By MICHAEL SMITH, Associated Press Writer PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad - A Saudi-born man wanted by the FBI for allegedly plotting terrorist acts traveled to Trinidad in 2001 and said he was visiting a friend, officials said Monday.The suspect, Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, used a Guyana passport issued in the United States to enter Trinidad and Tobago, said Malcolm O'Brien, of the Caribbean country's Immigration Division.
He arrived May 17, 2001, apparently on a flight from Guyana, he said. The authorities have yet to confirm when El Shukrijumah left or where he was headed, but he wrote on his immigration form that he was visiting a friend and staying six days.
The FBI issued an alert last week asking law enforcement agencies and the public to watch for the 27-year-old El Shukrijumah, saying he is suspected of being part of al-Qaida terrorist network.
U.S. authorities say they are working to establish links between El Shukrijumah and other terror suspects including alleged "dirty bomb" plotter Jose Padilla. El Shukrijumah "has been identified by senior members of the al-Qaida organization as a very, very, very serious threat to the United States' interests, both here and abroad," said Hector Pesquera, head of the FBI's south Florida office.
U.S. officials have said El Shukrijumah lived in south Florida in the 1990s at the same time as Padilla, an American arrested last year for allegedly plotting to detonate a radioactive bomb.
El Shukrijumah, 27, was once a legal U.S. resident. But the authorities are still researching his immigration status and say he may be using passports from Guyana, Saudi Arabia, Canada or Trinidad. His 73-year-old father, Gulshair, lives in Miramar, Florida, and has said his son is not a terrorist. The father said when they last spoke five months ago, his son was teaching English in Morocco.
The younger El Shukrijumah traveled on a Guyana passport because his father was born there, relatives in the South American country said.
On his last visit to Guyana three years ago, the younger El Shukrijumah lost that passport, said Bibi Juman, wife of the man's cousin, Marzab Juman. "As far as we know, he lost the passport somewhere between the airport when he came here around 2000 and the hotel at which he stayed," she said.
He left Guyana on an emergency travel document, she said. It was the first time the Guyana family had seen him in at least 20 years, and he told them he was headed for Trinidad.
The Juman family said they recognized El Shukrijumah's picture on television but that they knew him as Adnan Juman. The FBI says El Shukrijumah has used many aliases.
Officials in Trinidad said they were working to determine whether he might still be in the country. El Shukrijumah's family lived in Trinidad during the 1980s while Adnan's father taught at several mosques, said Munaf Mohammed, an imam at a mosque in central Trinidad.
Mohammed said Adnan El Shukrijumah was a young boy when he knew him, and he described the elder El Shukrijumah as "a very nice, peaceful, quiet man." Mohammed said he has rarely spoken to the family since they left Trinidad for the United States about 1990.
Out of the deep regard for El'Shukri-Jumah's father, Gulshair El'Shukri-Jumah of Miramar, cousins who hadn't seen El'Shukri-Jumah since he was 3 opened their home to him two years ago for a few days during Ramadan after a friend told them he was in town. It didn't seem right for the son of such a holy man to stay in a hotel, said Marzab Juman, a cousin. ....
"He never spoke bad about anything," said Marsab Juman, another cousin. "He always had a Quran in his hand."
The East Bank road that runs near the Juman home is dotted with green and white mosques, many of which El'Shukri-Jumah visited two years ago. Out of respect for his father, the first South American Muslim to graduate from the university at Medina, El'Shukri-Jumah was often asked to read prayers.
Although El'Shukri-Jumah was born to a Saudi mother in Saudi Arabia, he retains Guyanese citizenship, his cousins said, and when they saw him he was traveling on a Guyanese passport.
Saudi citizenship is conferred through the father, and since Adnan's father is Guyanese, so are his children, they explained.
"I don't think what's going on, he has any connection with those things," Marsab Juman added. "I think it's a mistake with names." [excerpt]