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To: Calpernia

That's one I'm unfamiliar with. I know some Paks got picked up,questioned and released, but don't recall anything about plastic bags of letters.


37 posted on 12/10/2004 4:59:09 PM PST by genefromjersey (So much to flame;so little time !)
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To: genefromjersey

By the way, I've set up a link to this discussion on my own bulletin board at

http://listeningpost.mywowbb.com/forum1/15.html


38 posted on 12/10/2004 5:03:27 PM PST by genefromjersey (So much to flame;so little time !)
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To: genefromjersey

This isn't the article I was looking for....but worth a read:


Anthrax probe: FBI raids homes of Pakistanis

WASHINGTON: FBI agents armed with search warrants raided two houses in a southwestern suburb of Philadelphia yesterday, backed by members of a hazardous-materials squad wearing full protective gear.

Located less than two blocks apart in Chester, Pa., some 15 miles southwest of Philadelphia, the houses are owned by Dr. Irshad Shaikh, a Pakistani physician and specialist in epidemic diseases who is Chester's city health commissioner, and by Asif Kazi, the Chester city accountant, who also is a Pakistani native.

It was the first known raid of private residences in the FBI's ongoing investigation into an anthrax attack on America that has killed four persons.

FBI spokeswoman Linda Vizi confirmed yesterday that search warrants had been signed and served, although she said they were based on an FBI affidavit that a federal court had sealed. She said she could not comment on what information, if any, FBI agents might have been seeking at the two houses.

"Two search warrants have been issued and two places have been searched," she told The Washington Times. "An affidavit in the matter has been sealed. No one has been detained and no one has been arrested.

"This is a young investigation, a new investigation," she said. "We do not know where it might take us." Officials at FBI headquarters in Washington confirmed that the warrants had been served, but also declined comment. More than two dozen FBI agents were involved in the raids, supported by a hazardous-materials team.

Chester Mayor Dominic F. Pileggi said FBI agents and hazardous-materials specialists clad in protective suits and gas masks spent "several hours" at the two houses, but "wrapped things up" during the afternoon.

He said the agents had search warrants and were working from a sealed FBI affidavit and that the FBI did not advise Chester city officials and police authorities on what investigators were looking for or had found.

"We were assured that there was no danger to the public health and that residents of the city are safe, but I have no information on what they were doing or why," Mr. Pileggi said.

Miss Vizi also declined to say whether agents were looking for traces of anthrax or other biological materials at the two houses, and she refused to offer any explanation on the presence of the fully protected hazardous-materials specialists, who set up a secure decontamination tent and trailer alongside one of the houses.

Investigators moved several green plastic trash bags to vans and other vehicles from the two houses, one located in the 2300 block of Edgmont Avenue and the other in the 100 block of Crozer Circle.

Jodi Masusock, who works at a dentist's office down the street from the house on Edgmont Avenue, said FBI agents blocked off the street during the raid. "But I didn't hear or see anything until it was over," she said. "The house that was raided is hard to see because there are a lot of bushes."

Agents also removed a computer from Dr. Shaikh's Chester city office. City records show the Edgmont Avenue home is owned by Dr. Shaikh, while the house on Crozer Circle is owned by Mr. Kazi.

Dr. Shaikh did not return calls left at his office for comment, although he told the Associated Press in Philadelphia that he had "fully cooperated" in the search. He said agents questioned him but declined to say what they asked.

Mr. Kazi and Masood Shaikh, Dr. Shaikh's brother who lived in the Edgmont Avenue house, were unavailable for comment. All three were questioned by the FBI. It was not clear yesterday whether Dr. Shaikh also lived in the Edgmont Avenue house.

The two houses are located about 50 miles from where anthrax-laced letters are believed to have been mailed from a post office in Hamilton Township, N.J. Those letters eventually went through a postal facility in Trenton, N.J., and then to NBC News in New York and the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington.

Two postal workers who were believed to have handled the Daschle letter later died from inhalation anthrax. Two other persons died from inhalation anthrax in New York and Florida, although the source of those infections had not been determined.

Mr. Pileggi said Dr. Shaikh had served as the city's health commissioner since 1994 and described him as "well respected." He added that Dr. Shaikh had done "a fine job" for the city and doubted he would be involved in anything nefarious.

"I would be extremely surprised if Dr. Shaikh has any connection to anything the FBI might be investigating," the mayor said. Records showed Dr. Shaikh completed his medical degree in community medicine in Pakistan and was considered an expert in epidemiology and international health. He received a master's degree in public health and a doctorate at Johns Hopkins University, where he held a faculty appointment.


39 posted on 12/10/2004 5:18:40 PM PST by Calpernia (Breederville.com)
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To: genefromjersey

Found it.

http://www.ict.org.il/spotlight/det.cfm?id=703

November 7, 2001

Three Detained in U.S. Anthrax Probe

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has reportedly taken three people into custody over the past week in connection with the recent postal anthrax attacks in the U.S.

The three men, all from Pakistan, were detained for questioning after FBI agents conducted searches of their homes. They all lived in neighborhoods near the Trenton, New Jersey postal facility that handled at least three anthrax-tainted letters. Investigators say they are now fairly sure that all 17 confirmed cases of anthrax in the United States can be traced to a small number of letters that passed through this New Jersey sorting office.

So far, the FBI has detained 31 people in New Jersey since the September 11 terrorist attacks, out of about 1,000 people taken into custody nationwide. No one has yet been charged with criminal offenses related to the attacks, nor has any direct link been established between the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and the postal anthrax campaign.

Plastic bag full of letters
On Friday, a Pakistani national, identified as Allah Rakha, was taken into custody at his rented apartment. His brother, Ilyas Chaudry, said that FBI agents wearing protective gear searched Rakha's apartment and a nearby mailbox. Chaudry said his brother's car, which had Florida license plates, was searched and towed away.

Rakha's landlord said the house had been under surveillance for several days, and that FBI agents had asked Rakha and possible associates for handwriting samples. Neighbors said that "four Middle Eastern men" lived in the building.

One neighbour said he had reported one of the suspects to the FBI after seeing him carrying a suspicious-looking plastic bag containing letters. He said that the man had held the bag away from his body before locking it in his car. "I noticed the gentleman late at night -- maybe 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock -- take a plastic bag, a clear plastic bag, with envelopes in it and placed it softly in the car, on the passenger side of the car, and locked it," the neighbor said.

On October 29, two men living in Hamilton, a few kilometers from the postal processing center, were detained after a search of their apartment. An FBI spokeswoman said that the two had been turned over to the Immigration and Naturalizaton Service (INS).

Cyanide letter unrelated to anthrax attacks
On Friday, a letter containing cyanide was found at the main Newark, New Jersey post office. The letter, addressed to a northern New Jersey police department, was picked out by an alert postal worker looking for possible anthrax contamination.

Tony Esposito of the Postal Inspection service was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that the envelope contained trace amounts of copper cyanide blended into laundry detergent. Officials said Sunday that there was little question that the cyanide incident was a domestic act with no connection to the anthrax crimes.

Possible domestic involvement?
The domestic angle has been taken more and more seriously in the search for the perpetrators of the anthrax attacks as well. The Los Angeles Times quoted a Bush administration official as saying that the lack of any obvious link to foreign groups had led the FBI to focus on a possible "lone wolf" or domestic extremist group as the source of the anthrax letters.

"If it were international we would have seen something in the [intelligence monitoring] traffic and we've seen nothing," the official said. Investigators speculate that the anthrax used could have come from a university laboratory, and have begun subpoenaing the records of laboratories where anthrax was stored. At the same time, the otherwise unexplained meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, thought to have been the ringleader in the September 11 attacks, and a senior Iraqi intelligence agent has encouraged speculation that Iraq may have supplied biological warfare agents to Atta, who may in turn have handed them over to others to use as they saw fit.


40 posted on 12/10/2004 5:21:58 PM PST by Calpernia (Breederville.com)
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