e-Islami have connections to several connected terrorists, including Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. One letter requests the purchase of ten vehicles for Hekmatyar's Hezb e Islami. It was Hekmatyar who sent fighters to rescue Bin Laden and Zawahiri from Tora Bora. Another letter to Atef signed by both Arnaout and Bin Laden found in the March 2002 search explains that the bearer was from Hekmatyar's Hezb e Islammi had "loaned us" a howitzer and it should be returned to him. Another letter requested ten vehicles for Hezb e Islami. In one videotape, Arnaout was engaged in an extended discussion with Hekmatyar about Afghanistan, its leadership, and its mujahideen. (Relatedly, in the prosecution of Al-Timimi's colleague and friend, IANA Vice-Chairman Rafil Dhafir, the government introduced a copy of a videotape showing Al-Timimi's friend Rafil Dhafir with both Hekmatyar and Azzam.) Hekmatyar provided land he controlled for Bin Laden's training camps at a time when the United States supported the "freedom fighters." Bin Laden paid Hematyar for use of the land. Hekmatyar was known as The Engineer. In 1993, Arnaout was briefly arrested by Croatian authorities. That was the year Croatia began clamping down on foreign jihadists and preventing them to transit the country on their way to the front line. There was tension between Egyptians and non-Egyptians in Al Qaeda, and there was a perception that Egyptians were treated better and received higher salaries. In 2007 a news report mentioned allegations at Gitmo that Hekmatyar's military commander in Kabul was involved with anthrax. In April 1999, the FBI recovered from BIF’s office in Palos Hills, Illinois, a February 1999 article in the Seattle Times concerning smallpox as a biological terrorism weapon. The sections of the text indicating that authorities were poorly prepared for a biological attack involving smallpox were highlighted. Although I do not see the referenced article from February 1999, on March 15, 1999, for example, there was a news article explaining that the idea that smallpox was a threat took hold when Ken Alibek said that Russia had produced tons of anthrax, along with smallpox. The FBI at some point apparently realized that if one wanted to gain access to what this defector knew about weaponizing anthrax, one would merely have to apply to be a graduate student down the hall from him — which is exactly what Falls Church, VA Salafist Ali Al-Timimi did. In 2000, Chechen military commander associated with Bin Laden’s CBRN aspirations, Ibn Khattab solicited funds on the Al Qaeda website, qoqaz.com. Mirrored by a North Brunswick, NJ webmaster Mazen Mokhtar, the website said that funds should be routed through one of two charities. One of the two charities commended by the website for this purpose was BIF. The Al Qaeda website mirrored by the North Brunswick, NJ webmaster explained BIF's trusted status: "There is one trusted agency that has set up operations in the region and we will be posting their contact and bank details, etc. on the internet very soon insha-Allah [God willing]. This is the only aid that the Qoqaz web-sites trust and recommend the people to give their donations to." Beginning in February 2000, the website listed the address for BIF. Nineteen wire transfers during a 4-month period January 2000 through April 2000 totalled nearly $700,000. In a paragraph about a December 2001 search and document mentioning "steeds of war projects," the FBI agent in the affidavit in support of Arnaout's arrested noted that there is a verse in the Koran which reads: "Against them [the enemies] make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies." In the New York City area, BIF was represented by Saffet Abid Catovic. Catovic was a boy scout troop leader, religious teacher, hospital administrator, and senior Bosnian diplomat and “Minister Counsellor” at the Bosnian Mission to United Nations in Manhattan. New York City police found his New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation business card among the personal effects of the blind sheik’s bodyguard, El Sayyid Nosair, after Nosair assassinated militant Jewish leader Meir Kahane. Mr. Catovic worked as a budget director at a New York Hospital. In a videotaped religious lecture, Catovic introduced and praised Siddig Ali (who was later convicted of a central role in a fundamentalist conspiracy to bomb New York landmarks in 1993). Siddig Ali spoke on the subject of “Jihad: The Forgotten Duty.” Catovic spoke alongside Mazen Mokhtar at a jihad summer camp in Pennsylvania in 2000 in which he explained that a timeframe for the US to become a caliphate was 2-5 years. Yusuf Wells, who was a BIF fundraiser, visited Northern Virginia over the April 14-15, 2001 weekend. The previous month he had been at Iowa State University on a similar visit. On April 15, 2001, he was brought to a paintball game. In the second season, they had become more secretive after an inquiry by an FBI Special Agent was made in 2000 of one of the members about the games. Part of BIF fundraiser Wells’ job involved writing reports about his fundraising trips. In his April 15, 2001 report he wrote:
After the anthrax mailings, former FBI agent Jack Cloonan and several colleagues arrived in Khartoum, Sudan in November 2001 to interview al-Douri and Bayazid. He was part of a joint FBI-CIA team. Cloonan has said Douri and a second Iraqi laughed when asked about possible bin Laden ties to Saddam Hussein's regime, saying bin Laden hated Saddam. Bin Laden viewed Saddam as "a Scotch-drinking, woman-chasing apostate." Both al-Duri and Bayazid lived in Tucson during the early 1990s. Although the CIA had once seen fit to generously support Gulbeddin Hekmatyar's efforts against the Soviets, connections by the US-based charities with Hekmatyar were seriously frowned upon after 9/11. For example, the government saw fit to introduce evidence that Al-Timimi's friend, Rafil Dhafir, a respected Rome, NY oncologist, had interviewed Azzam and Hekmatyar about their jihad. A videotape of the interview was seized in Upstate New York at the same time the FBI raided the Virginia townhouse of his friend, microbiologist Ali Al-Timimi. In 2007, there was mention of an unexplained claim that Hekmatyar's military leader in Kabul had involvement with anthrax. In 2008, at the trial of the charity, Care International, (which was Al Kifah renamed and reincorporated as a nonprofit), prosecutors made much of an oath they swore to Gulbeddin Hekmatyar in 1995. An indictment in January 2008 alleged that a charity Islamic American Relief International gave $130,000 to two orphanages housed in a building owned by Hekmatyar. j. Manhattan Anthrax Mystery Linked To Jihad-Supporting Doctor In October 2001, NATO forces raided the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia and seized before-and-after photographs of the World Trade Center, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole; maps of government buildings in Washington; materials for forging U.S. State Department badges; files on the use of crop duster aircraft; and anti-Semitic and anti-American material geared toward children. An employee of the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia and another cell member was in telephone contact with Osama bin Laden aide and al-Qaeda operational commander Abu Zubayda. The employee's planned immigration to the United States was going to be sponsored by Dr. Hassan Faraj, who worked at the hospital where the first New York inhalational anthrax victim died. The doctor was a co-author of a leading article in the Journal of American Medical Association ("JAMA") about the causes of the woman's death. Dr. Faraj lived in the building next to Al-Timimi until 1999 when he moved to Brooklyn to take an internship at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. An arrest warrant issued for a former Falls Church, Virginia resident, Dr. Hassan Faraj, on immigration charges on June 29, 2004. He had been working as an intern and resident at hospital in Manhattan for the past three years. The Syrian-born doctor, Hassan Faraj, formerly worked for the Al Qaeda front charity, BIF, in Zagreb, Croatia. He was accused in late June 2004 of supporting an Al Qaeda terrorist. He was listed in 2002 as an author of a key article in the Journal of the American Medical Association ("JAMA") about the fatal anthrax inhalation exposure of 61- year-old Kathy Nguyen. She had worked in the stockroom of Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital (MEETH), which was a subsidiary of Lenox Hill. The doctor, Hassan Faraj, was an intern there at the time and then finished his residency at Lenox Hill in 2004. The article explained that an epidemiological study of her workplace and residence had not turned up any explanation of how she was exposed. The United States government charged Dr. Farah with immigration violations, accusing him of providing aid to a supporter of Osama Bin Laden and making false statements. In early November 2004, federal prosecutors alleged that they found shredded blueprints for a suburban Washington overpass in a bag in his Brooklyn apartment. His lawyer claimed that they were from his brother, a lecturer at an unidentified Washington-area university who had left the country. Prosecutors said that Faraj's duties included running recruits to camps in Bosnia. In November 2004, the Daily News reported that "Computers seized at the foundation's office in Chicago contained a deleted file stating, 'Hassan has spent substantial amount of time with us in Bosnia . . . and had said that he is willing to do anything.'" In an April 11, 2005 letter (provided to me by intelwire.com, an Assistant United States Attorney explained to a federal magistrate the "defendant had engaged in repeated fraud in pursuing a medical career in this country, including lying to obtain his Virginia medical license." The Virginia medical licensing website, there is a Consent Order confirming that he had surrendered his license. His license in Connecticut was also allowed to expire that year after it had been granted. The AUSA in the 2005 letter explained that on June 29, 2004, the defendant had been arrested on charges of falsely obtaining his United States citizenship, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 1425. The defendant gained his citizenship in part because he had fraudulently obtained asylum. The government summarized:
At his initial appearance on June 30, 2004, the defendant was released pursuant to an agreed upon bail amount of $100,000, co-signed by two sureties. On August 12, 2004, the defendant was indicted on the immigration charge. Sitting outside the courtroom in November 2004 before his hearing on whether his bail would be revoked, Mr. Faraj told the New York Times reporter: "I have nothing to be afraid of. They have nothing else to do but to make things up." In early November 2004, the government learned that the defendant had violated his pre-trial release conditions by making false statements in his August 2004 Virginia medical licensing application. The defendant made at least two false statements to the Virginia board: (i) falsely asserting that he had not engaged in any plea bargaining in any matter; and (ii) falsely asserting that he had never been censured or warned in regard to his medical background. The February 2007 Consent Order in Virginia explains that he had been warned about his job performance on February 28, 2003. The government argued that false statements to the Virginia board were part of a larger pattern of medical fraud by the defendant, dating back several years. In essence, the defendant satisfied two other essential medical requirements beyond the state licensing requirement through fraud: (i) fraudulently securing a required medical residency position at Lenox Hill hospital, and (ii) fraudulently securing a required certification from the Educational Committee for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMGO). The government contended that in 2001, the defendant told at least two significant lies to secure the residency. "First, in his personal statement and application submitted to Lenox Hill, the defendant falsely claimed that, "[f]rom January 1996 to January 1997, I did an internship in Zvijezda Hospital in Zagreb where I rotated in all departments." The government continued: "In fact, the defendant did not intern at that hospital and was in the United States eleven months of the twelve he was supposedly doing the internship in Croatia." The defendant engaged in similar fraud, the government explained, in his submissions to the Educational Committee for Foreign Medical Graduates, which regulates the practice of foreign medical graduates in the United States. Among other things, the defendant falsely asserted to the ECFMG that he was an intern at yet another hospital in Croatia in 1996, the Venograd Hospital. The defendant even went so far as to submit a fraudulent certification to ECFMG that he interned at Sestre Vinogradska (Sisters of Misericordy) hospital in Croatia from September 1, 1996 to January 31, 1997. The good doctor came under suspicion, in part, because of his support for suspected foreign terrorist Amir Abdulrazzak. Associated Press reported in November 2004 that "Sources familiar with the case said Abdulrazzak's immigration documents were found on a computer recovered during a raid by U.S. Special Forces on a building in Bosnia housing the Saudi High Commission for Relief, an independent group linked to the Saudi Arabian government. The building, also known as "Mecca House," was targeted after intelligence reports indicated terror suspects using it as a meeting house were planning to attack U.S. and NATO targets in Bosnia, according to a 2001 report by Army Times, a weekly for military personnel." In the 2005 letter to the federal magistrate, the Department of Justice formally provided additional detail:
As noted above, when he was not sponsoring Al Qaeda operatives, he was serving as a listed author on an article in a prestigious journal addressing the epidemiological puzzle of the anthrax spores that infected a fellow Lenox Hill employee Kathy Nguyen -- who worked in the stock room at MEETH. It seems that one never knows what one is hiding in the closet. Attorney Stanley L. Cohen represented Hassan Faraj. "The defendant had nothing to give and wouldn't become one of their snitches," Cohen told the press in November 2004. Attorney Cohen was the law partner of radical attorney Lynne Stewart, who represented blind sheik Abdel-Rahman. The blind sheik's son, Mohammed Abdel-Rahman, was on Al Qaeda's 3-member WMD committee. Mohammed was in frequent contact with the blind sheik's paralegal, Post Office employee Abdel Sattar. He would use Lynne Stewart as a "dove" to send messages to his father. The blind sheik once bemusedly said that they'll stop using doves when the US stops using secret evidence. Mohammed Abdel Rahman was captured on February 13, 2003 in Quetta, Pakistan, and that had quickly led to the seizure of anthrax spraydrying documents at the home of a bacteriologist and the raid on Ali Al-Timimi's townhouse on February 26, 2003. According to the February 2007 Virginia Consent Order, two days later -- "on or about February 28, 2003" -- Lenox Hill had issued a warning to Dr. Faraj about his job performance. Those massive searches and numerous arrests would be enough to distract even the most committed doctor from their work. k. Fall 2001 Greenlight of Biological Attack By US-Based Operatives In October or November 2001, Al Qaeda's spokesman al-Kuwaiti wrote a letter to the Administration threatening that they would use their biological weapons if the US did not stop their financial and military support for Israel and the muslim regimes. The letter from Abu ‘Abdullah Al-Kuwaiti outlined the next attack against the Americans and issued a statement to the Americans to let them know of their fighters’ readiness to kill hundreds of thousands with their nuclear and biological arsenal. The letter has been declassified and cleared for release (and was released by West Point Combating Terrorism Center in 2006).
In early October, Abu Graith had appeared on two widely-circulated videos on al Jazeera television to defend the attacks and threaten retaliation for the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan, saying "Americans should know, the storm of the planes will not stop. There are thousands of the Islamic nation's youths who are eager to die just as the Americans are eager to live." Abu Gha'ith, Bin Laden's spokesman, was from Kuwait and made a similar threat in a videotape released June 2002. In June, he renewed the biochem threat, more broadly, urging that under the koran, it was morally justified to kill up to 4 million Americans, including 1 million children, with biological or chemical weapons. In July 2003, a Kuwaiti minister announced that the Iranian government had offered to extradite Abu Ghaith to Kuwait, but that Kuwait had refused the offer. It is unclear (as of July 2003) whether he is currently in Iranian custody, or indeed in Iran at all. l. Hani and Nawaf on the Straight Path: Connecting the Kuala Lumpur, Falls Church and New Jersey Dots Nawaf Al-Hazmi was one of the two hijackers who had been at the meeting at anthrax lab director Yazid Sufaat's Malaysian condominium in January 2000. Nawaf Hazmi and a colleague had arrived the previous year in San Diego, where they had been unsuccessful in learning to fly. Upon arriving in San Diego in 2000, he met with Imam named Aulaqi -- perhaps even the same day as arriving. The 911 Commission Report said that Nawaf and his fellow hijacker and "developed a close relationship with him." One pilot at the flight school in Arabic said that Nawaf wanted to learn to jets right away, rather than start with small planes. The pilot man thought Nawaf and his colleague, Khalid al-Mihdar, were either joking or dreaming.They were joined in San Diego by Hani Hanjour, a good friend of Nawaf's from Saudi Arabia. Hani was the pilot of flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon. He was one of the most conservative and religiously observant of the hijackers. Hani had first come to the United States in 1991. After short stay in the US in Tucson where he studied in English, he returned to Saudi Arabia until 1996, when he worked in Afghanistan for a relief agency. He took flight lessons in Phoenix, Arizona where he did poorly. He eventually earned his commercial pilot training in 1998. In March 1999, he traveled to Ontario, Canada for an unknown reason. Hani had been at al-Qaeda's al-Faruq camp when Bin Laden or Atef told him "to report to KSM, who then trained Hanjour for a few days in the use of code words." Hani then met with Aafia Siddiqui's future husband al-Baluchhi in United Arab Emirates. Al-Balucchi opened an account for Hani who then traveled to San Diego.
The 911 Commission Report, however, notes that "[a]lthough Aulaqi admits talking several times with Nawaf several times, he has said he does not remember what they discussed. Aulaqi in early 2001 moved to Falls Church. Several months later, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, who by then had joined them in San Diego in December 2000, also moved to Falls Church, Virginia. On April 1, 2001, Nawaf al-Hazmi received a ticket for speeding in Oklahoma, apparently while driving cross-country from San Diego to Falls Church, Virginia. Nawaf Alhazmi and Hani Hanjour rented an apartment in Falls Church, Virginia, for about a month, with the assistance of a man they met at Aulaqi's mosque. They lived at 3355 Row St., Apt. 3 in Falls Church. The hijackers attended sermons at the Dar al Hijrah mosque, where Aulaqi was now located. Ali Al-Timimi attended the mosque until he established the nearby center. Police later found the phone number of the Falls Church mosque when they searched the apartment of 9/11 planner Ramzi bin al-Shibh in Germany. Various instructors have confirmed that Hani continued to have poor english and flying skills. Nawaf's english and flying skills also remained poor.
On May 1, 2001, Nawaf reported to police that men tried to take his wallet outside a Fairfax, Virginia residence. Before the county officer left, al-Hazmi signed a "statement of release" indicating he did not want the incident investigated. Hani and Nawaf then moved to Paterson, New Jersey, renting a one-bedroom apartment where they lived with some of the other hijackers. On June 30th, his car was involved in a minor traffic accident on the east-bound George Washington Bridge. Hani was stopped by police on August 1, 2001 for driving 55 mph in a 30 mph zone in Arlington, Virginia. On August 22, 2001, Nawaf al Hazmi purchased a Leatherman Wave Multi-tool from a Target department store in Laurel, Maryland. Hani and Nawaf moved out of the New Jersey apartment on September 1. Hani was photographed a few days later using an ATM with a fellow hijacker in Laurel, Maryland, where all five Flight 77 hijackers had purchased a 1-week membership in a local Gold's Gym. On September 10, 2001, Hanjour, al-Mihdhar, and al-Hazmi checked into the Marriott Residence Inn in Herndon, Virginia where Saleh Ibn Abdul Rahman Hussayen, a prominent Saudi government official -- who later was appointed to head the mosques at Mecca and Medina -- was staying. He was the uncle of Sami al-Hussayen, the webmaster of the Islamic Assembly of North America ("IANA"). m. Kandahar Souvenir: Hijacker Ahmed's Blackened Leg Lesion One of the hijackers, Ahmed Al-Haznawi, went to the ER on June 25, 2001 with what now appears to have been cutaneous anthrax, according to Dr. Tsonas, the doctor who treated him, and other experts. "No one is dismissing this," said CIA Director Tenet. Alhaznawi had just arrived in the country on June 8. He had traveled with Wail al Shehri from Dubai, United Arab Emirates via London-Gatwick, England to Miami, Florida. His exposure perhaps related to a camp he had been in Afghanistan. He said he got the blackened gash-like lesion when he bumped his leg on a suitcase two months earlier. Two months earlier he had been in camp near Kandahar (according to a videotape he later made serving as his last Will and Testament). His last will and testament is mixed in with the footage by the al-Qaeda's Sahab Institute for Media Production that includes Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Sulaiman Abu Ghaith. There are some spiders that on rare occasions bite and cause such a blackened eschar (notably the Brown Recluse Spider found in some parts of the United States). Dr. Tara O'Toole of the Biodefense Center at John Hopkins concluded it was anthrax. The former head of that group, Dr. Henderson, now director of the office of public health preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services, explained: "The probability of someone this age having such an ulcer, if he's not an addict and doesn't have diabetes or something like that, is very low. It certainly makes one awfully suspicious." The FBI says no anthrax was found where the hijackers were. (The FBI tested the crash sites where the planes came down and found no traces of anthrax). Although no doubt there are some other diseases that lead to similar sores, it is reasonable to credit that it was cutaneous anthrax considering all the circumstances, to include the finding by the 9/11 Commission that " in 2001, Sufaat would spend several months attempting to cultivate anthrax for al Qaeda in a laboratory he set up near the Kandahar airport." Now that we know Kandahar is where the extremely virulent anthrax was located, it makes it more likely that the John Hopkins people are correct that the lesion was cautions anthrax.
At the time, CBS reported that "U.S. troops are said to have found another biological weapons research lab near Kandahar, one that that was eyeing anthrax." But CBS and FBI spokesman further noted that "Those searches found extensive evidence that al-Qaida wanted to develop biological weapons, but came up with no evidence the terrorist group actually had anthrax or other deadly germs, they said." Only years later did we learn that there was in fact extremely virulent anthrax at Kandahar. (Though some senior officials at the CIA and FBI knew this in Autumn 2003). Thus, a factual predicate important to assessment of the John Hopkins report on the leg lesion needed to be reevaluated after Hambali's interrogation in Jordan. Another intriguing potential lead concerned a report about Atta's red hands. Shortly before 9/11, Atta went to a pharmacy with red hands, as if he had been working with bleach or detergent. Delray Beach, Florida pharmacist Greg Chadderton explained: He was given a cream called acid mantle. The explanation I favor is that it was just a latex allergy from wearing gloves. Maybe his red hands may have related to use of gloves while making a gas or spray later used to subdue passengers such as the red pepper spray introduced as an exhibit in the Moussaoui trial. But there is another disturbing, less likely possibility. The late Midhat Mursi aka Abu Khabab, the chemist helping Zawahiri with his Zabadi, or Curdled Milk, project, worked with a chemical additive for his pesticide/nerve agent. It increased absorption into the skin. Saponin, a natural detergent, is used for that purpose in a variety of commercial contexts. In late 2002, a plot was foiled when an attempt to purchase 1100 pounds of saponin was noticed by a chemical company and stopped. Authorities are not talking. A final, even more remote possibility for Atta's red hands concerns the use of chlorine bleach to decontaminate anthrax. n. Al-Marabh: Escape To Parrot-Ice Nabil Al-Marabh, before 9/11, was arrested when he tried to sneak in the country from Canada in the back of a truck. He was released from the Niagara jail in July 2001 on $10,000 bail paid by his uncle, Ahmed Shehab, owner of a Toronto copy shop. (He had been a cab driver in Boston and for a time apparently a cab driver in Tampa.) Shehab, the uncle who paid his bail, is the principal of Toronto's Al-Qura Islamic elementary school. The uncle is the successor to Mahmoud Jaballah who remained in detention for years. The two had cofounded the school. Al-Marabh skipped on his bail. Telephone records indicate he had contact with at least two of the suicide hijackers. Al-Marabh had worked for the Al Qaeda-affiliate Muslim World League and lived at the House of Martyrs in Pakistan. The immigration judge turned him over to the Canadians who released him on bail. The uncle in whose care he was being released had co-founded the local islamic school with a man under arrest for major terrorists in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. After going first to Detroit, where he applied for a new driver's license on August 7, Al-Marabh moved to suburban Chicago to live with another uncle in Justice. Al-Marabh accompanied that uncle to install a security camera at a liquor store and then came back to buy slushy drink called Parrot-Ice. In early September, when a cashier did not report, the owner hired Al-Marabh for the late shift. A personal injury lawyer in Boston handling an accident involving al-Marabh's cab had his forwarding address when the FBI ran his picture on the television news. On September 19, 2001, Nabil al-Marabh was working the night shift when a half dozen FBI officers arrested him at the Seven Days Liquor Store in suburban Chicago where he had been working for a week. When his uncle went to the store to tell him the FBI wanted him, the FBI arrived in bulletproof vests with their gun drawn. Telephone and banking records reportedly link al Marabh with September 11 hijackers Ahmed Alghamdi, Satam al-Suqami, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Mohamed Atta. A few days later, Toronto police raided Mr. Shehab's copy shop at the request of the FBI. 40 or 50 officers, some with masks and machine guns, burst into the Best Copy, a copy shop on Charles Street in Toronto. According to witnesses, in the past, there had been a large picture of Bin Laden hanging in the store. According to al-Marabh, he spent that 8 months unable to get access to a lawyer. Ms. Mariano later reported that she came to have a normal lawyer-client relationship with Mr. al-Marabh, and declines to say whether they have had any conversations related to the terror attacks of September 11. Although he was deported to Syria in January 2004, he had never been there. In 1994, he listed his citizenship as Syrian. Al Marabh felt the government was pressuring him to give up information about terrorism. According to his attorney, he feared he may end up in prison for life or be killed if deported to Syria. Although both his parents had been born in Syria, his former landlord in the Boston area said Al-Marabh told him he was Palestinian. Al-Marabh stayed at the bin-Laden "House of Martyrs" in Peshawar in 1992. The House of Martyrs had been run by Abdullah Azzam prior to his death in 1989. By 1992, it was run by the brother of Sadat's assassin, Mohammed Islambouli). From Peshawar, al-Marabh he traveled to Afghanistan, he says, and charity work there led im to be in contact with unsavory figures. In a September 2002 press interview from jail, Nabil al-Marabh explained:
Lawmakers from both parties in June 2004 questioned why he was deported rather than prosecuted. Iowa Senator Charles Grassley in a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft described the release as "of deep concern" and not in keeping with what he called the "aggressive, proactive approach to the war on terrorism." Actually, deporting him to Syria may have been aggressive and too proactive.His family reports that they have not heard from him. He was arrested shortly after being deported. The Republican's letter says al-Marabh was at one time number 27 on the FBI's list of most wanted terrorists, with substantial links to terrorists in the U.S. He had been detained for nearly two years. AP reports that the Justice Department, for its part, says the deportation was "determined to be the best option available under the law to protect our national security," including intelligence sources and methods . Al-Marabh, who lived in apartments at 147 and 180 Boston St. in Dorchester from 1989 to around October 2000, was part of a Customs Service investigation that involved hijackers Ahmed Alghamdi and Satam al-Suqami. Hamza Alghamdi was the hijacker shown apartments by the wife of the American Media ("AMI") Editor, Mike Irish. Interviewed in connection with the Amerithrax investigation relating to the Fall 2001 anthrax letters, she said she found Alghamdi withdrawn and weird. In early 1999, al-Marabh apparently was driving taxis in Tampa, Florida. Al-Marabh then was living in Detroit by May 2000, though he continued to keep his Boston address. In September 2001, Al-Marabh still received mail at 180 Boston St. in the Boston area -- and on September 18, 2001 a Boston Herald reporter saw a letter that had been sent to him from the Florida-based AMI Globe tabloid (reportedly for nonpayment of his bill). Al-Marabh got at least four letters from AMI's tabloid Globe demanding payment for an overdue subscription bill. Mark Gromis, prosecutor in the US Attorney's office in Buffalo, said he could not comment on the case -- he wanted to keep his job. In sentencing al-Marabh for crossing the border illegally to the 8 months he had served, the judge commented that he wondered why prosecutors had only given him information about the immigration charge and nothing else. The judge said there were things that didn't add up, such as that al-Marabh had close to $50,000.00 US in cash and gemstones on him when he was arrested. Wesley Wark, of the University of Toronto, was quoted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation "You know, the intelligence community's credo is that in a way, better to protect the secret than to have a successful trial." Al-Marabh's name was on the mailbox when authorities raided the apartment where the so-called "Detroit terror cell" defendants, to include Karim Koubriti, 23, Farouk Ali-Haimoud, 21, and Ahmed Hannan, 33. were staying. (Two were convicted). According to an affidavit by FBI agent Robert Pertuso, ``handwritten sketches of what appeared to be a diagram of an airport flight line, to include aircraft and runways'' were seized from the Detroit apartment where al-Marabh's name appeared on a mailbox. They in turn were associated with an unidentified Egyptian scientist who had worked in a lab in Egypt and was expert in diseases transmitted from animals to humans -- such as anthrax. Did al-Marabh, the Boston cab driver, whose address was on the door in Detroit when the authorties raided the apartment looking for al-Marabh, know Jayyousi, the Florida cell member who kept a home in Detroit and was indicted in November 2005? Did he know the Care International defendants from Boston? Did he know Aafia Siddiqui from Boston? Al-Marabhs friends and family now fear that he has been jailed. Upon arriving in Syria upon being deported, Al-Marabh emailed to one correspondent that his questioners were friendly even. Al-Marabh called and wrote friends and family in North America to say he was doing fine and that he planned to sue the U.S. government for wrongful detention. He wanted Johnny Cochran, OJ's attorney. Months later, however, when he reported for mandatory military service in May 2004, he was taken into custody by two intelligence officers when he went to register for military service in Damascus. "It sounds like it has been a year ago [since his arrest]" said Adem Carroll, a New York acquaintance who is spokesman for the New York-based Islamic Circle of North America. "His family was so afraid for him they didn't [initially] tell other family members." Mr. Carroll told a reporter he had learned of the detention after talking to Mr. al-Marabh's uncle, Ahmed Shehab, an imam in Toronto, who heard the news a few months ago after travelling through the Middle East while on hajj, a pilgrimage to Mecca. "I don't know whether they're holding him on that or whether it's the national-security thing," said Mr. Carroll, The group had helped Mr. al-Marabh with his U.S. case. Mr. Carroll said that Mr. Shehab complained that his nephew had "absolutely vanished." There was then no word of him for over a year. He apparently began to receive monthly family visits from the end of 2005. At last report, from Amnesty International, Nabil al-Marabh remains in ‘Adra prison awaiting a final decision on charges relating to "subversion". Reportedly, according to the Syrian government, the charges also relate to forging a passport, using false documents and "spreading false information abroad." He did not have access to a lawyer. o. Elzahabi: Another Boston Cabby Who Got Around Al-Marabh was also friendly with one-time Boston cab driver Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi. The Boston office of the FBI probed whether the Boston cab drivers may have been part of a cell supporting Al Qaeda terrorist activities. Elzahabi was charged in Minnesota with lying to the FBI and shipping communications equipment to Pakistan. Elzahabi lived in the Boston area between 1997 and 1999, driving a cab leased from the Boston Cab Co., the same company that al-Marabh and Hijazi leased from. Elzahabi lived in apartments in Everett. Like al-Marabh, he attended Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan during the 1980s. According to an account provided to the Boston Globe, Elzahabi fought together with al-Marabh against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Parrot-ice was Nabil al-Marabh's favorite drink in 9/2001 according to owner of 7 Days Liquor Store, his employer for a week at the Chicago area liquore store. The drink compay's slogan was "Escape to Parrot-ice."
Elzahabi reentered the US in mid-August 2001 and went to Minneapolis (the month Zacarias was arrested in Minneapolis). Like Al-Marabh, Elzahabi allegedly acted as a cash courier for jihadist groups prior to his arrival in the US in the summer of 2001. Elzahabi trained 4 years in Khalden in the early 1990s. He came back to the US for medical care after being shot and treated by an Egyptian doctor in Connecticut. After reentering the US in August 2001, he reportedly also occasionally turned up in Montreal before his arrest. He allegedly knew three jihadists who had been rendered to Syria. Wherewas Elzahabi on the dates of mailing? He applied for a job with a school bus company on September 11. Elzahabi did not begin work until at least about October 17, 2001, according to a published report quoting a named First Student spokesperson. He reportedly was dismissed in January 2002 after missing a few days of work. Elzahabi was granted a hazmat truck license in January 2002 by the Minnesota Department of Public Safety Department. His license to drive a bus was cancelled in February 2002. As the FBI secretly watched him, Elzhahabi became friendly with a police officer. When he wanted to go to Canada, he asked the officer about the background checks involved. The officer told him he was on a terrorism watch list. Minneapolis police Sgt. Andy Smith, a member of the joint terrorism task force with the FBI, suggested to Elzahabi that they talk to a buddy of Smith's in the FBI about it. FBI then questioned him two weeks before arresting him. On April 16, 2004, they first met on a dark street along the river. Agents told Elzahabi they needed people like him to help them -- and he agreed. He said he had long ago abandoned his extremist views. Agents questioned him in the living room of his hotel suite, while working out next to him in the gym, at lunch and dinner. Elzahabi flunked two polygraphs. The machine indicating deception when he was asked about plans to attack the United States. Agents frequently reminded that his statements were voluntary. When he said he had enough with the questioning, they arrested him. A Lebanese national, he had paid a Houston woman to marry him so he could be a permanent resident alien. He divorced in 1988. He first traveled to Afghanistan in 1988, entering the country through Pakistan. At the camp in 1988 and 1989, he knew Al-Zarqawi. He knew Raed Hijazi, later convicted in Jordan for his part in a millennium bombing plot targeting tourists. He also knew Bassam Kanj, who was killed by Lebanese troops in 2000 while leading a coup attempt aimed at installing a fundamentalist Islamic government. Both Hijazi and Kanj would work with him at the same Boston cab company, as would a man named Derwish, the Buffalo, NY Al Qaeda operative who recruited some young local Yemeni men there. According to the complaint unsealed in US District Court in Minneapolis, Elzahabi lied about the extent of his relationship with Hijazi. When questioned in April 2004 by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, Elzahabi "denied knowing him very well." The complaint alleged that Elzahabi helped obtain a driver's license for Hijazi. Elzahabi served as the sponsor for the application and Hijazi used Elzahabi's Everett address for mailing. The Boston Globe reports that one friend says that Elzahabi had taken a used mattress from his apartment and brought it to Hijazi's apartment in Malden. The Boston Globe reports that the friend from Everett says that Elzahabi also had become friends with yet another Boston cab driver, Kanj, when both were fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Elzahabi knew Khalid Mohammed, Zubaydah, and even Zarqawi. He lived in Queens in NYC in 1995-1997, where he allegedly shipped portable field radios to Afghan fighters. Then he worked in Boston with Al-Marabh and Hijazi in 1997-1998. In 1998, Zubaydah asked him to come back to work as a trainer (though he actually ended up in Lebanon). Before 9/11, he fought under Ibn Khattab, the Arab Chechnya fighter who was killed in 2002 by a poison letter. He travelled to Minneapolis in mid-August 2001 as did Zacarias Moussaoui. He applied for a job as a driver for a school bus company job on 9/11. Then he was fired on January 18, 2002 for missing a few days of work. In August 2007, Elzahabi was tried and convicted for immigration fraud. Soon after he came to the US on a student visa in 1984, his wife-to-be danced at the Pink Pussy Cat club. He had met her in his apartment building. He promised to pay her $5,000 to marry him. According to an FBI affidavit, Elzahabi acknowledged over 17 days of interviews that he had attended a jihad training camp, fought as a jihadist sniper in Afghanistan from about 1991-1995, and had connections to high-ranking Al Qaeda members. Government officials allege that just months after he came to the U.S., Elzahabi and the woman were married. The government alleges the couple never lived together, never exchanged rings and never went on a honeymoon. According to court records, he said he shot and killed a bulldozer driver while fighting with Chechen rebels. "We think this is a death-penalty case," Elzahabi's defense lawyer told theJudge, given the possibility of deportation. In connection with a related Minneapolis case involving a man named Warsame, court documents allege that Warsame trained at two Al-Qaida camps for several months. At the second camp, he met Bin Laden and attended Bin Laden's lectures and sat next to him on the floor at a meal. Prosecutors allege that Warsame wanted to bring his wife and daughter to Afghanistan but Al Qaeda leaders told him instead that they would pay for him to go back home. Al Qaeda bought him an airline ticket and gave him $1,700. Dr. L. Thomas Kucharski, psychiatrist for the defendant, explained in his affidavit filed July 2, 2009 how she had been tasked to study germ warfare: . Who was Abu Lubaba? Why did a reporter attending the Aafia Siddiqui July 2009 competency hearing ask who was Dr. Bannan? That is the name of the FBI's forensic microbiologist. The affidavit by a Dr. Sally Johnson, a professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill filed July 2, 2009 sheds light on the continuing mysterious saga of Aafia Siddiqui, one Al Qaeda biochem operative.
Who were the members of the other cells? What attacks were referenced? The earlier indictment filed on September 2, 2008 alleges:
When various non-pilot hijackers purchased their tickets in late May 2001 and June 2001, they listed the phone number of Al-Baluchi, the future husband of Brandeis PhD Aafia Siddiqui, as their contact number. He was in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Later in June 2001, other hijackers listed al Hawsawi. Al-Hawsawi was KSM’s assistant. KSM says it was al-Hawsawi’s computer that had the anthrax spraydrying documents. Al-Hawsawi was also in Dubai. In the formal charges, the Department of Defense alleges that Al Hawsawi and Al-Baluchi (Ali Abdul Aziz Ali) both assisted the non-pilot hijackers by buying clothes, food, lodging, rental cars, traveler’s checks and making travel arrangements. Al-Baluchi returned to Karachi from Dubai on June 26, 2001. Al-Baluchi told KSM, who was his uncle, that he was willing to do anything to help the Planes Operation. KSM advised him to apply for a visa. In late August 2001, he applied for travel to the US on September 4, 2001 but his visa was rejected. With his plan to enter the US thwarted, on September 10, 2001, al-Baluchi flew from Dubai, United Arab Emirates to Karachi. If his travel visa for travel to the US had been accepted, what would have been his role? Al-Balucchi later married Aafia Siddiqui, a Brandeis PhD, in the spring of 2003, shortly before his capture. Al-Hawsawi had taken over for KSM upon KSM’s capture a couple months earlier. Had al-Baluchi known Aafia Siddiqui prior to 9/11? Did the lovely and pious Aafia have foreknowledge of 9/11? Is it true she met anthrax planning head Atef in June 2001 in Liberia? Aafia’s attorney once said she could prove Aafia was in the US in June 2001. Aafia’s family, however, prevailed upon the attorney not to subpoena Aafia’s credit card records as she had planned. Aafia left the US for Pakistan in a hurry on September 19, 2001, booking the first available flight. Perhaps the forensic evidence most useful in proving the source of the acquisition of the Ames strain used in the mailings will be an inverted plasmid. Dr. Read, a scientist helping with the Amerithrax investigation in the DNA sequencing, long ago published the news that the anthrax was a 50/50 mixture of genotype 62 (Ames) and genotype 62 with an inversion on the plasmid. At Houston, where Aafia has a connection, graduate student Melissa Drysdale at Theresa Koehler’s lab in Houston in Spring 2001 — just as the lab was ramping up to BL-3 — rendered a strain virulent from avirulent by inserting the virulent plasmid into an avirulent strain. Did Aafia visit Houston in June 2001 after she finished her PhD? There was a massive flood at the lab then and the doors were left propped open. In early November 2005, an Assistant United States Attorney said in his opening argument in the prosecution of Uzair Paracha, that an unnamed woman, if asked would “help carry out a deadly Anthrax attack against the United States.’” It earlier had been reported that the defendant, Uzair Paracha, had agreed to help KSM and an operative in connection with some ID documents. The AUSA was referring to Al Qaeda supporter Aafia Siddiqui. One ACLU lawyer representing the family described the doe-eyed Aafia as a soccer mom driving a Volvo. In early 2002, Aafia Siddiqui had opened up the Post Office box that was to be used in connection with the documents. In January 2002, she was still married to her husband when she came back to the US, interviewed at SUNY and John Hopkins, and opened up a PO Box in Maryland for operative Majid Khan. She says, according to a psychiatrist's report, that Majid Khan had asked her to open the P.O. Box box. She filed for divorce from her husband in 2002 — her divorce came through in August 2002. At the Paracha trial, an employee at the Gaithersburg post office, testified that Aafia Siddiqui opened a PO box for Majid Khan on December 30, 2002. Uzair Paracha had never met Aafia but he told detectives that he believed she was the kind of person who would be willing to receive anthrax at a PO Box. The jury saw that as evidence that he was willing to help dangerous terrorists. In a statement to the court, Majid Khan said that he wanted to come to the US because he had a plan to attack gas stations in Baltimore. However, Uzair told detectives that he suspected that Khan, al-Baluch and his father were planning some sort of attack involving chemical weapons. He said al-Baluchi and his father had been meeting in Karachi with an 80-year-old chemistry professor whom he said was helping al-Qaeda develop chemical weapons. Later he recanted everything he had said about chemical weapons. The jury didn’t believe him. Aafia studied for a time at the University of Houston in 1990-91 after moving to Houston in 1990. (Her brother lived and worked in the Houston area beginning in 2001). Aafia Siddiqui then transferred to MIT and went on to Brandeis to get her PhD in neuroscience. The Wall Street Journal has reported that according to witnesses discussed in a UN dossier, Aafia Siddiqui reportedly met with Al Qaeda’s military commander, Atef, in Liberia in June 2001. There is a difference of opinion as to whether the key witness is credible. Although he drove the woman around, perhaps the man's desire for a visa to the US influenced his recollection when he saw Aafia’s picture in the paper. Aafia’s attorney emphasizes that witness identifications are inherently unreliable. In Maryland, Aafia visited a cousin in Gaithersburg and helped Majid Khan in connection with possible attacks by opening a mailbox in his and her name. Her family argues that it is her husband, Mohammed Ahmad Khan, who has made her look guilty — for example, by using her e-mail account to buy night goggles and a book on how to make explosives. According to one report, Aafia left for Pakistan on September 19 and so was not in the country at the time of the second mailing. She returned from Pakistan with her husband in January 2002. At last report, she had 3 children. In 2009, her ex-husband broke his silence to convincingly argue that Aafia and her family have been lying. Prosecutors and government psychiatrists now have similarly argued to the court that she had been faking mental illness. She apparently thinks that if declared incompetent she will be repatriated to Pakistan. Aafia and her ex-husband, a Harvard-trained anesthesiologist at last report living in Karachi, were officers of Institute of Islamic Research and Teaching Inc. In the mid-1990s, she worked for the United Islamic Organization (”UIO”), an education and relief organization. Her mother was President and her sister also volunteered. Through the group, for example, Siddiqui raised money for Bosnian refugees and the widows and orphans from that conflict. The organization was founded in Zambia in 1974 by Ismat Siddiqui. Its head office is in Karachi, Pakistan and on paper has branches in the United States, Canada, and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps the reality is as the family’s first attorney described to me: Aafia’s father set up the charity as something for the mom to do, who ran it out of her home. Any branch offices were run out of residences. In addition, Siddiqui was found to be active with the Al-Kifah Refugee Center, the Boston branch of an Islamic charity that was ostensibly raising funds for Bosnian orphans. Federal prosecutors allege it is a front for Al Qaeda associated with the Blind Sheikh. In April 2003, Aafia’s mom, Ismat, said she last saw her daughter on March 30, 2003 before Aafia left in a minicab along with her three children to go to the capital Islamabad. She was going to visit a friend and uncle. She called her mom from the train station — she did not have money for plane tickets. (Rail by far is the easiest and most efficient means of traveling to Islamabad, far in the north). She would later report that she had a fight with her mom and it had been decided she would go live with her uncle. She never made it to see her uncle. Pakistani government officials tried to calm her fears — telling her to be “patient and not rely on media reports” about Aafia’s fate. The authorities have denied having Siddiqui in custody. Ismat Siddiqui, Aafia’s mother, reports that a stranger came to her house and told her that her daughter was safe and that she should not raise a “hue and cry” for her release. She says he told her not “make too much noise about Aafia if you want her to return safely.” He also threatened her that if she made the matter public, her daughter would meet the “same fate as Asif Bhuja met.” (Bhuja was a suspect in the murder of Danny Pearl but was found dead when police arrived to question him; Saud Memon, the man who owned the property where Pearl was kept, was later reported to have been involved in financing Al Qaeda’s anthrax efforts and years after being captured was left for dead on his family’s doorstep.)
The affidavit by Dr. Leslie Powers, psychiatrist for the government, addresses her whereabouts for the 5 years before her 2008 arrest.
A family member in the US hired an attorney who inquired of the FBI as to Aafia’s whereabouts but the FBI reported that they did not have her in custody. Aafia Siddiqui’s family has long-standing ties with the family of Pakistan religious affairs minister Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq. Ul-Haq’s late father — Gen. Zia ul-Haq — gave Izmat Siddiqui, Aafia's mother, a government post after he seized power in 1977 and set up a new court system to enforce sharia. The religious affairs minister Ijaz ul-Haq told The New Yorker that his family respected Aafia’s mother because she “is a religious scholar.” An Interior Ministry spokesman confirmed in late May 2004 that Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, allegedly involved in terrorist activities, had been arrested in 2003 from Karachi and handed over to the US authorities. Just three days later on May 26, 2004, Director Mueller and Attorney General Ashcroft held a press conference announcing she was an Al Qaeda operative and they were looking for her (even though some were suggest the ISI or CIA already had her in custody for over a year). In October 2008, a Pakistani news account relays Aafia's description of her whereabouts for 5 years:
Aafia
Her Uncle provides a detailed and fascinating account that does not seem inconsistent. In the Fall of 2003, Fowzia left her position at John Hopkins in neurology to return to Pakistan. Fowzia's phone reportedly was wiretapped under an NSA program codenamed "Stellar Wind." In the Spring, she inquired of a government official as to Aafia’s whereabouts and was told she had already been released and should go home and wait for a call — but the call never came. In 1995, Aafia wrote this:
“That was before she became a house frau,” the family’s ACLU attorney pointed out to me. But is it accurate to suggest that just because someone has primary responsibility for child care that they suddenly are no longer political? She certainly remained both very political and highly anti-semitic. Aafia’s sister Fowzia, a respected neurologist involved in diagnosing and treating epilepsy, was at John Hopkins until her concern for Aafia’s welfare became too pressing a matter. She too, along with her mom, for a time was locked inside the family home incommunicado even as to a distraught uncle. The Pakistan Interior Minister once said at a press conference: “You will be astonished to know about the activities of Dr Aafia (Siddiqui).” Her uncle wrote two informative letters to the editor at a Pakistan paper. His sister and niece were not under house arrest as he speculated — which leaves the inference they just didn’t hear the knocking at the door, weren’t at home, or just weren’t interested in communicating on the subject. In December 2008, Aafia's former husband made an impassioned plea for information relating to his children and their welfare. The ACLU Attorney Lamoreaux advised me that she knows of no basis to the suggestion, first made by a Southern Florida television station, that Aafia knew “Jafar the Pilot.” (In contrast, the Pakistan press has said she was a member of the “Chemical Wire Group” and we later learned that someone known as "Abu Luaba" had tasked her with studying biological and chemical weapons while she worked at a lab technican at the Karachi Technology Institute. In US News & World Report, attorney Lamoreaux is quoted as saying that Siddiqui doesn’t fit the profile. “A woman with children, wearing a hijab, driving a Volvo,” scoffs Lamoreaux. “Is that how al Qaeda is recruiting, now, at playgrounds?” To know how Al Qaeda is recruiting, it seems a good source would be the thumb drive in her possession which contained correspondence involving cells and previous attacks -- and to understand her relationship with this "Abu Luaba." The story noted “The FBI says the information from those early investigations is classified.” Lamoreaux adds: “The FBI often fans sparks into flames. But it looks to me like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed knew enough about her to know her name. It wasn’t Jane Doe or Jane Smith. That does strike me as odd.” The ACLU in a February 2004 publication called “Sanctioned Bias: Racial Profiling Since 9/11” described Aafia’s brother first encounter with the FBI. Muhammad A. Siddiqui is an architect in Houston and father of two young children. When his mom and sister called him to say the FBI had questioned him, he called ACLU attorney Annette Lamoreaux. It was a Monday evening when two FBI agents came to visit. “I’d be happy to talk to you, but I’d like to have my attorney present.” Borrowing a page from your favorite television show, one of the FBI agents suggested he didn’t need an attorney. He said that asking for an attorney only made him look guilty. The FBI agent again said that he wanted to speak to him now, greatly emphasizing the word “now.” Following the advice of his civil rights attorney, he repeated: “I’d be happy to talk to you, but I’d like to have my attorney present.” In response to the FBI’s continuing pressure, he called Attorney Lamoreaux on his cell phone. She told the FBI agent that the agent could call her office during the day and set up an appointment. He screamed at Lamoreaux that Siddiqui did not have a right to counsel (as he was not in custody). Repeating her earlier suggestion that the agent call her on Monday, she told the agent “and you are to leave the house immediately.” The FBI agent handed the cell phone back to Siddiqui. Muhammad did not feel comfortable telling the agents to leave and so he kept politely repeating his attorney’s advice. “Turn off that cell phone!” the agent demanded. Mr. Siddiqui reasonably refused, at least wanting to permit his attorney to serve as a witness to the questioning. From Siddiqui’s point of view, at least, the FBI agent pulled back his coat to reveal a gun. Siddiqui repeats that he was afraid — his children were inside and his wife, Dr. Lubna Khawaja, a busy doctor who worked at the local medical center, was not at home. Aafia lived with the Khawaja family in Pakistan, according to one government psychiatrist, while working at the Karachi Technology Institute and studying germ and chemical warfare, but it is a common name. “I do this all the time. As soon as there is a lawyer in the picture, they have to play by the rules,” Lamoreaux explains. The agents — thwarted — turned away. One of them said upon leaving: “We will talk to you. We are watching you. Don’t leave town.” When the agent called on Monday, Attorney Lamoreaux suggested that they meet on Thursday when Siddiqui was free from work and child care responsibilities. The agent insisted on meeting that day and said he would stand outside of Siddiqui’s home until he came out and spoke to them. At the 15 minute meeting held that day at Lamoreaux’s office, the agent confirmed he had never been a criminal target. Mr. Siddiqui says, “Once there was counsel involved, attitudes changed dramatically. Laws started to mean something.” Before 9/11, Mr. Siddiqui had lived in Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his wife was an MD. Aafia Siddiqui is associated with the Ann Arbor addresses, perhaps as the result of visits. Ann Arbor is the location of the nanobiotechnology researchers supplied virulent Ames by Bruce Ivins were located but it is not known whether the head of the DARPA project there, Tarek Hamouda, knew any of Aafia's relatives. A Boston blogger arrested in mid-November 2008 was a big supporter of Aafia Siddiqui. He apparently travelled from Boston to NYC for her bail hearing. He allegedly used as code words "school" and "peanut butter and jelly sandwiches." Aafia Siddiqui’s musings and brainstorming about bioweapons that would kill only certain ethnic groups etc. was actually what Dr. Basson has said he was working on in an interview with Coen and Nadler in their recent documentary online. ABC News yesterday reported on a hearing on her competency:
The fellow in the Canton, Ohio library researching anthrax worked at a chicken farm. So she may be totally unrealistic and an anti-semitic religious zealot, but she does not seem psychotic. At a July 2009 hearing on her competency, while psychiatrists were testifying, Aafia called out to the gallery that the US has been framed to look bad and that the wars were just due to misunderstandings. What is the FBI's Ivins Theory other than one gigantic misunderstanding? The FBI's forensic microbiologist Dr. Bannan, at the same time he focuses on Amerithrax, needs to bear down on the activities of Aafia Siddiqui -- as needed to be done these past years including the time she worked at the Karachi Institute of Technology researching germ warfare even though she had up to a $5 million reward on her head. q. Aafia at Brandeis: Truth - Even Unto Its Innermost Parts
: Truth: Int Did Aafia have potential access to any Ivins-supplied virulent Ames in the collection of anthrax strains at Brandeis and did that long-held collection include Ames? On March 11, 2002, the Brandeis General Counsel sent an email advising that the federal authorities had subpoenaed records in connection with the investigation of the anthrax crimes. In November 2001, the Hazmat Team and the State Department of Health was called after three researchers were doing research with anthrax and Administration officials were concerned there might be contamination. The scientists were confident all scientific protocols had been followed but Hazmat was called nonetheless. The research had been done after the anthrax mailings seeking means to detect anthrax spores. The anthrax used had been at Brandeis a long time, acquired at a time before federal regulations in 1997 required that transfers be recorded. The lab was in the Kalman Building, part of the complex of buildings adjoining the Volen Center. Brandeis researchers Daniel Perlman and Inga Mahler had “decided to focus on developing a solid growth medium for cultivating B. anthracis that might be usable in the field with a minimum of equipment. They further developed the growth medium for use at room temperature thereby obviating the need for equipment such as incubators for sustaining an elevated temperature.” The pair obtained a patent issued March 2004 titled “Selective growth medium for Bacillus anthracis and methods of use.” Dr. Perlman has been innovative on a wide range of consumer products; Dr. Mahler had published on the subject of gram positive and gram negative bacteria (the subject underlying the patent) in the Journal of Bacteriology in 1989. Dr. Mahler advises me that the strain of Bacillus anthracis they used in December 2001 was ordered by her group at Brandeis almost 40 years ago. It came from the American Type Culture Collection and was kept viable, together with other stock strains. She explains that before 9/11 you could simply obtain the organism from culture collections or colleagues. Their offices are in Abelson-Bass-Yalem, adjoining the Volen Center where Aafia’s lab was located. The strain used, Dr. Mahler advises (referred to in the paper as MC 607) — MC stands for Rosenstiel Center — was Vollum, not Ames. Vollum is a strain that like Ames is used to challenge vaccines. It is less lethal but was used by the US in the 1950s in making anthrax weapons. Dr. Mahler reports she knows of no Ames on campus. Dr. Perlman did not respond to an email query. The anthrax was autoclaved, or inactivated in a pressure cooker, before the inspectors arrived at the scene. Aafia obtained her PhD from Brandeis in 2001, having graduated from MIT with a degree in biology in 1994. The Visual Lab at which Aafia worked had rules: “No Hitting, No Punching, No Pushing, No Grabbing, No Biting.” Judging from its internet page, the lab seems to have been a pleasant place to work. The operating manual instructed that if you don’t know “ask.” The lab’s work under Robert Sekuler, mainly funded by a grant from the NIH, related to how we remember, forget, or misremember things. Aafia's 2001 183-page thesis “Separating the components of imitation,” which concerns visual learning and visual discrimination, was very far removed from questions like the Palestinian conflict or creating a fine powder using a mini-spraydryer. In the first year of their Ph.D. program, students do 4 nine-week rotations in different laboratories of their choosing. First-year course work includes a core class in principles of neuroscience, and intensive graduate level seminars that give students experience in reading original research literature and making oral presentations. Graduate research advisors are typically chosen at the end of the first year. So one question is: what different labs did Aafia work in during her first year? It is related to the question: what is the origin of the anthrax spraydrying documents on the laptop of the colleague of Aafia’s future husband al-Balucchi? “Aafia Siddiqui was here (Boston) in June 2001— when some press reports suggest she was in Liberia meeting with Atef — says the family’s attorney, Elaine Whitfield Sharp. “And I can prove it.” When her attorney proposed to the family that they obtain her credit card records by subpoena, the family vetoed the idea. Although it should have been easy to check, no members of a play group were brought forward to say that Aafia was in Boston in June. Counsel for the family succeeded at preventing Ismat, the mom, from having to testify before a grand jury in Boston on the grounds that she was too distraught over the disappearance of her daughter.
r. Houston, We May Have A Problem Alternatively, did the PhD neurologist Aafia Siddiqui have potential access to the virulent Ames strain at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston? Veterinarian and anthrax expert Martin Hugh-Jones, a professor at Louisiana State University, has said: “It was like trading baseball cards.” Hugh-Jones reports he got most of his anthrax from Peter Turnbull at the Porton Down lab in Great Britain, one of those that had received the Ames strain directly from Ft. Detrick. Dr. Theresa Koehler at Houston and Hugh-Jones discussed the distribution of Ames on NPR in January 2002:
Dr. Theresa M Koehler holds a faculty appointment at the UT Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. She is Associate Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. She has had grants from the CIA, the National Institutes of Health, and others for her work on virulence. Her office was in the same complex, in the connected John Freeman Building. Aafia's sister-in-law, Dr. Lubna Khawaja, had an office there. In Fall 2001, Dr. Koehler said she had taken the anthrax vaccine and that she got anthrax strains from Porton Down. In the Spring of 2003, Dr. Koehler explained that “It’s critical to use a genetically complete strain of the [anthrax] bacterium in experiments involving virulence.” A government study reported in April 2003 found that all of the labs that had received grants from the National Institutes of Health had unobstructed access to the floors with critical labs.
Ten million gallons of water were unleashed on the UT Medical School at Houston June 9, 2001 by Tropical Storm Allison. The basement, where the anthrax lab was located, was the hardest hit. More than 400 emergency personnel (internal and contracted) attempted to address the devastation. Throughout June, no equipment could be removed or powered up. Stairwell doors needed to be kept closed. By the first week of July 2001, the basement and ground floor was still off limits, and only one entrance was available. Ground floor occupants needed to continue to work at their temporary sites. Gross mold spore counts continued to be beyond acceptable limits in the basement, which was ventilated separately from the rest of the building. The building was opened for business on July 11, 2001 but the ground floor and basement were construction remediation sites and off-limits except to access elevators to upper levels. Two entrances to the building were available: on the Webber Plaza side of the building near the circle drive and at the breezeway near the guard’s desk. Occupants were reminded in an employee newsletter not to block open stair well doors on any floor. The newsletter Scoop reported that in 2007, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new six-story research space completed in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Allison, "[m]any in the crowd were moved to tears as they recalled that day in June 2001. 'All of the animals were drowned and there were $165 million in structural damages,' President Willerson said. 'It was a daunting task, but we didn’t give up.'" Did the anthrax lab in the basement have virulent Ames anthrax strain, to include Ames? If so, what was done with the isolates during the devastation caused in the basement by the flood? At the time it was lawful to have virulent anthrax in its liquid form in a BL-2 facility, contrary to the occasional misperception; a hood is used in handling such isolates. A University President explained as much in a letter in connection with the incident when some live Ames spores were sent by Northern Arizona to Los Alamos in Fall 2001. Members of the lab brought out the champagne at the lab in late 2001 when a special visa was granted to a research team member, who without it would have had to return to China. “We knew it was going to be risky,” said Dr. Koehler, a microbiologist at the school who for the past 20 years has studied the anthrax bacterium now being used as a terrorist weapon. “The question was whether current events would convince federal officials that [the researcher’s] skills are in the national interest or make them restrict workers from certain countries.” “It is a horrible feeling to think that it could be someone I know, that the perpetrator is a microbiologist among us,” said Dr. Koehler. In September 2001, Dr. Koehler explained her anthrax research, how terrorists might deploy anthrax as a biological weapon and how physicians would treat it. Aafia’s brother in 2001 was associated with addresses in Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Canton, Michigan — and even Harrison, NJ — in 2001. The ACLU attorney representing Aafia’s family advised me that it had been years since she was Houston — certainly before 2001 and maybe not since she was married. She added that if Aafia was there, it was to visit her brother, who has nothing to do with the med center.” The attorney reports: “there is no way they could have helped her get access to the necessary labs at the med center.” On Research Day in 2003, the award winners for Biomedical Excellence included a graduate student working in Dr. Koehler’s lab, Melissa Drysdale, who worked on gene regulation in a virulent strain of bacillus anthracis.
Dr. Koehler received, for example, the Weybridge strain from Porton Down prior to the Fall of 2001. Did Dr. Koehler have virulent Ames from either Porton Down or somewhere else? (Her mentor was the eminent vaccine researcher Dr. Curtis Thorne who got samples directly from Ft. Detrick). Remember: Khalid Mohammed, who told authorities about Aafia, had anthrax production documents on his assistant’s laptop (the guy working with Aafia’s future husband in UAE in the summer of 2001). She allegedly was associated with both KSM and “Jafar the Pilot” who is at large. She later married an Al Qaeda operative al-Baluchi who, like al-Hawsawi, had been listed as a contact for the hijackers and took over plots upon the arrest of KSM. Authorities have said that a Pakistani scientist , who they refused to name was helping Al Qaeda with its anthrax production program. Were they referring to bacteriologist Abdul Qudus Khan in whose home the Pakistan authorities claim KSM was captured? Was it Rauf Ahmad who Zawahiri sent to infiltrate UK biodefense? Was it the chemistry professor who met with Uzair Paracha in February 2003? Or was it Aafia who was alleged to be a “facilitator” who handled logistics. “Logistics” is handling an operation that involves providing labor and materials as needed. One government psychiatrist affidavit reports that she claims to have been tasked by an "Abu Luaba" to research germ warfare. According to a UN dossier reviewed by a journalist at the Wall Street Journal, in June 2001 she traveled to Liberia to meet Al Qaeda’s military commander, Atef, who had been head of the anthrax planning. One important mystery to resolve analysis is to determine whether the chauffeur who claims the lady was Aafia is lying or mistaken. A FBI memo from 2003 titled "Allegations Relating to al Qaeda's Trafficking in Conflict Diamonds," and a related 2004 presentation to the intelligence community, debunking the allegations relating to trafficking in conflict diamonds. The memo was declassified in 2006 and provided under FOIA in February 2008 to intelwire.com. If those documents represent the FBI's current thinking, there is reason to think Aafia never went to Liberia in June 2001 -- or atleast that the FBI does not think she did. The ACLU in a February 2004 publication called “Sanctioned Bias: Racial Profiling Since 9/11” described Aafia’s brother first encounter with the FBI. Muhammad A. Siddiqui is an architect in Houston and father of two young children. Someone with the same common name, as mentioned in the court record relating to Project Bojinka. United States of America v. Ramzi Ahmed Yousef et al, (August 26, 1996), page 5118. A letter was read into the record
In addition to many people having this very common name, people often used aliases. The attorney, Dietrich Snell, at the time was under the impression it related to a solicitation for money. Attorney Snell was from the US Attorney’s Office. More recently, Snell acted as counsel for the 9/11 Commission. He served as Deputy Attorney General for Public Advocacy under Eliot Spitzer. What was the address of the recipient? Who was Muhammad Siddiqui with whom KSM corresponded? Attorney General Ashcroft and Director Mueller made an on-the-record renewed push to find Aafia Siddiqui in a press conference on May 26, 2004 shortly after ACLU Attorney Annette Lamoreaux responded to my emailed inquiries about Aafia. Three days after the Pakistan Ministry of Interior claimed she had been handed over to US authorities in late March 2003. There are the many questions surrounding the mystery of the disappearance of the lovely, intelligent and pious -- and it turns out occasionally quite chatty -- Aafia Siddiqui. Aafia once had an MIT alumni email account forwarded to umaisha@yahoo.com — which under one translation means lively mom. Aisha was the Prophet’s favorite wife. Maybe correspondence in that email account held the answers. In a Pakistan news account, Attorney Whitfield Sharp says she doesn’t know of any police report filed by the mom. In the same account, she reports that Aafia received job offer at both John Hopkins and the State University of New York (SUNY). It likely was SUNY downstate in Brooklyn where her sister had gone to school and lived. (Her mother Ismat is associated with addresses in Brooklyn, as well as Massachusetts, in Houston, and in Ann Arbor where Mohammad’s wife had a medical practice. Mohammad is associated with some Ann Arbor and Detroit-area addresses. Ann Arbor, coincidentally, was where IANA was located, as well as the President of Global Relief. When he was captured, Al-Baluchi, Khalid Mohammed’s nephew and Aafia Siddiqui’s husband, “was in possession of a perfume spray bottle which contained a low concentration of cyanide when he was arrested.” He was the fellow who met with Majid Khan about using a textiles shipping container to smuggle an unidentified chemical into the country. Cyanide in perfume bottles had been suggested for use in nightclubs in Indonesia but Bin Laden reportedly nixed the plan as ineffectual. The transcript from the Combatant Status Review Tribunal explains: MEMBER [AL-BALUCHI]: While you were in Pakistan you describe the cyanide… DETAINEE: [Interrupting the Member] MEMBER: … you had in your possession, a small amount, as being textile, chemical-oriented. DETAINEE: Yes. MEMBER: Why would you have that on your person? DETAINEE: Just I have. Wasn’t for specific purpose but I have. It’s ah… MEMBER: Did you have an intent to use it once you got there? What were you going to do with it? DETAINEE: No, no. Just ah, it’s use for clothing to remove the color. And something in Pakistan it’s something that they do. It’s bleach like kinda bleach but industrial bleach so.” According to the DOD formal charges issued in February 2008, KSM would give the hijackers a chemical in an eye dropper to remove Pakistan visas from their passport. Perhaps the low concentration of cyanide in the perfume bottle used to remove stains just related to that — rather than consideration of a plot to spray cyanide in a nightclub that had been vetoed by Bin Laden. But here’s a Helpful Heloise Tip. Before attempting to get that damn spot out, first get rid of that incriminating pocket litter. The transcript from the hearing on al-Baluchi’s status as an “unlawful combatant” continues: “The Detainee’s pocket litter included a letter from unidentified Saudi Arabian scholars to Usama bin Laden. The letter discussed al Qaida’s strategy in the War on Terror.” Upon her arrest in the summer of 2008, Aafia's pocket litter included both documents about biological weapons and correspondencing referencing cells and attacks. Will Aafia Siddiqui cooperate about other US-based operatives? s. Aafia, Anthrax, Silica, and Zabadi (Yogurt or Curdled Milk) Did Al Qaeda operative Aafia Siddiqui’s research into germ warfare or work as a lab technician expose her to the use of silica or a siliconizing solution for the purpose of encapsulation? Did she know Al-Timimi who shared a suite with the inventors of a process to use silica in the culture medium to concentrate anthrax? Was Al-Timimi one of the cell members referenced in the correspondence on her thumb drive when she was captured in July 2008? As the result of a secret undisclosed program, was this all known by the White House and Vice President Cheney’s Office but kept from Amerithrax? Why is Dr. Bannan privately mentioned by a reporter to me in connection to the Aafia Siddiqui case? Does Dr. Bannan multi-task and consult with intelligence agencies on bioweapons when he is not supporting hanging Amerithrax on the dead guy who — yikes! — used fake screen names on the internet and liked pictures of blindfolded sorority coeds? And did Aafia have potential access to the collection of anthrax strains at Brandeis and did that long-held collection include Ames? On March 11, 2002, the Brandeis General Counsel sent an email advising that the federal authorities had subpoenaed records in connection with the investigation of the anthrax crimes. In November 2001, the Hazmat Team and the State Department of Health was called after three researchers were doing research with anthrax and Administration officials were concerned there might be contamination. The scientists were confident all scientific protocols had been followed but Hazmat was called nonetheless. The research had been done after the anthrax mailings seeking means to detect anthrax spores. The anthrax used had been at Brandeis a long time, acquired at a time before federal regulations in 1997 required that transfers be recorded — and before Ivins’ flask 1029 was created. The lab was in the Kalman Building, part of the complex of buildings adjoining the Volen Center. Brandeis researchers Daniel Perlman and Inga Mahler had “decided to focus on developing a solid growth medium for cultivating B. anthracis that might be usable in the field with a minimum of equipment. They further developed the growth medium for use at room temperature thereby obviating the need for equipment such as incubators for sustaining an elevated temperature.” The pair obtained a patent issued March 2004 titled “Selective growth medium for Bacillus anthracis and methods of use.” DR. PERLMAN HAS BEEN INNOVATIVE ON A WIDE RANGE OF CONSUMER PRODUCTS TO INCLUDE YOGURT INVOLVING SILICON DIOXIDE MICROPARTICULATES IN ITS PROCESSING. AYMAN ZAWAHIRI’S PROGRAM WAS CODE-NAMED YOGURT OR CURDLED MILK — ZABADI IN ARABIC. Brandeis life sciences PhD was tasked with researching germ warfare. The FBI’s Dr. Bannan needs to put aside his visions of Bruce Ivins’ panty raids and roll up his sleeves regarding the hypothesis of silicon dioxide microparticulates in processing. Dr. Perlman has been innovative on a wide range of consumer products to include yogurt involving silicon dioxide microparticulates in its processing; Dr. Mahler had published on the subject of gram positive and gram negative bacteria (the subject underlying the patent) in the Journal of Bacteriology in 1989. Dr. Mahler years ago advised me that the strain of Bacillus anthracis they used in December 2001 was ordered by her group at Brandeis almost 40 years ago. It came from the American Type Culture Collection and was kept viable, together with other stock strains. She explains that before 9/11 you could simply obtain the organism from culture collections or colleagues. Their offices are in Abelson-Bass-Yalem, adjoining the Volen Center where Aafia’s lab was located. The strain used, Dr. Mahler advises (referred to in the paper as MC 607) — MC stands for Rosenstiel Center — was Vollum, not Ames. Vollum is a strain that like Ames is used to challenge vaccines. It is less lethal but was used by the US in the 1950s in making anthrax weapons. Dr. Mahler reports she knew of no Ames on campus. Dr. Perlman, however, did not respond to an email query. The anthrax was autoclaved, or inactivated in a pressure cooker, before the inspectors arrived at the scene. Aafia obtained her PhD from Brandeis in 2001, having graduated from MIT with a degree in biology in 1994. The Visual Lab at which Aafia worked had rules: “No Hitting, No Punching, No Pushing, No Grabbing, No Biting.” Judging from its internet page, the lab seems to have been a pleasant place to work. The operating manual instructed that if you don’t know “ask.” The lab’s work under Robert Sekuler, mainly funded by a grant from the NIH, related to how we remember, forget, or misremember things. Aafia’s 2001 183-page thesis “Separating the components of imitation,” which concerns visual learning and visual discrimination, was very far removed from questions like the Palestinian conflict or creating a fine powder using a mini-spraydryer. In the first year of their Ph.D. program, students do 4 nine-week rotations in different laboratories of their choosing. First-year course work includes a core class in principles of neuroscience, and intensive graduate level seminars that give students experience in reading original research literature and making oral presentations. Graduate research advisors are typically chosen at the end of the first year. So one question is: what different labs did Aafia work in during her first year? It is related to the question: what is the origin of the anthrax spraydrying documents on the laptop of the colleague of Aafia’s future husband al-Balucchi? She says that she for a time was tasked with researching germ weapons and worked as a lab technician at Karachi Institute of Technology (this apparently was while there was a $5 million BOLO out for her — good work guys in tracking down the scientists helping Al Qaeda). “Aafia Siddiqui was here (Boston) in June 2001— when some press reports suggest she was in Liberia meeting with Atef — says the family’s attorney, Elaine Whitfield Sharp. “And I can prove it.” When her attorney proposed to the family that they obtain her credit card records by subpoena, the family vetoed the idea. Although it should have been easy to check, no members of a play group were brought forward to say that Aafia was in Boston in June. Although I may be mistaken, I believe counsel for the family succeeded at preventing Ismat, the mom, from having to testify before a grand jury in Boston on the grounds that she was too distraught over the disappearance of her daughter. According to one point, Ismaat is now suffering dementia — Aafia, for all the controversy over her mental state, just seems highly anti-semitic and very angry. If that is enough to avoid trial, Ayman Zawahiri has nothing to worry about. The federal magistrate should assume special role in assuring that Aafia Siddiqui receives excellent medical care and legal representation. The District Court Judge seems to be bending over backwards in being fair. His permitting her to address the gallery at length from the defense table was extraordinary. It’s rare that a judge politely says “Excuse me, excuse me” in trying to quite a defendant talking over witnesses. Aafia has received excellent legal representation but for reasons that are unclear seems not to be cooperating. She, according to some, thinks she may be repatriated to Pakistan if found to be incompetent. Of course, KSM has not cooperated and rejected legal assistance also so the reasons for the lack of communication with counsel is unclear and may be in some terrorist handbook somewhere. Such maneuvering certainly served Ted Kaczynski well. But for the sake of the rule of law, every effort needs to be made to assure that Aafia Siddiqui’s rights are protected so that justice may be done. It is highly relevant where she has been for the past 5 years as it bears on her psychological state and well-being. And people should come to understand encapsulation which was understood both by Bruce Ivins (and was addressed by him in passing in a patent) and suggested by Ken Alibek’s former assistant two doors down from Al-Timimi as perhaps indicated by the forensics. t. Ode to Anthrax: the US-Based Falls Church, VA and Chicago-area Hamas Fundraisers Palestinian activist Mohammed Salah, a used-car salesman from Bridgeview, Illinois, was acquittedin a case which the government accused him of being a high-level Hamas operative. In Israel in 1993, he reportedly confessed that he and Moussa Abu Marzook, the then-head of Hamas operations in the U.S., had sought recruits in America with chemical and biological expertise. Atallah Abu Al-Subh, a columnist for the Hamas weekly Al-Risala based in Gaza who writes open letters to prominent figures, ideologies, and events, wrote a November 2001 column titled "To Anthrax":
(The Middle East Media Research Institute translated the above op-ed piece which originally appeared in Al-Risala) In 1998, Israeli agents reportedly found computer records of plans to use chemical and biological agents to contaminate food and water. The United States explained in connection with the requested extradition of Abu Marzouk being handled by Lynne Stewart's partner Stanley L. Cohen, that statements of Muhamad Salah indicate that Musa Abu Marzook was involving in collecting names of Palestinians and their expertise in chemical materials, toxins, military education and knowledge of computers, who were tested and given materials from their fields of expertise, "such as remote-control activation, agricultural pesticides and basic chemical materials for the preparation of bombs and explosives. The judge found that the statement was admissible because Muhamad Salah had given the statement to individuals he thought were Hamas members, because he wanted to show that he possessed significant information about Hamas membership and leadership. Lynne Stewart's law partner, Stanley L. Cohen, had represented Falls Church resident Abu Marzouk, in connection with the attempted extradition of him to Israel from the US in the mid-1990s. Born in 1951 in the Gaza Strip, Marzouk went to Cairo to study engineering and received a degree from Ein Shams University in 1977. He lived for about 15 years in the US, to include Falls Church and Brooklyn. His wife Nadia Elashi was the heralded connection "by marriage" to Abu Marzouk of the Holy Land Foundation official Ghassan Elashi. Abu Marzouk's detention in the mid-1990's was talked about at the time as at the level of the detention of blind sheik Abdel-Rahman. Israel eventually dropped its extradition request after two years and Marzouk was deported to Jordan. Abu Marzouk and his wife were indicted in December 2002 along with other Holy Land Foundation defendants. Both Abu Marzouk and his wife Nadia Elashi were somewhere in the Middle East. In a press conference in 2004, Patrick Fitzgerald, standing alongside Attorney General Ashcroft, announced the indictment of Marzouk's colleague, Mohammed Salah. Salah was accused of being a high-ranking Hamas military leader. Fitzgerald's office announced that it would prove its case by attempting to introduce the purported confession that defendant Salah had given in Israel to Israeli authorities. The confession was admitted but much of the proceedings were strictly sealed apparently in part to protect the identity of Israeli agents. Mohammed Salah was acquitted of the central charges after a 3-month trial, although he was convicted of perjury and sentenced to 21 months. Abu Marzouk's wife listed an address in the same high-rise, 5501 Seminary Road in Falls Church, as another Stanley L. Cohen client, Hassan Faraj. Faraj was the former Benevolence International Foundation employee who worked at the Manhattan hospital where the first inhalational victim in New York City died. They in turn appear to have lived next door to Falls Church resident Ali Al-Timimi. The highrise next door is "0 minutes" and less than .1 mile on mapquest. Faraj is a listed author on a key Journal of the American Medical Association article exploring how the victim, Kathy Nguyen, described in the Hamas ode above as the "aging nurse," died. When a NY lawyer, however accomplished, represents two politically aligned-people from the same street address in Falls Church, there may very well be a connection between the two individuals. For example, they very possibly attended the same mosque, the one that came to be led by the "911 Imam," Al-Timimi's colleague Awlaki. It indeed is a small world. I haven't spoken to any of the individuals to confirm the addresses or who knew who when or who lived where. With address listings in the wonderful free Zabasearch, you definitely get what you pay for. I spoke to Al-Timimi's very gracious wife but did not have the presence of mind to raise the point. Someone should ask whoever might know whether Abu Marzouk knew Hassan Faraj and Ali Al-Timimi -- and whether Hassan Faraj and Al-Timimi knew each other. In life, they say it's who you know that matters. t. The 80 Year-Old Professor With the Mickey Mouse Ears Trial testimony in the prosecution of Uzair Paracha provided a description of an 80-year chemistry professor who allegedly was helping Al Qaeda with respect to chemical weapons. Q. Now, during the Sunday questioning -- how long did that 11 Q. And, it was during the Sunday questioning that Mr. Paracha, 12 that is Uzair Paracha, you said, told you about a scientist, is 13 that correct? 14 A. Yes. 15 Q. And, in fact, what Mr. Paracha told you was that he had 16 called his father having at least two meetings with an 17 individual that's a scientist at some university and a 18 professor, is that correct? 19 A. Yes. 20 Q. And now, at that point, did you ask Mr. Paracha a question 21 about this person or did he just volunteer information on that 22 person? 23 A. No, we asked. 24 Q. What did you ask him, specifically? 25 A. We asked him what he knew about this person, and he
1 explained to us that his father had told him that this person's 2 job was to develop chemical weapons for al-Qaeda. And I 3 believe he described him. 4 Q. And how did he describe him? 5 A. Off the top of my head right now I remember him saying 6 something about him having Mickey Mouse ears. But, other than 7 that I can't remember. I would have to look at my 302. 8 Q. And, did he tell you how old the person was? 9 A. Yes. Approximately 80 years old. 10 Q. And, he said that this person, this scientist used to come 11 meet with his father at night at the business, is that correct? 12 A. That's correct. 13 Q. Now, did you ask Mr. Paracha, Uzair Paracha, how he knew 14 that this person was al-Qaeda? 15 A. Yes. 16 Q. And, what did he tell you? 17 A. He said that his father told him. 18 Q. And his father not only told him that he was al-Qaeda, his 19 father told him that this person was involved in developing 20 chemical weapons for al-Qaeda? 21 A. Yes. u. Uncle's First-Hand Account By Aafia Siddiqui's Uncle Of Meeting In January 2008 In Lahore
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