Posted on 02/27/2003 1:58:34 AM PST by sarcasm
MOSCOW, Idaho -- Agents with a federal anti-terrorism task force yesterday arrested a University of Idaho student who they say provides a window on how al-Qaida, the group responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, raises money.
Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a doctoral candidate studying computer security here, was a terrorist bagman, according to one federal criminal justice source. "He's in touch with people who could pick up the phone, call UBL (the law enforcement acronym for Osama bin Laden), and he would take the call."
Few in this region's small Muslim community would talk about Al-Hussayen yesterday. Some praised him as a man of peace. Nearly all feared that his arrest could mean trouble for the entire community.
Al-Hussayen, who is from Saudi Arabia, had been a committed student leader at the University of Idaho, where he has studied since 1999. He once was president of the local chapter of the Muslim Students Association and gave blood after the Sept. 11 attacks, then marched with others in a peace rally. Al-Hussayen, 35, is married and the father of two children.
Indeed, the charges against Al-Hussayen involve immigration crimes with only tangential relationships to terrorism. But investigators say the accusations do not reflect the central role that investigators believe Al-Hussayen has played in the flow of al-Qaida cash.
Federal agents coordinated the 4 a.m. arrest of Al-Hussayen in this quiet college town of 18,000 people with the arrests of four Arab men around Syracuse, N.Y., and searches of a Muslim charity operation in greater Detroit. The arrests also come in the wake of the recent arrests of a Tampa, Fla., professor from Palestinian territories and three other men accused of setting up a terror cell at the University of South Florida.
These arrests represent a basic change in the way the FBI does business.
The hallmark of an FBI investigation has been a slow, methodical investigation designed to arrest and convict all the participants of even the most complex criminal enterprise. But in the past few weeks, federal criminal justice sources say, FBI headquarters has ordered field offices nationwide to arrest the targets of investigations who in the past would be kept under close surveillance to develop further intelligence and evidence.
One overriding objective has sparked this change: To stop another Sept. 11 attack by disrupting suspected terrorist cells.
It's an objective that has gained urgency with a war looming in Iraq and the recent heightening of the nation's terrorism alert status to orange.
"Clearly, there is an emphasis on disruption" of terror cells, said Special-Agent-in-Charge Chip Burrus of the FBI's Salt Lake City field office. The Salt Lake office, which is responsible for Idaho, is conducting the investigation with the Seattle FBI office.
So Al-Hussayen spent last night in a county sheriff's jail awaiting arraignment in U.S. District Court in Boise where he will face an 11-count indictment essentially accusing him of lying to the U.S. immigration officials by not revealing his activities with the Muslim charities around Detroit and Syracuse. Had he revealed those activities, the government probably would not have given him a visa to remain in the United States.
Among those activities:
Cynthia Miller, Al-Hussayen's attorney, refused to make a substantive comment yesterday, saying that she had not had adequate time to study the case. Asked about Al-Hussayen's state of mind, she said: "Obviously, he's upset."
The investigation of Al-Hussayen began around Sept. 11, said Burrus. It began not as a criminal investigation, but an intelligence inquiry. Its objective was nothing less than to remove the veil of secrecy on al-Qaida's complex financial network. And, sources say, that the FBI used many of the means of electronic surveillance at its disposal including wiretaps and intercepts of e-mails.
In August, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote a story about the use of Islamic charities as a conduit to finance terrorism. The story revealed the presence of the investigation into what happens to charitable donations by Muslim students at Washington State University and the University of Idaho. In the course of that story, a Post-Intelligencer reporter unsuccessfully attempted to interview Al-Hussayen.
Federal criminal justice sources say the Post-Intelligencer story changed the course of the investigation by alerting Al-Hussayen and his colleagues.
The investigation is far from over.
"We are not at the end of the trail, we are at the beginning of the trail," Burrus said to a packed news conference yesterday in Moscow's 100-year-old City Council chambers. "You can't imagine the flow charts" depicting the flow of so-called charitable funds, he said.
In the center box of a flow chart is Al-Hussayen, the nexus of millions of dollars flowing from Saudi Arabia to the United States and from Al-Hussayen to individuals and Islamic organizations in the United States as well as Egypt, Canada, Jordan and Pakistan, according to sources, court documents and public statements made yesterday.
Participating in the news conference yesterday was Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne, who said: "When this sort of thing happens in a state like Idaho, in a community like Moscow . . . where no one would ever expect activities like this would occur, then this network exists throughout the United States."
It was a sentiment echoed by one federal criminal justice source, who said last summer: "We're not finding Sami cases in New York. We're finding them in the hinterlands, the Spokanes, the Springfield, Ill."
People in Moscow yesterday seemed intrigued by the invasion of anti-terror agents into the city. But Moscow's Muslims were in shock -- traumatized by the arrest of a man they know and respect.
No one heeded the 12:30 call to prayer at the local mosque yesterday.
Al-Hussayen's counterpart in nearby Pullman at Washington State University, Muslim Student Association president Irshad Altheimer, said the charges surprised him.
"It definitely caught me off guard," said Altheimer, a 25-year-old Muslim convert from Tacoma. "I know Sami well. He always meets me with a smile, and is always asking if he can help with things."
Altheimer said that Al-Hussayen, to his knowledge, did not harbor anti-U.S. or terrorist-sympathizing views. "After Sept. 11, Sami had been at the forefront of trying to get people to understand Islam," he said.
And one Muslim woman who lived a few doors away from Al-Hussayen, his wife and two little kids, pronounced herself "terrified."
"I am too scared. Maybe tomorrow they will come to my house."
The "charity" called "help the needy" appears to be linked with Iraq:
Justice Department Raids Local Charity (Syracuse NY ) WSTM ^ | 2/26/03
Posted on 02/26/2003 9:24 AM PST by L`enn
Action News has confirmed that the U.S. Justice Department has raided a Syracuse-area charity called "Help The Needy." 3 men have been arrested in Syracuse; 4 in all are indicted on charges of illegally transfering money to Iraq. That is illegal under sanctions placed on Iraq after the Gulf War...
SEATTLE PI.com (AP): "FOUR CHARGED IN SENDING MILLIONS TO IRAQ" (ARTICLE SNIPPETS: "The four men are accused of using the charity to solicit contributions from people in the United States, depositing money in central New York banks and laundering much of it through the Jordan Islamic Bank in Amman. Charged were oncologist Dr. Rafil Dhafir, 55, of Fayetteville, N.Y., a U.S. citizen born in Iraq; Maher Zagha, 34, a Jordanian who attended college locally; Ayman Jarwan, 33, of Syracuse, a Jordanian citizen born in Saudi Arabia who worked as the executive director of Help the Needy; Osameh Al Wahaidy, 41, of Fayetteville, a Jordanian citizen employed as a spiritual leader at the Auburn Correctional Facility and a math instructor at the State University of New York at Oswego." ... "The separate indictment involves Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a citizen of Saudi Arabia who is a graduate student at the University of Idaho. He was arrested Wednesday in Moscow, Idaho, and charged with supporting the Michigan-based Islamic Assembly of North America. Al-Hussayen allegedly supplied money from overseas sources and computer expertise. He is charged with failing to disclose his relationship with the group, which, if revealed, would have resulted in the government rejecting his visa application, prosecutors said. Web sites operated by the Islamic Assembly praise suicide bombings and tout the use of airplanes as terror weapons, the government said.") (February 26, 2003)
US DOJ.gov Press Release: "INDICTMENTS ALLEGE ILLEGAL FINANCIAL TRANSFER TO IRAQ; VISA FRAUD INVOLVING ASSISTANCE TO GROUPS THAT ADVOCATE VIOLENCE" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Al-Hussayen was arrested this morning in Moscow, Idaho. According to the 11-count indictment, Al-Hussayen received and renewed student visas to pursue computer studies at the University of Idaho, certifying in the applications that his requested U.S. entry and presence was solely for the purpose of pursuing graduate studies. The indictment alleges that from October 1998 through the present, Al-Hussayen routed thousands of dollars he received from overseas sources to the Michigan-based Islamic Assembly of North America )IANA), and provided computer expertise and website services to IANA. The indictment alleges some of these websites promoted terrorism through suicide bombings and using airplanes as weapons. In one example, the website www.alasr.ws, registered by Al-Hussayen posted an article which read in part: The second part is the rule that the Mujahid (warrior) must kill himself if he knows that this will lead to killing a great number of the enemies, and that he will not be able to kill them without killing himself first, or demolishing a center vital to the enemy or its military force, and so on. This is not possible except by involving the human element in the operation. In this new era, this can be accomplished with the modern means of bombing or bringing down an airplane on an important location that will cause the enemy great losses.") (February 26, 2003)
SEATTLE PI.com - SEATTLE POST INTELLIGENCER: "ANTI-TERROR FORCES ARREST IDAHO STUDENT" by Paul Shukousky (ARTICLE SNIPPETS: "The investigation of Al-Hussayen began around Sept. 11, said Burrus. It began not as a criminal investigation, but an intelligence inquiry. Its objective was nothing less than to remove the veil of secrecy on al-Qaida's complex financial network. And, sources say, that the FBI used many of the means of electronic surveillance at its disposal including wiretaps and intercepts of e-mails." ... "The investigation is far from over. "We are not at the end of the trail, we are at the beginning of the trail," Burrus said to a packed news conference yesterday in Moscow's 100-year-old City Council chambers. "You can't imagine the flow charts" depicting the flow of so-called charitable funds, he said. In the center box of a flow chart is Al-Hussayen, the nexus of millions of dollars flowing from Saudi Arabia to the United States and from Al-Hussayen to individuals and Islamic organizations in the United States as well as Egypt, Canada, Jordan and Pakistan, according to sources, court documents and public statements made yesterday.") (February 27, 2003)
stepping back in time...SEATTLE PI.com - SEATTLE POST INTELLIGENCER: "INQUIRY TARGETS CHARITIES IN THE PALOUSE WSU and U of Idaho Groups Investigated" (August 2, 2002)
On The Net...THE ARGONAUT - University of Idaho News Site
SEATTLE TIMES.COM: "JUDGE WANTS FEDS TO REWARD RESSAM AS PROMISED" by Mike Carter (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Would-be millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam should be rewarded for providing "startlingly helpful information" in the government's war on terrorism, a federal judge here said yesterday.") (February 27, 2003)
SEATTLE TIMES.com: "INSURERS RATE SEATTLE A TOP TERROR TARGET" (February 26, 2003)
OREGON LIVE.com: "TERRORISM SUSPECTS' ATTORNEYS SEEK ACCESS" (February 26, 2003)
And one Muslim woman who lived a few doors away from Al-Hussayen, his wife and two little kids, pronounced herself "terrified."
"I am too scared. Maybe tomorrow they will come to my house."
These Trojan Horse Muslims don't worry about America, only their own black jihadi souls.
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