Posted on 12/06/2001 3:31:03 PM PST by t-shirt
INS detainee anthrax suspect
TRACY KENNEDY, Register Citizen Staff December 06, 2001
HARTFORD - A Hartford judge set bail Wednesday for one of four local men detained by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service since Nov. 25 for their suspected involvement in the deadly national anthrax mailings. At Immigration Court, Judge Michael W. Straus ordered Mohammed I. Khan, 46, of Torrington, to pay $12,000 bail during a hearing regarding his application for asylum. Kahn reportedly filed the application after arriving in this country from Pakistan in 1993. According to an INS representative, he had not posted the bail by late afternoon Wednesday.
According to published reports, Khan and three other men, Najmul Hasan, 33, of Winsted, Ifran Ahmed, 36, and Ayazuddin Sheerazi, 32, both of Torrington, were arrested by local police and FBI agents after a tip from Torrington resident Robert Janco.
Janco told authorities and "America's Most Wanted," a nationally syndicated television show, that he believed Kahn and Hasan were involved in the recent anthrax scares. According to published reports, Janco told police he overheard the men talking on Sept. 8 about delivering letters to a Vietnamese immigrant in New York City named "Kathy." When Janco heard of the death of 61-year-old Kathy Nguyen on Oct. 31, he reportedly contacted the police.
According to source at the immigration court, charging documents have not been filed against Kahn or the other men and they are solely being detained on immigration matters.
Gary Cote, acting deputy district director of INS in Boston, would not comment on the investigation or confirm the men were being detained by the immigration agency. "I cannot discuss that or what action is being taken if any action is being taken concerning these men," he said Wednesday. Cote explained his office could not discuss any actions concerning immigrants that may be involved in national terrorist activities pursuant to a directive received from the Attorney General.
However, according to prison records checked on Wednesday, Khan, Ahmed and Hasan are currently incarcerated in Osborn Correctional Institution in Somers, and Sheerazi is being held at Hartford Correctional Center in Hartford.
Court dates have not yet been set for Ahmed and Hasan, and Sheerazi is scheduled to appear at a hearing on Wednesday in the immigration court in Hartford concerning his application to extend his visa.
During Kahn's hearing on Wednesday, Assistant District Council Attorney John Marley indicated he would oppose Kahn's application for asylum based on Kahn's alleged failure to report his residence in Torrington.
Kahn, a native of Pakistan, said that while he works in Torrington, he still maintains his residence on Neptune Street in Brooklyn, N.Y., as indicated on his immigration documents.
Two reasons for that knowledge -
1. They observed that the first victim in Florida probably had to be infected before 9/11, and that he had a fairly close relationship at one degree through his wife who had been the rental agent for an apartment where some of the hijackers lived (until they died on 9/11).
2. They read my posts. Unfortunately I do not have access to any investigative materials except those published in the media or announced on TV, but I know enough about the operating environment in which the attack took place to point out the nonsense and separate it from the good stuff, and there was good stuff in there - unfortunately never from the FBI, but certainly from the Inspection Service.
At this point I don't have enough information from this article to say "case closed", but we finally have someone at the federal level understanding that the anthrax attack took place prior to 9/11, and the supposed deaths would coincide with the attacks on the buildings.
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Anthrax scare rekindles idea of national health database
November 30, 2001 print edition
American City Business Journals
Jane Meinhardt
The idea of nationalized electronic medical records has arisen in the wake of anthrax incidents and as a spinoff of new federal regulations regarding standardization of health care data.
So far, it is only an idea and far from realization.
"We may see a national medical database, but I'd say it's a long way away -- maybe even 50 years," said Dr. John Heilman, director of Florida's Pinellas County Health Department.
"I think the technical capability exists. Everything that would be needed to put it into practice is not there. Clearly, there are serious privacy issues."
No formal proposals to government entities or lobbying by medical organizations have been developed to promote the idea, said Trent Batchelor, spokesman for the Florida Medical Association.
The advantages of nationalized electronic medical records would include facilitation of epidemiological surveillance and investigation, which means public health agencies and medical organizations could better track disease outbreaks and respond to them.
The public health system gets disease information from a variety of sources such as laboratories, which are required to report certain ailments, as well as physicians. Reporting is done by telephone and in written form.
Some problems in reporting occur.
In the case of sexually transmitted diseases, more than half are never reported, Heilman said. Reporting is better when rare diseases are diagnosed or the symptoms develop, especially when there is a pattern.
"We would like to get data on a real-time basis," Heilman said.
"We're beefing up our infrastructure, but we're not there yet. Really, private practitioners are the eyes and ears for the public health system."
The basis for discussion about nationalized electronic medical records stems from regulations in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, also known as the Kennedy-Kassenbaum Act.
The goal of the law is to reduce health care fraud and abuse, guarantee privacy of health information and standardize health care information, applications and processes, including electronic formats.
The law aims to standardize: health care transactions such as claims; code sets relating to diseases, procedures, drugs and other information; identifiers for providers, patients and payers; benefit coordination; and privacy measures and electronic medical records.
Standards are being implemented in stages.
Health care organizations must be compliant with the transaction and code-set standards next October. Establishing standards, coupled with electronic processing, is expected to lower health care costs.
The Federal Register estimates that the standards and electronic processing could produce a savings of about $1.5 billion a year.
Jane Meinhardt is a reporter for The Business Journal in Tampa, Fla.
Amen to that!! The government wants to infringe on the rights of 280,000,000 Americans when they can't find 413,000 missing illegals. What a bunch of sick puppies we have inside the beltway.
New Page 1 To: CommiesOut
"...Who Killed Kathy Nguyen? "
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My money is on the possibility of sometype of physical contact with one of the terrorists - either directly, or via a 'common friend'.
....but...that's just my opinion...
5 posted on 11/4/01 8:51 PM Pacific by Alabama_Wild_Man
None of this adds up...
dep
I was one of the first here to point that out, and to say I would take any bet that it was not "domestic terror."
Now what do you think are the odds that AA587 "coincidentaly" crashed aslmost within sight of Dubya (he was at Ground Zero that morning) and while the UN general assembly was in town?
Never bet unless you know you will win.
And people wonder why we need military tribunals to try the terrorist bastards who are waging war against the civilian population of this country. Gee think this guy might be a flight risk?
And the liberals who said we were losing this war are DEAD WRONG
And we even got at least a few of the sustpects alive!
Maybe it's not credible enough.
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