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Posted on Wed, Feb. 08, 2006

Mexican man held in Boston terror hoax faces psych evaluation

ELLIOT SPAGAT
Associated Press

SAN DIEGO - A Mexican man accused of making a phony threat of a nuclear attack on Boston was ordered held without bail Wednesday.

Jose Ernesto Beltran Ortiz must undergo a psychiatric evaluation, said U.S. Magistrate Judge Louisa Porter, who scheduled a hearing March 9 to review the results.

Beltran pleaded not guilty Monday to federal charges of passing on false information about a terror attack and lying to federal officials. He faces up to eight years in prison if convicted. Dorn Bishop, his attorney, said he declined to seek bail because his client couldn't afford it.

He was arrested in October by Mexican authorities in Mexicali, a border city about 120 miles east of San Diego, and extradited to the United States on Sunday.

The threat prompted authorities to alert the public and increase airport and subway security. Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney skipped President Bush's inauguration to return home.

"It was a tremendous waste of public and law-enforcement resources on both sides of the border," said FBI spokeswoman April Langwell. "There were hundreds of FBI agents affected from San Diego to Boston and all the way in between."

Beltran is one of the first people to be charged in the United States under a law passed in 2004 that makes it a crime to pass along false information about a terrorist attack, Langwell said.

A three-count indictment says Beltran called California Highway Patrol emergency dispatchers from a cell phone on Jan. 17, 2005, to report that a nuclear warhead would be smuggled through a cross-border tunnel linking Mexicali and Calexico, Calif.

Beltran allegedly told dispatchers that he recently smuggled four Chinese chemists and two Iraqis into the United States, and the Iraqis were to deliver the nuclear warhead and the Chinese were to place it in Boston.

The FBI declared a false alarm within days, but the scare ignited a media frenzy and a nationwide hunt for the supposed terrorists.

According to the indictment, Beltran guided U.S. authorities to a package that he had promised to toss over the border fence. The package contained Mexican visas for three people identified as Chinese nationals, airline tickets from Beijing to Mexico City and from Mexico City to Mexicali and baggage claim receipts.