Washington Post 08/25/93: William Claiborne
Excerpt:
More than 80 members of Congress have asked President Clinton to end what they called the "potentially dangerous and unfair policy" of resettling captured Iraqi soldiers in the United States along with deserving civilian Iraqi refugees.
Nearly 1,000 Iraqi soldiers captured by U.S. forces during the 1991 Persian Gulf War have been resettled at public expense in cities across the United States. They are among nearly 3,000 Iraqi refugees -- the majority of them civilians -- who have been resettled in the United States from internment camps in Saudi Arabia.
Another 3,000 Iraqi former POWs and their families are scheduled to be moved here on humanitarian grounds, the complaining House members said.
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A full day after a car bomb caused horrific destruction to the Alfred P. Murrah federal building, the confirmed death toll stood at 36, including 12 children, Fire Chief Gary Marrs said late this morning. More than 400 people were injured. CNN said the three men suspects had stopped to ask an Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer for directions Wednesday, and the officer was suspicious enough to write down their car's license plate number. The license number was registered to a rental car -- a car other than what the men were driving, the network said. In New York, a law enforcement source told The Associated Press that one of the three, Asad R. Siddiqy of New York, was a suspect in the bombing. Siddiqy is a cab driver in the borough of Queens. CNN said Siddiqy was arrested in Dallas, along with Mohammed Chafi. The network said a brother of Siddiqy was arrested in Oklahoma. ''There are a number of good solid leads being pursued,'' Stern said in Washington. He added, ''We may have more to say later.'' There seemed no doubt that the death toll at the federal building would rise, although no one could say by how much. Marrs said he didn't know how many people remained unaccounted for, and that it might take six days to find all the bodies. He said more than 700 people have called special telephone numbers to notify authorities that they were safe. Marrs' assistant, Jon Hansen, said structural engineers have identified sections of the building most likely to shelter survivors, and rescuers had refocused their search on those areas. No one had emerged alive from the federal building since 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, and Mayor Ron Norick said at midmorning that rescuers had stopped hearing any sounds of life. No one knows precisely how many people were in the building at the time of the blast. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) estimated that there were about 810 people -- 560 employees and 250 non-employees. Dr. David Tuggle, a pediatric surgeon at Children's Hospital of Oklahoma, said he believed there was only a remote chance anyone else would be found alive. Children's Hospital was among several public institutions nationwide to be evacuated today after bomb threats, presumed to be the work of ''copycats.'' GRAPHIC: A soldier and search dog examine cars at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City one day after the federal building was bombed. ; ASSOCIATED PRESS |
Authorities also questioned three other men, one of the men said Thursday. The man said his brother, Asad R. Siddiqy, 27, a New York cab driver, and an acquaintance, Mohammed Chafi, had driven to Oklahoma City seeking documents for an emergency return to their Middle Eastern homeland when they were arrested.
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Anis Siddiqy, 24, a cab driver from New York City, said his brother, Asad R. Siddiqy, 27, and an acquaintance, Mohammed Chafi, were in Oklahoma City seeking immigration documents for an emergency return to their Mideast homeland when they were arrested Wednesday. Siddiqy said he needed the documents to get home because of a family matter. He refused to be more specific or identify his Mideast homeland. Siddiqy said he was arrested Wednesday at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport while trying to rent a car so he could join the others in Oklahoma City. Earlier that day, police raided an apartment in Dallas that was being rented by two of the men. A copy of a search warrant left in the apartment showed that a black bag, containing clothing, a calendar and an address book was seized. The items were sent to a federal lab for testing after a bomb -sniffing dog indicated they may have been exposed to chemicals used in explosives, officials said. The man's two acquaintances were picked up Wednesday night soon after they had asked an Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer for directions. The tag number recorded from their vehicle by the trooper was allegedly traced to a blue Chevrolet Cavalier rented by one of the men from National Car Rental at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, a law enforcement official said. The Cavalier was found with one of the men Thursday morning at an Oklahoma City motel, the official said. The man said he was questioned for 16 hours and given a lie-detector test before being released Thursday. Chafi was also released Thursday, but his older brother remained in custody. Federal officials have denied that suspects were taken into custody in Dallas. Dallas police spokesman Jim Spencer referred requests for comment to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. |
And in a sign that a foreign connection had not been ruled out, the FBI asked the CIA counterterrorism center for information on the organization of foreign terrorist groups and their patterns of operations.
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Sources said Asad Siddiqy's name "came up" in the investigation of the February, 1993, explosion at the World Trade Center but added he never was connected to the explosion. Asad and Anis Siddiqy lived in a two-story brick Elmhurst home as recently as one month ago, according to Amir Mufti, a 22-year-old man who lived next door to the brothers. He said he didn't know where they moved. Anis Siddiqy also had an Astoria address where he was living until a week ago. The Siddiqys' mother lived with her unmarried sons in the same house until she returned to Pakistan two or three months ago, Mufti said. Taxi and Limousine Commission records show Asad Siddiqy received summonses in June, 1992, for speeding and operating a dirty taxi, for which he was found guilty at TLC hearings, spokesman Eugene Rodriguez said yesterday. "He had a pretty abysmal record, pretty lousy," Rodriguez said. Asad Siddiqy, who has not driven a cab in months, was most recently driving a limousine, Mufti said. When he first came to the United States four or five years ago, Asad Siddiqy worked at a carpet company in Manhattan, according to a former roommate who did not want his identity revealed. Afterward, he became a cabbie, but he'd always hoped to start his own carpet business someday, the roommate said. During his free time, Asad Siddiqy liked to stay home and watch movies on TV. Acquaintances didn't consider him very religious, but he went to Friday prayers every week at a Queens mosque. "It's impossible" that the brothers could be involved in any religious or political violence, Mufti said. "This has to be some kind of mistake." GRAPHIC: Photo-A 1994 photo of Asad Siddiqy from the Taxi and Limousine Commission. |
Three other men who had been questioned about the case were released. In Dallas, Anis Siddiqy, 24, and Mohammed Chafi were released on Thursday morning. Mr. Siddiqy said that he had been questioned for 16 hours by agents from the F.B.I. and the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and that Mr. Chafi's apartment, where he was staying, had been searched.
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"It was nobody's fault," Asad Siddiqy told The Associated Press. "They were just doing their jobs. I'm OK, and everything's fine." The Justice Department said yesterday the FBI had released Ibrahim Abdullah Hassan Ahmad, an American citizen of Middle East origin, who was detained in London and then returned to the United States on Thursday. Ahmad, an electrical engineer who recently worked as a court interpreter in a double-murder case in Oklahoma City, was caught in the spreading dragnet after the disastrous explosion in his adopted city. He was briefly detained in Chicago, then in London as a possible suspect or witness after he left Oklahoma City on Wednesday night to fly to Jordan to visit his father. John Russell, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said investigators may want to talk again to Ahmad, initially described by the Justice Department as a "possible witness" in the blast probe. But he said investigators had no reason to believe there was any danger Ahmad would flee the country. Russell was unable to say if Ahmad had any knowledge about the bombing. One FBI official said Ahmad could have fit the profile of suspected perpetrators and he simply may have been "in the wrong place at the wrong time." In Oklahoma City, investigators also released Mohammed Chafi after questioning. Top federal officials, including Attorney General Janet Reno, had repeatedly stressed the men were not suspects. GRAPHIC: AP Photo-Oklahoma State Trooper Terry Morris looks around a building yesterday that had been boarded up after being damaged by the bombing and spray-painted with a verse from the book of Psalms. |