FBI checking 5 in illegal-license cases for possible al-Qaida links

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - The FBI is investigating whether four New York men and one from Tennessee who are in custody here for illegally purchasing Tennessee driver's licenses may be members of an al-Qaida terrorist cell that helped survey New York's World Trade Center for the Sept. 11 hijackers.

When one of the men, Sakhera "Rocky" Hammad, was arrested, FBI agents found a security pass from the Trade Center dated Sept. 5. Agents also have learned that Hammad drove from New York to Memphis on Sept. 11.

So far, none of the five men, all of Middle Eastern origin, has been linked to any terrorist organization or to the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI said.

But interest in the case spiked this week after Katherine Smith, the Tennessee state worker who allegedly sold the men driver's licenses, was found burned to death in her car one day before she was due to appear in court. Forensic specialists found gasoline inside Smith's car and on her clothing. She died from inhaling flames, one FBI agent testified.

"We are looking at every possible scenario," Phil Thomas, the head of the FBI's Memphis field office, said Friday. "And that includes whether it was an accident, a murder or a suicide."

The trail leading from Memphis to Hammad began Jan. 31 when an FBI informant in New York told FBI agents that "several persons from the Mid-East who were here illegally" were driving to Memphis on Feb. 5 in a gray 2001 Dodge Durango, court papers say. Their purpose: to obtain driver's licenses for about $1,000 each, according to the arrest affidavit.

The Durango, followed by a Toyota Avalon driven by Khaled Odtllah, 31, the alleged middleman in the deal and a friend of Smith's, arrived at a motor vehicle office on Summer Avenue in Memphis at 8:15 a.m., the affidavit says.

Hammad got out of the Durango with Mohammad Ali Fares, 19; Mostafa Said Abou-Shahin, 26, and Abdelmuhsen Mahid Hammad, age unknown. The four went inside, where Smith allegedly issued driver's licenses to the men, who used altered spellings of their names, FBI agents said.

Smith, 49, was questioned the same day the men were arrested, and told FBI agents that she had provided licenses for Odtllah on about "six or seven occasions," Thomas said.

Thomas said Smith was so "visibly shaken" before her questioning that she accidentally ran into the back of the FBI car she was following to the bureau's Memphis office.

She surrendered a day later on federal charges of conspiracy to issue the fraudulent licenses. A Tennessee state employee for 29 years, her yearly salary was $23,052.

"She was just an average citizen raising her family and going to work every day," the FBI's Thomas said. "Unfortunately, she made the wrong decision."

After his arrest, Sakhera Hammad, 24, told FBI agents that he had a World Trade Center pass because he had worked as a plumber at the twin towers. He said he worked on the sprinkler system, and that Mahid Hammad also worked at the Trade Center.

Sakhera Hammad has dual citizenship in the United States and Jordan, which controlled the eastern part of Jerusalem and the West Bank until Israel captured them in 1967.

Mahid Hammad has overstayed a visa to enter the country, and Shahin, from Eqypt, is in the United States illegally, according to the criminal complaint.

Alleged middleman Odtllah, 31, came to the United States from Jerusalem about 13 years ago and settled in Memphis, where he owned a gas station and sells used cars. Smith later said she was a customer when Odtllah learned that she worked for the Department of Motor Vehicles and asked if she could arrange to get driver's licenses for his "cousins," agents said.

Fares was born in Venezuela, has a Venezuelan passport and has lived in Lebanon. After walking across the border from Mexico into California, he went to New York, where he said he needed the driver's license to get a job, court papers say.

Jake Erwin, the attorney for Mahid Hammad, said Friday that had it not been for the "collateral issues" of Smith's death and the links to the World Trade Center, Hammad would have been released on bond.

"My client was in custody when the lady was either killed or whatever happened," Erwin said.

Smith spent the hours before her death eating ice cream with one of her daughters in their midtown home across from the Liberty Bowl.

After her daughter fell asleep about 9 p.m. last Saturday, Smith drove her 1992 Acura to a rural road about 25 miles outside Memphis, FBI agent Thomas said.

An off-duty Mississippi police officer driving in the opposite direction saw her back seat on fire at 12:45 a.m. Sunday. By the time he doubled back, she had veered off the road and tapped a utility pole before her car burst into a fireball. Although she died in the blaze, her gas tank never ignited.

It's equally possible that Hammad's pass was only peripherally related to the 9/11 attack. Since it was for the bottom 6 floors, he may have been there to steal something. I remember there was a large vault there. Perhaps he was casing the place to see if the attack would create an adequate diversion for some theft.

Smith's murder just has more of an organized crime quality about it to me. Somebody felt comfortable enough to stage the "warning" on a fairly busy highway. Somebody felt reasonably protected.

I haven't forgotten all the shorts on the airlines. People knew about the attack. The link between crime and terrorism is well established. So why couldn't Hammand be moving in both worlds?

It's a shame they get to sit silently in cozy cells getting fat and watching TV all day, instead of sitting naked on hard stools under bright lights in a forgotten hanger on a closed base somewhere talking to Turks, Israelis and Philippinos.

Then and only then we'd get all the answers to these questions, and many more.

After walking across the border from Mexico into California, he went to New York, where he said he needed the driver's license to get a job

Prior to 9-11, there was a push in California, to issue drivers licenses to illegal aliens. It was to make them "better drivers"..ha ha ha!!!! So far, that idea has died for now. But, I am sure it will come forward once again.

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