FBI Looking for Five Illegal Immigrants (five men of Arab ancestry entered illegally Dec. 24)

Associated Press

[RCW2001]

FBI Looking for Five Illegal Immigrants

The Associated Press
Sunday, December 29, 2002; 4:23 PM

WASHINGTON –– The FBI said Sunday it is looking for five men of Arab ancestry who may have entered the country illegally last week.

The agency said the five men are believed to have arrived in the United States on or before Christmas Eve.

The five men are: Abid Noraiz Ali, Iftikhar Khozmai Ali, Mustafa Khan Owasi, Adil Pervez and Akbar Jamal, all born between 1969 and 1983. The FBI warned that the names and birth dates may be false.

The FBI said it had no indication the men were linked to terrorist activities, but still wanted to question the five "based upon information developed in the course of ongoing investigations."

The FBI said it was working with the Customs, Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Transportation Security Agency to find the men.

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On the Net:

Photographs of the men: http://www.fbi.gov

[Friend of thunder]

Tell me honestly, do you believe they aren't nutty enough to dig up a 70 year old grave, roll around naked on a corpse, then come to this country to spread the disease as far and wide as possible?

Clearly, if they could do it they would – or might (although I don’t know if rolling around naked on a corpse would be necessary). But where would they find a contaminated body?

[Miss Marple]

Dog, read that message. The guy who posted was in the Ukraine where he got his degree before going to Pakistan.

Isn't Ukraine where they had missing nukes?

[Dog]

Did you get the freep mail I sent???

[Angelus Errare]

A couple of reactions to all of this:

- Regarding the names, keep in mind that some may be non de guerres (like Jose Padilla becoming Abdullah al-Muhajir) and they may be carrying passports and photo IDs under different names.

- Pervez, if I remember correctly, is a Baluch name and there are Baluchs in both Iran and Pakistan. The odds are that this guy is a Pakistani rather than an Iranian because the Iranian Baluchs are Shi'ite. If he is Iranian, he could easily be a Hezbollah contact, which would certainly up the ante quite a bit.

- Regarding the number of al-Qaeda sleep cells, the best guess of US intelligence that I've seen is that around 200 sleepers and 5,000 supporters (in the sense of having active ties to the terrorist organization) survived the post-9/11 dragnet organized by Ashcroft and the Justice Department. If anyone wants to tally up the number of busted sleepers so far they're welcome to do so, but the safest bet is that there are still ~180 sleepers at large within the US. The US has also apparently allowed over 150 terrorist suspects (and I'm betting these guys were IRA) to obtain visas post-9/11, which would raise the number of sleepers to around 350. Al-Qaeda can also call upon existing Hezbollah and al-Fuqra leaders to assist them in their war against the United States, along with perhaps the Nation of Islam.

- It is worth noting that both the United Kingdom and France have made 3 separate major arrests within the last two months of al-Qaeda cells planning to carry out chemical weapons attacks on European targets. Since this contingent was sent in from outside the country, the best conclusion to make is that they were sent over to execute a suicide operation. All suicide operations are under the command of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the head of al-Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion who is, near as the CIA can figure, being harbored in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. The nationality of the individuals would seem to confirm that this was indeed planned from Pakistan, which indicates that these guys probably aren't going to have too high a regard for their own lives.

- Depending on where they crossed over from Canada, they have a variety of choices as to their destination. Al-Qaeda has support networks and safehouses in place in Washington State, Michigan, Ohio, New York State, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts for the sole purpose of assisting sleepers in getting into the United States without being captured by law enforcement. As much as some Freepers like to bash on Muslims, our only real hope at this point is probably going to be a moderate Muslim, like a member of Sheikh Kabbani's Islamic Supreme Council of America, selling these guys out to the FBI, as happened in the case of the "Buffalo Six."

- Al-Qaeda's Canadian branch may well be assisting its North American equivalent in this endeavor (hence the recent spike in terrorist chatter here in North America), which would mean that this would be a coordinated operation by the group's central leadership. Even if these guys simply attacked random New Year's parties with AK-47s, the result would still be a massacre, particularly if they occurred in gun-free states.

- Additionally, if this is an even high grade operation, Abu Khabab, the head of al-Qaeda's chemical and biological weapons bureau, may even choose to provide the sleepers with the ton of VX he bought from Iraq back in October, per the Washington Post. And if that stuff is unleashed at a major New Year's celebration, we're going to be talking about hundreds if not thousands dead. An operation of that scale, however, would likely require the activation of multiple cells for al-Qaeda's trademark of simultaneous attacks. Which leads us to the ominous question of if they know about these sleepers (and I'm amusing this information was obtained from Abd Rahim al-Nashiri), are there others out there that they won't know about until it's too late?

[Miss Marple]

Haven't checked my mail. Back in a second.

[EGPWS]

LOL!

Yea, after the laughing...NOW where do I bang my head?

[Dog]

Angelus you need to get an easier screen name to spell...I was going to ping you to this thread.

Miss Marple .....look at this ..

Shiek Omar Bakri Mohammed and Ifkhar Ali...

[Miss Marple]

You have freepmail now.

[mware]

Hi Jim,

This looks like serious trouble, for them to come out and ask for the public's help in catching them. It is the right thing to do but I sure would not be in Time Square on the 31st.

[Dog]

Hi...look at the link in 247..

[Dec31,1999]

I doubt there are vast numbers of sleepers in the country; it takes a large amount of resources to get them in place.

Negative. All it takes is someone dedicated to the cause and zero resources. I suspect they are here and waiting for orders from their higher ups.

[visualops]

I need to get myself a job retouching photos at the FBI lab lol

[mware]

Wow, odds are he is heading for NYC.

[Angelus Errare]

If one of these guys is a member of al-Muhajiroun, then there's no question that they're al-Qaeda. Al-Muhajiroun is basically al-Qaeda's political wing and they staged a rally in support of Osama bin Laden on September 11 of THIS year.

Although we should take into account that this could be someone else with the same name. Ali is a fairly common Muslim surname.

[Miss Marple]

Duh, I just now made the connection. I need to get more familiar with these names...they all sound alike to me, being as how I am not fluent in Arabic.

Do you think this is the same guy on the FBI list? How did he get out of the UK? Maybe we had a tail on him and he led us to others?

[Dog]

Is it clear now...???

A radical Islamist(Ifikhar Ali) hands out leaflets in Britian for a Shiek who is a known troublemaker........and now that same name turns up tonight....Ifikhar Ali.

[mommadooo3]

After skimming through all the replies, one thing 'struck me'. ....

The FBI has released this info, wants the public to 'help out'/locate/etc. with these creatures. AND they have said that they've recieved hundreds of possible leads.

Wouldn't it make sense for the FBI to let the public know where most of those leads seem to be located/seem to be the most 'promising'? (unless of course, these 5 have split up to different cities/towns. Even then, the tips for all the cities/towns, could STILL help us track them down)

[Miss Marple]

Got it! It is a weird coincidence of names if they are not the same person. I am going on the assumption that they are one and the same.

[Dec31,1999]

I've checked

Can you post quotes? I know it's frowned upon, but I'm very curious. And I damned sure don't want to go over there.

[Dog]

How common is IFIKHAR???