Posted on 10/22/2001 5:45:14 AM PDT by veronica
Three Alberta men suspected of terrorist connections
EDMONTON - A northern Alberta town is reeling after a federal lawyer linked three men arrested there with the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
Emad Jamal Hassan, Yousef al-Amleh and Mohamadkhair Salah were arrested earlier this month in Fort McMurray. Last week, a federal lawyer told a hearing that all three are being investigated for possible connections to the terrorist attacks.
"Around the coffee tables people are talking about it," said Fort McMurray Mayor Doug Faulkner. "And we're just appalled that that would happen in our beautiful, young, dynamic city."
After the three men were arrested on Oct. 12 and charged with immigration offences, police searched a Fort McMurray apartment shared by them.
Police found documents in various names, including credit cards, cheques, and school transcripts. Two of the men were sharing as many as 16 aliases, federal lawyer Silvia Rapaj told a detention review hearing last week.
The documents are being studied to see if the men are connected to the suicide hijackings that crashed four U.S. passenger jets.
Hassan arrived in Calgary in August from Jordan and has no immigration status. The other two are refugee claimants.
Salah is believed to have traveled from Jordan to Palestine to the United Arab Emirates to Malaysia to Korea over a period of a few weeks, finally landing in Vancouver carrying a Swedish passport.
The search warrant used in the raid said al-Amleh's birthdate and fingerprints match those of a man wanted in Chicago since 1996 for failing to appear at a sentencing hearing for bank fraud. That man's name is Yousef Hassan.
Emad Hassan told the hearing he took flight lessons in 1994 and 1997, but denied having any terrorist affiliations. The three men drew little attention to themselves in the time they were in the community. Members of the Muslim community said they were quiet men who didn't talk politics.
Some members of the community say they are worried the Muslim community will suffer after the arrests.
"Personally, I feel really bad for the people who are Islamic who have nothing to do with this," said Rene Lupien. "But I think people see them and they get scared because of everything that's going on."
The three men are being held in Edmonton and face more hearings this week.
Personally I feel really bad about the 6,000 who got killed.
This is the PC way of saying "illegal alien."
Complacent, puke PC fools.
Hardly unusual in Canada. Enables the "refugees" to collect more than one welfare check every month.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.