‘Trainee pilot’ held in US terror probe
A Saudi man who apparently holds a student pilot’s licence has been arrested in Missouri on a bank fraud charge as America’s post-terror attacks investigation pressed ahead.
Another Saudi who once took flight lessons in Alabama has denied charges of lying on his visa application.
The FBI, however, has not linked Adel F Badri, arrested on Monday in Missouri, to the September 11 attacks against New York and Washington. A lawyer for the other man, Khalid al Draibi, who appeared in a federal court in Virginia, said al Draibi had passed a lie detector test about the attacks but was still under investigation.
Investigators also are looking at whether terrorists have laundered money through exchange bureaux, possibly including US companies.
German interior minister Otto Schily, in Washington to meet Bush administration officials, said foreign exchange companies that operate globally could have been used by terrorists. He would not name specific companies but urged money exchange firms to cooperate.
Separately, it was disclosed that a Jersey City man detained following the terrorist attacks had been charged with lying to an FBI agent about checks he wrote and deposited into his bank account.
Mohammad Pervez lived with two other detainees, Mohammed Jaweed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan. Investigators have taken particular interest in those two men since they were detained in Fort Worth, Texas, the day after the attacks, carrying hair dye, about 5,000 (£3,300) in cash and box-cutting knives.
Pervez was accused of lying when he said he didn’t know about certain cheques and money orders that moved in and out of his bank account, according to an October 16 complaint filed in US District Court in New York City by the FBI.
Missouri police arrested Badri and charged him with bank fraud for cashing allegedly forged cheques worth dlrs 10,000 (£6,500), according to an FBI affidavit released by the Justice Department.
The cheques were written on an account at Chevy Chase Bank in Maryland that had been closed. According to the FBI, the closed account’s holder was Fatmah Ibrahim, a woman who Badri said lived in Virginia and worked for a ‘‘specific organisation in Washington DC’’. Badri denied writing the cheque for himself.
Authorities tracked down the unidentified organisation and found no record of the woman and a forgery expert said Badri wrote the cheques, the FBI said.
Federal Aviation Administration records show a person named Adel F Badri was certified as a student pilot in the FAA’s eastern region covering the District of Columbia and Maryland, Virginia and other Atlantic seaboard states.
Some of 19 alleged hijackers suspected of crashing four planes on September 11 and killing more than 5,000 people had US pilots’ licences or took flight lessons in the United States.
The FBI affidavit does not specify whether Badri had links to the attacks. The Justice Department’s practice is to release court records about cases that come up in the terror investigation. A hearing will be held today in federal court in Kansas City.
Al Draibi, 32, pleaded not guilty in an Alexandria, Virginia, federal court, to providing false statements on a visa application and lying to police about being a US citizen.
He was stopped by Virginia police on the night of September 11 while driving on a flat tyre. A search of his car found multiple drivers’ licences from eight states and a flight manual for small aircraft.
Al Draibi passed an FBI polygraph test, in which he denied any connection, but the FBI is still interested in talking with him about the attacks, says his lawyer, Drewry Hutcheson Jr.
Authorities said al Draibi took flight lessons at a field near Birmingham, Alabama, where he worked as a taxi driver in 1998 and 1999, paying cash for his lessons.
Meanwhile, Michigan State Police confirmed that many terrorist groups, including Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida network that is the target of the US war on international terror, had members and financial supporters in Michigan.
A state police report identifies 374 ‘‘potential threat elements’’ in Michigan, a figure that includes individuals and groups, both Middle Eastern and domestic.
The Michigan connection was first reported by Newsweek magazine.
Authorities arrested three men in Detroit after the September 11 attacks in connection with the investigation: Karim Koubriti, 23; Ahmed Hannan, 33; and Farouk Ali-Haimoud, 21, all being held on identity fraud and other charges.
Agents who searched the house they were living in found a planner with Arabic handwriting that referred to an American base in Turkey, an ‘‘American foreign minister’’ and Alia Airport in Jordan.
Investigators also found what appeared to be a diagram of an airport flight line, according to court records.
