TORONTO - The FBI in Chicago has arrested a man named Nabil al-Marabh, a Boston cab driver who lived in Toronto for six years and was charged in Canada with carrying a fake passport. But there are at least two other Toronto connections. CBC News reported earlier this week that two Egyptian men are in custody in Toronto, accused by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service of being members of a terrorist organization. Now CBC News has learned that CSIS has given evidence to the Federal Court that seeks to link these men to the extremist group Al Jihad, to Osama bin Laden, and even to Iraqi intelligence.
The evidence comes from court records in the 1999 case of Mahmoud Jaballah, a father of six who's being held in maximum security in Toronto. According to Jaballah's testimony, he's a devout Islamic teacher, but with a curious history. He says he was "persecuted" in his native Egypt, arrested seven times, then fled to Saudi Arabia on a pilgrimage, then to Pakistan, then to Yemen on a false Iraqi passport. Jaballah testified: "I thought to leave Pakistan with a false passport and I travelled from there to Yemen." He testified he had come from Iraq. Finally, Jaballah came to Canada on a false Saudi passport in May 1996. He won refugee status, saying he'd worked in Pakistan for the International Islamic Relief Organization. But CSIS says that organization is linked to Osama bin Laden. The purported link is a man called Ayman Zawahiri. Zawahiri is on the FBI's terrorism watch list and he's said by Israeli intelligence to be a key contact for bin Laden's Al Qaeda organisation with Iraqi intelligence. Jaballah's lawyer says his client is in jail while none of these allegations have been proved. Jaballah won't get a hearing on all that until the end of October. ------- "More Toronto connections to terror attacks," CBC News [Canada], Last Updated Fri, 21 Sep 2001 15:51:17 EDT
In several conversations with the [Ottawa] Citizen since his nephew's arrest, Ahmad Shehab, a Toronto-based Islamic cleric and special adviser to the United Nations, has expressed shock. "He led an ordinary, normal life. He loved people and he loved animals. I pray for his innocence," Mr. Shehab told the Citizen last night. "He's just a kid. Nobody would let him know any secrets. He is the last person on earth that would be involved with terrorism," Mr. Shehab said.
---- "Canada released 'key' al-Qaeda operative: Freed on bail in July, man held in Chicago is accused of having ties to suicide pilots," by Gary Dimmock, The Ottawa Citizen, 2001.10.17- via http://www.sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca/~ab133/Archives/Digests/v04n200-299/v04-n202.txt
You just knew I was going to get the UN inolved some way... =:-O
Wowser piasa.
You're on a roll.
I scanned your posts/pings.
Keep on going.
I'm in the middle of searching stuff and then
I'll go back and read all your posts.
FYI.
No mention was made at the hearing that the uncle [of Nabil alMarabh], Ahmed Shehab, shared control of the school with Mahmoud Jaballah, a man Canadian authorities had long suspected to be associated with an Egyptian terrorist group. When Jaballah was arrested in Toronto last August for being in Canada with forged immigration papers, documents filed in court by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service stated that he was a member of the extremist group Al Jihad, and had supported and ''will engage in terrorism.''-------- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/548211/posts