Fighting terror notebook

Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 11, 2002

Oops! Hijacker gets newsletter from the FAA

The Federal Aviation Administration removed one of the Sept. 11 hijackers from its mailing list Wednesday after learning it had sent the man its regional pilots newsletter.

FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said she did not know why Ziad Samir Jarrah's name had not been taken off the mailing list.

The incident came to light just weeks after it was disclosed that the Immigration and Naturalization Service sent official notice to a Florida flight school six months after the attacks that two of the other hijackers had been approved for student visas. The episode embarrassed the INS and prompted an agency shakeup.

Jarrah, a 26-year-old from Lebanon, was believed to have piloted United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, apparently after the passengers fought back.

The quarterly newsletter addressed to Jarrah was sent to his former apartment near Fort Lauderdale.

The issue contains an editorial about the World Trade Center attack that read: "We hope for justice to be served to those individuals who horrified our great nation."

INS breakup moves ahead

The Immigration and Naturalization Service would be dissolved under a bill approved by a House committee Wednesday, to be replaced by two new agencies dividing immigration enforcement and citizenship services.

The Judiciary Committee voted 32-2 to send to the full House the bill to break up the INS offered by the committee's chairman, Rep. James Sensenbrenner. The overwhelming endorsement was a sign of congressional discontent both with the agency and with the Bush administration's plan to fix it from the inside.

INS commissioner James Ziglar wants to divide the INS functions administratively but keep the agency intact. Committee members said they have heard too many ineffective INS overhaul plans over the years.

Under Sensenbrenner's plan, the INS would be abolished, and the bureaus of Citizenship and Immigration Services and of Immigration Enforcement would take over its responsibilities.

The new agencies would remain under Justice Department control but report to a new associate attorney general for immigration affairs.

Karzai: Honor aid promise

Interim Afghan Prime Minister Hamid Karzai on Wednesday called on the world to make good on promises to help rebuild his country, saying Afghans' expectations are very high but almost nothing had been delivered.

In the first meeting on how to implement pledges of $4.5-billion in assistance to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. envoy for Afghanistan, called for international donors to fund Afghanistan's police and army.

Brahimi said that is the only way to guarantee security outside the capital and lead the country toward peace and stability.

The appeal by Brahimi followed the refusal of the United States and other major powers to expand the peacekeeping force outside Kabul or increase its numbers dramatically.

At the meeting in the Afghan capital of Kabul, Karzai called for big infrastructure projects, in particular roads, to make the country economically viable and secure.

On the war front

Crew members of two U.S. Army Apache helicopters suffered non-life-threatening injuries when their chopper made a hard landing Wednesday at a remote site northeast of Kandahar. The cause was not clear, but U.S. Central Command said it was not because of hostile fire. A Canadian platoon was deployed to secure the site.

Fighting was reported in the western province of Nimroz, on the border with Iran. The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said forces opposed to Kabul-appointed governor Abdul Karim Brohi had seized areas along a major trade route. Brohi sent 500 reinforcements to bolster his position there, the agency said.

A pro-U.S. Afghan militiaman was killed and five others injured when their vehicle struck a recently planted land mine near the American base in Kandahar.

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