Al-Qaeda Threat in Philadelphia?

ABC Channel 6 Action News - Philadelphia ^ | June 27, 2002 | David Henry

[all4one]

Al-Qaeda Threat in Philadelphia?

Philadelphia, PA June 27, 2002 — David Henry reports from the Action Newsroom.

An Action News investigation reveals that a chain of jewelry stores operating in the Delaware Valley is being investigated by the FBI for possible connections to the Al Qaeda terror network.

A series of raids were carried out yesterday in Philadelphia and across the state of Pennsylvania.

The stores are mostly kiosks in shopping malls operating under the name "Intrigue Jewelers." They are all owned by Pakistanis under franchise agreements with a company called Gold Concepts, based in Pennsacola, Florida.

Intrigue operates stores at malls in Philadelphia, Plymouth Meeting, Harrisburg, and Monroeville. Until recently, they also had a kiosk at the Lehigh Valley Mall near Allentown. Owners and employees of the Intrigue shops at the Gallery in Center City and at the Plymouth Meeting Mall were questioned yesterday by agents from the FBI and INS. An employee at the shops in the Monroeville Mall tells us he was detained for hours yesterday.

Tariq Hussain says his home was searched and his computer was taken. He says the FBI accused him of funneling money to Ossama bin Laden's terror network. He says they questioned him about a photo he took two years ago of the NASDAQ building in New York, but he doesn't know how they knew about the photo.

The man in the photos taken at the World Trade Center just days before the attacks also worked at the Intrigue Jewelry store at the Lehigh Valley Mall. Two days before the attacks Ashar Iqbal Butt came to a photo shop in the mall looking for the pictures. The clerk says Butt seemed anxious to get them.

He was picked up on September 12th and was later charged with entering the country on a false passport just a month before the attacks.

Action News has confirmed that yesterday's sweep is part of a nationwide investigation involving at least 60 jewelry outlets. The justice department confirms that a number of people have been detained for questioning, but no charges have been filed yet.

[not-alone]

I just did a search on google and can't believe how many malls they are in. Just one breaking story on cnn and no more news. Please keep checking and posting local stories everyone.

[Dialup Llama]

>Jewelry is a good way to bring money in and out of the U.S. without raising suspicion and is highly liquid.

That is why diamonds are called blood diamonds because the support dictators and terrorists. Some people try to buy diamonds certified to come from Canada.

[dawn53]

I just did a google search too, couldn't believe it, they're everywhere. There was also an article I couldn't access that had been on McCall.com about arrests of Muslims at one of the stores in connection with 9/11. This didn't appear to be a recent article as it must have been archived.

[nevergore]

Butt is a common name in Pakistan....I sat on a British Airway's flight last year from London to Islamabad with a retired Pakistani Lt. General Hamid Butt in the seat next to me. Interesting guy, ran their railroad system...

NeverGore

[Mo1]

Some more Mall locarions ...

Meadows Mall, Las Vegas

Aventure Mall, Aventura Mall is located near the beaches between Miami and Fort Lauderdale

Quail Springs Mall, Okahoma City, Oklahoma

Galleria at White Plains , White Plains, New York 10601

[b4its2late]

Interesting guy, ran their railroad system...

From a wide chair, no doubt.

[Steve Eisenberg]

I just did a search on google and can't believe how many malls they are in.

If anything, this indicates that they will not attack malls. The money/gemstone transfer and laundering connection sounds the most plausible.

Predicting where the terrorists will attack the U.S. next is, in my opinion, somewhere between hopeless and heartless. Hopeless, because we can't know. Heartless, because there are a handful of places which are the most obvious targets, and there is no need to further worry the brave people who still live and work there despite knowing the danger.

[Aliska]

I think someone is trying to head off something that is in the pipeline......

Yup!

[rmlew]

The Jihadist might hate Jews, but they do seem to be following our steriotypes: Banking, diamonds, oil....

[6ppc]

Just found one at University Mall in Tuscaloosa Alabama...60 miles down the road from me.

[dighton]

Ashar Iqbal Butt ... a real name?

Yes. Oddly enough, I seem to remember Hindus with the last name Butt, a (regional?) variant of Bhatta. In the same way Dhatta becomes Dutt.

Evidently there are Muslim Butts as well. ;-)

Swarthyguy, could you possibly fill us in on name-meanings and so forth?

[6ppc]

Just found another one at Riverchase Galleria in Hoover AL...six miles from my house. I think I might just drive down and take a look.

[Jeff Head]

That's an excerpt from book two, which hasn't been published yet.

Having said that, future/potential attacks on malls have been discussed at some length for some time by many analysts. There's no secret how vulnerable they are and how many Americans gather there.

The entire reason for the books is to warn us what might be, and give some potential solutions that are "outside the box" for our current policy makers ... like ARM EVERYBODY!

Thanks for the ping. Looks like on another thread they are talking about the potential of missiles being launched against us from commercial ships! Imagine that! Got to go reply over there too.

DRAGON'S FURY - BREATH OF FIRE
The Story of the coming Third World War

[Antoninus]

I worked next to these folks when they first moved into Plymouth Meeting Mall. They did almost no business. I was amazed that they stayed open at all...

[M. Thatcher]

Galleria at White Plains , White Plains, New York 10601

FYI.

Figures.

[Senator Pardek]

LOL - of course not the high priced highbrow Westchester Mall.

[Scott from the Left Coast]

Ashar Iqbal Butt

Have you ever seen a more appropriate name for one of these clymers?

[M. Thatcher]

On the other hand, if there's ever a mall that needs to be blown up, it's the JV mall...

[cf_river_rat]

I worked next to these folks...They did almost no business. I was amazed that they stayed open at all...

bump for reference and BINGO!!

[antidisestablishment]

Man who took photos of Trade Center charged Former Whitehall resident altered passport, used it, and altered visa papers, feds say.

By Christine Schiavo Of The Morning Call

May 22, 2002

Federal charges were filed Tuesday against a Whitehall Township man arrested at the Lehigh Valley Mall after a clerk at a photo shop became suspicious of snapshots he had taken of the World Trade Center days before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Ashar Iqbal Butt, a 22-year-old native of Pakistan, was charged in U.S. Eastern District Court in Philadelphia with altering a passport, using an altered passport and altering a visa document. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 30 years. A hearing has not been set.

Also known as Mobasser Mahmood and Max Hassan, Butt was one of two employees at Intrigue Jewelers, a mall kiosk, arrested at the mall on Sept. 12 for allegedly carrying false passports. He lived in a one-bedroom basement unit at Parkview Apartments in Whitehall with at least one other man, a woman and a child.

The apartment was rented to Mohammed Mir, who moved out without notice in September, leaving clothing and furniture as well as a baby's picture. The Morning Call reported in December that federal agents searched the apartment on Sept. 13, a day after a clerk at a photo processing store in the mall called them about the suspicious snapshots.

According to a federal court affidavit:

Butt dropped off film for one-hour development on Sept. 8 and was told by a clerk that processing would take a few days. Butt returned for the film on Sept. 12, but the clerk couldn't find the pictures under his name. Butt asked him to try the name Hassan and then the name Max, but the pictures weren't under either of those.

Butt left the store anxious and in a hurry. The clerk then searched the photo packets more thoroughly and found one with the name Burt Asmar. He opened it to find Butt in the pictures, which were exclusively of the World Trade Center. There were 25 shots with panoramic views taken both inside and outside the complex during a six-hour period. The clerk immediately called police.

Special Agent Kenneth G. Vincent of the FBI found Ashar Butt at work at the mall that day. Butt told Vincent his name was Mobasser Mahmood, that he was a citizen of the United Kingdom and that he was in the United States for two weeks on a visitor's visa. He said his passport was with a friend in Jersey City, N.J., and that his roommate Moeen Islam Butt could get it for him. As the conversation continued, Vincent found Butt's statements inconsistent.

He was taken to the federal courthouse in Allentown for questioning that day. On Sept. 14, the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., provided a passport application and photo of Mobasser Mahmood. Vincent could see that Butt was not the man in the picture.

On Sept. 17, Vincent contacted Moeen Butt at Intrigue Jewelers, who turned over a passport for Mobasser Mahmood. The photograph on the passport was Butt's, but a forensic examination done a week later detected that it had been substituted for the original.

Confronted with the information while being held at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., Ashar Butt acknowledged that he had entered the United States illegally by using an altered passport of Mahmood.

He told Vincent that his father paid a smuggler in Pakistan $10,000 for fake Pakistani and United Kingdom passports. Butt was supposed to return the fake passports to the smuggling operation when he finished with them. He said he left Pakistan for Los Angeles on Aug. 5 and continued on to New York, then Whitehall. The affidavit does not say how long Butt lived in Whitehall.

Moeen Butt, also of Pakistan, was taken into custody Sept. 17 after admitting to Vincent that he bought a fake passport for $4,000. According to an affidavit filed Oct. 12, Moeen Butt also said he paid a woman he met in a bar $2,000 to marry him so that he could apply for immigration status. He told Vincent he had talked to the woman only once or twice since marrying her in Fort Lee, N.J., on April 24, 2001.

He pleaded guilty in April to altering a passport and marriage fraud, according to Rich Manieri, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Philadelphia. Sentencing is scheduled for June 13.

It's not clear if Moeen Butt, whose address is the same basement apartment as Ashar's, is related to Ashar Butt.

Moeen Butt, 23, was supposed to begin managing Intrigue Jewelers around Sept. 17 because its previous manager was taken into federal custody for what the company's lawyer believed was a visa violation. The lawyer, Philip Calandrino of Orlando, Fla., said a manager named Hamza Mir left the business abruptly around Sept. 11 and was replaced by his brother, who was arrested by federal agents Sept. 12.

Calandrino did not know the brother's name. Contacted Tuesday, he said he did not know the name Ashar Butt.

Intrigue Jewelers closed the mall kiosk around Sept. 17.

christine.schiavo@mcall.com 610-820-6509 Copyright © 2002, The Morning Call