By STEVEN CHURCH
Staff reporter
11/30/2001
A federal judge declined for a second time Thursday to release a Pakistani man arrested as part of the government's investigations into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Mary Pat Thygne ruled that Raza Nasir Khan, 30, of Wilmington should not be allowed to post bail or be released on his own while awaiting trial on the charge that he possessed guns as an illegal immigrant.
Her decision came after a federal prosecutor accused a friend of Khan's from Pakistan of forging a letter to help Khan win release.
Federal prosecutors have not accused Khan of being part of the attacks. They have said he was arrested on an unrelated weapons charge as a result of the terrorism investigation.
Khan is one of two Delaware men among 93 people nationwide charged with crimes arising from the government's investigation of the attacks.
Khan and Mustafa Camci, 24, were arrested in the weeks after the attacks as FBI agents followed up on thousands of leads. U.S. Justice Department officials will not say whether they suspect the men are involved in terrorist activities.
Camci is being held without bail on charges that he possessed a false visa. Both men are in a federal detention center in Philadelphia. Federal officials have not publicly linked the men to each other.
Khan was arrested in September after an agent from the Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife told federal marshals that Khan was asking about hunting maps for an area across from the Salem Nuclear Power Plant.
The agent became suspicious because Khan had a handheld Global Positioning System receiver with him and he looked Middle Eastern, according to an affidavit filed by prosecutors in federal court.
A few days before the Sept. 11 attacks, Khan went as a tourist to the World Trade Center in New York City and videotaped his visit, according to his roommate and a criminal affidavit provided to Congress by the Department of Justice. Court documents at the time of his arrest did not mention the video.
Khan's lawyer and friends say he is not a terrorist. They describe him as a hard-working man who was trying to get his expired work visa renewed at the time of the attacks. He had a job with Pat's Pizza near Wilmington when he was arrested.
Two friends testified at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Wilmington that Khan is not dangerous and would not try to flee if he were to be released.
One of them, Syed Hassan, told the court that he owned the shotgun, .22 caliber rifle and pistol federal agents took from the Wilmington apartment he shared with Khan.
Hassan has said that he and Khan are friends who worked together at a Marriott Hotel in Pakistan before they moved to the United States. Hassan came to Delaware in 1997 and Khan moved to Florida a year later. Khan moved to Delaware two years ago.
Hassan defended a letter supporting Khan that prosecutors said is a fake. Hassan gave the letter to the court earlier this month, claiming it was written by a Wilmington man willing to post bail for him. The letter said the man was a friend of Khan, who had delivered food to him and helped him pay his bills.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Beth Moskow Schnoll introduced a sworn affidavit in which the man, George Brittingham, says he never wrote the letter and did not authorize anyone to write it for him.
Moskow Schnoll accused Hassan of forging the letter to help Khan.
"So his affidavit is a lie," Moskow Schnoll asked.
"It looks like it to me," Hassan said.
Moskow Schnoll also said the letter matched Hassan's handwriting, but not Brittingham's.
Thygne said she did not consider Hassan's testimony reliable.
When FBI agents first questioned Khan, he admitted his visa had expired and officers found guns in his home, the affidavit says. A few days later an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms came back and arrested Khan.
A few days after his arrest, Thygne refused to release him, but said her decision was not based on concern that Khan was connected to the terrorist attacks.
The hearing Thursday was held on a motion by Khan's defense attorney, John Malik, asking Thygne to reconsider her decision.
"I wasn't surprised by the decision," Malik said. "I knew we had a very difficult standard to reach."
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