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Man who took photos of Trade Center charged
Former Whitehall resident altered passport, used it, and altered visa papers, feds say.

By Christine Schiavo
Of The Morning Call

May 22, 2002

Federal charges were filed Tuesday against a Whitehall Township man arrested at the Lehigh Valley Mall after a clerk at a photo shop became suspicious of snapshots he had taken of the World Trade Center days before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Ashar Iqbal Butt, a 22-year-old native of Pakistan, was charged in U.S. Eastern District Court in Philadelphia with altering a passport, using an altered passport and altering a visa document. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 30 years. A hearing has not been set.

Also known as Mobasser Mahmood and Max Hassan, Butt was one of two employees at Intrigue Jewelers, a mall kiosk, arrested at the mall on Sept. 12 for allegedly carrying false passports. He lived in a one-bedroom basement unit at Parkview Apartments in Whitehall with at least one other man, a woman and a child.

The apartment was rented to Mohammed Mir, who moved out without notice in September, leaving clothing and furniture as well as a baby's picture. The Morning Call reported in December that federal agents searched the apartment on Sept. 13, a day after a clerk at a photo processing store in the mall called them about the suspicious snapshots.

According to a federal court affidavit:

Butt dropped off film for one-hour development on Sept. 8 and was told by a clerk that processing would take a few days. Butt returned for the film on Sept. 12, but the clerk couldn't find the pictures under his name. Butt asked him to try the name Hassan and then the name Max, but the pictures weren't under either of those.

Butt left the store anxious and in a hurry. The clerk then searched the photo packets more thoroughly and found one with the name Burt Asmar. He opened it to find Butt in the pictures, which were exclusively of the World Trade Center. There were 25 shots with panoramic views taken both inside and outside the complex during a six-hour period. The clerk immediately called police.

Special Agent Kenneth G. Vincent of the FBI found Ashar Butt at work at the mall that day. Butt told Vincent his name was Mobasser Mahmood, that he was a citizen of the United Kingdom and that he was in the United States for two weeks on a visitor's visa. He said his passport was with a friend in Jersey City, N.J., and that his roommate Moeen Islam Butt could get it for him. As the conversation continued, Vincent found Butt's statements inconsistent.

He was taken to the federal courthouse in Allentown for questioning that day. On Sept. 14, the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., provided a passport application and photo of Mobasser Mahmood. Vincent could see that Butt was not the man in the picture.

On Sept. 17, Vincent contacted Moeen Butt at Intrigue Jewelers, who turned over a passport for Mobasser Mahmood. The photograph on the passport was Butt's, but a forensic examination done a week later detected that it had been substituted for the original.

Confronted with the information while being held at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., Ashar Butt acknowledged that he had entered the United States illegally by using an altered passport of Mahmood.

He told Vincent that his father paid a smuggler in Pakistan $10,000 for fake Pakistani and United Kingdom passports. Butt was supposed to return the fake passports to the smuggling operation when he finished with them. He said he left Pakistan for Los Angeles on Aug. 5 and continued on to New York, then Whitehall. The affidavit does not say how long Butt lived in Whitehall.

Moeen Butt, also of Pakistan, was taken into custody Sept. 17 after admitting to Vincent that he bought a fake passport for $4,000. According to an affidavit filed Oct. 12, Moeen Butt also said he paid a woman he met in a bar $2,000 to marry him so that he could apply for immigration status. He told Vincent he had talked to the woman only once or twice since marrying her in Fort Lee, N.J., on April 24, 2001.

He pleaded guilty in April to altering a passport and marriage fraud, according to Rich Manieri, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Philadelphia. Sentencing is scheduled for June 13.

It's not clear if Moeen Butt, whose address is the same basement apartment as Ashar's, is related to Ashar Butt.

Moeen Butt, 23, was supposed to begin managing Intrigue Jewelers around Sept. 17 because its previous manager was taken into federal custody for what the company's lawyer believed was a visa violation. The lawyer, Philip Calandrino of Orlando, Fla., said a manager named Hamza Mir left the business abruptly around Sept. 11 and was replaced by his brother, who was arrested by federal agents Sept. 12.

Calandrino did not know the brother's name. Contacted Tuesday, he said he did not know the name Ashar Butt.