Detained Indians linked to anthrax?
Dharam Shourie
New York, October 26
FBI sleuths are testing documents seized from the apartment of two Indians, detained in connection with the US terror attacks, for anthrax after old issues of magazines carrying stories on biological weapons and gas attack were found in their rooms.
Ayub Khan and Mohammad Jaweed Azmath, both from Hyderabad, were pulled off a train near Dallas and detained as they were found carrying box-cutters similar to those used by the hijackers who destroyed the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon building on September 11.
The New York Times reported that the Hyderabadi duo had not explained their travels to the satisfaction of the investigators and FBI is trying to squeeze information from reluctant witnesses. They said they were going to Texas to open a fruit stall.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that a search at their residence in Jersey City found old issues of Time magazine and US News and World Report with cover stories on biological weapons and a gas attack in Tokyo.
Their room-mate, Aslam Pervez, who once worked in Trenton and lived near the postal facility from where some of the letters suspected to have carried anthrax powder were posted, has also been detained.
No links so far have been established against Khan and Azmath and the terrorist attacks, and investigators say they doubt if they were involved.
Police officials in India were quoted as saying that they were helping the FBI look into how Azmath and Khan, who had little money when they moved to the USA in the mid 1990s, amassed enough to wire $ 54,000 to their families in 1999.
Last week, Pervez was reportedly charged with lying to federal agents when they questioned him about more than $ 110,000 in cheques and money orders that moved in and out of his bank account, mostly during 1995 and 1996.
Khan’s and Azmath’s movements on September 11 and 12, and the box-cutters they were carrying in a briefcase, are “certainly suspicious,” one law enforcement official told The Times. But “we can’t link them to anything, any particular suspicious flights or destinations,” he said.
The Times said there might be an innocent explanation for the Hyderabadis trip to Texas. The news stand on which the two worked was sold to another company in late August, leaving Khan, Azmath and Pervez without jobs.
The Times said that Khan’s real name is Gul Mohammad Shah. They said he and Azmath had obtained Indian passports by giving false information about themselves, but they added that that was not uncommon for people trying to leave the country. PTI