If you want to hear serious discussion on this issue tune in to Batchelor & Alexander at 10:00 pm eastern time on WABCradio.com. For the past two nights they have been discussing this issue, including the tracking of a possible device being moved across the Canadian border, with Andrew Krystal from a Canadian Radio station. Other than there, you're right - its has not been front and center as it should be. These guys prompted the orange alert and they have connections with Binalshib (sp?). I don't understand why it is being downplayed. The focus seems to be on their defense.
Man arrested here in terrorist probe may be deported
July 17, 2002
BY FRANK MAIN CRIME REPORTER
Nabil al Marabh--whose arrest in suburban Chicago last year drew national attention when he was described as a suspected operative of Osama bin Laden--has pleaded guilty to an immigration violation and could be deported without facing terrorism charges, officials said Tuesday.
The FBI picked up al Marabh on Sept. 19 at the 7 Days Liquor/Food Store in Burbank and shipped him to New York as a material witness in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Al Marabh piqued the interest of federal investigators because he allegedly transferred money to a bin Laden associate in the Middle East.
But like other people rounded up in the investigation of the World Trade Center attacks, no terror charges have been brought against the 35-year-old Kuwait native.
"Our case here was primarily about an attempt by al Marabh to smuggle himself into the United States in June 2001," said Marc Gromis, a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office in Buffalo, N.Y., where al Marabh is being held. "We are not raising concerns about terrorism in our case. We are not prepared at this time to present evidence against him for any terrorist activity."
On July 8, al Marabh pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit alien smuggling for trying to sneak across the Canadian border into Lewiston, N.Y., in a tractor-trailer with the aid of two accomplices on June 27, 2001.
U.S. immigration officials caught al Marabh, who was carrying fake Canadian citizenship papers, and gave him to Canadian authorities, who released him on bail. He later found his way to Detroit and suburban Chicago, where he applied for a job to drive a tractor-trailer.
When he was arrested in Burbank, he was wanted by Boston police for violating his parole in a stabbing there.
Raed Hijazi--convicted of conspiring to bomb tourist sites in Jordan that Americans and Israelis visited--identified al Marabh as a bin Laden agent, authorities said. Hijazi has said he and al Marabh worked at the same cab company in Boston in the late 1990s after meeting in Afghanistan.
A federal law-enforcement source said Tuesday that al Marabh is still considered to be a "very bad guy," but that prosecutors in Buffalo, N.Y., did not have enough evidence to pursue more serious charges.
The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has ordered al Marabh deported to Syria, where he had claimed citizenship in 1994 while unsuccessfully applying for political asylum in Canada.
Under federal sentencing guidelines, al Marabh faces two to eight months in prison. But he will probably receive credit for the time he has served and be expelled from the United States after his Oct. 17 sentencing hearing in Buffalo, Gromis said.
Al Marabh's lawyer, Marianne Mariano, has asked the judge to speed up sentencing She could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Like al Marabh, several other people arrested in the Sept. 11 investigation are being held without terrorism-related charges against them, raising concerns from some civil rights groups that investigators might be overreaching. Among those suspects:
* Jose Padilla was arrested March 8 in Chicago on suspicion he was working with al-Qaida terrorists on a plan to detonate a radioactive "dirty" bomb in the United States. The former Chicago gang member is being held without charges in a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., as an "enemy combatant."