 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
More arrests coming, U.S. says
Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times,
Authorities said only that the individual could be among 25 people now being held by the Immigration and Naturalization Service for immigration violations. "There are going to be more," said Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker, referring to the two "material witness" warrants. Meanwhile, a Deerfield Beach motel owner said Saturday that he found Boeing 757 manuals, three illustrated martial arts books and an 8-inch stack of East Coast flight maps while cleaning out a room that had been used by one of the suspected hijackers two days before he flew into the World Trade Center. Marwan Al-Shehhi and another Arab man spent a week at the Panther Motel, and they had a constant visitor, owner Richard Surma said Saturday. Surma said he recognized Al-Shehhi from FBI photos, but not the other two men. Of the 19 hijackers, at least 15 have Florida ties, and seven of them were believed to be pilots. Al-Shehhi, who trained at two Florida flight schools, was aboard the United Boeing 767 that crashed into the south tower Tuesday. So far, 25 people arrested for immigration violations are being questioned by federal investigators in connection with the attacks that left thousands dead Tuesday. All 25 have been interviewed by the FBI at least once, Tucker said. None have been charged in the sweeping investigation of the terrorist attacks. Tucker would not divulge where or why the individuals were being held. Two of the 25 being interviewed were seized by federal authorities on an Amtrak train in Fort Worth, Texas, on Wednesday, according to an NBC News report. Ayoub Ali Khan, 51, and Mohammed Jaweed Azmath, 47, were flown to New York to be interviewed by FBI agents there. During a search of the train, investigators discovered that the men had box cutters, hair dye and an undisclosed sum of money. The hijackers took control of the planes using knives typically used to cut cardboard boxes. The pair apprehended in Texas had been on a TWA flight from Newark, N.J., en route to San Antonio, Texas, Tuesday morning when the attacks occurred. The plane was grounded in St. Louis after the attacks. Khan and Azmath continued to Texas by train. Some of the 25 people being interviewed are cooperating with authorities, Tucker said. She declined to characterize their importance to the investigation. More information developed Saturday about the hijackers. Newsweek reported that the FBI was on the trail of two of the suspected hijackers little more than two weeks before the attacks. Operating on a tip from the CIA that the men were connected to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, FBI agents began looking at Khalid Al-Midhar and Salem Alhamzi, two of the suspected 19 hijackers named by the Justice Department, the weekly magazine reports in Monday's edition. Al-Midhar was captured on a surveillance videotape in Malaysia at a meeting with one of the suspects in the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden, Newsweek said. The bombing killed 17 American sailors. Bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi exile now living under the protection of the Afghanistan government, is the chief suspect in that attack as well as the attacks in New York and Washington. Authorities have found and interviewed some of the 100 additional people being sought for questioning in the case, which has the nickname "Penttbom." Investigators were pursuing about 1,000 leads in Florida, said Judy Orihuela, an FBI spokeswoman in Miami. Hundreds of FBI agents are rebuilding the history of the hijackers from a paper trail of flight school records; house, apartment and hotel rental records; credit card receipts; and interviews with pilots, landlords, neighbors and bartenders. Surma, the motel owner, said that he kept many of the items from the room that had been occupied by Al-Shehhi and called a sheriff's deputy Wednesday, when officers began scouring the oceanfront strip of small motels 12 miles north of Fort Lauderdale. The FBI quickly followed, interviewing guests and lifting fingerprints from the room. Al-Shehhi checked out last Sunday without taking a three-ring binder full of handwritten notes, an English-German dictionary, an airplane fuel tester, a protractor, tote bag, aircraft manuals, maps and books, Surma said. Attorney General John Ashcroft told reporters Saturday that the investigation was yielding promising results. "We are beginning to understand the ways in which this terrible crime was committed," Ashcroft told reporters at Camp David, where he was meeting with President Bush, FBI director Robert Mueller and other high level government officials. The Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested a man Friday evening in New York. He had been questioned Thursday at John F. Kennedy International Airport after authorities said he was found to have a fake pilot's license. Officials said the man was associated with the brother of bin Laden and is being held under a material witness warrant like the one issued for the second suspect on Saturday. Such warrants allow authorities to keep someone in custody without charging them with a crime if that person is considered important to an investigation. There were also these developments Saturday: The Chicago Tribune reported that Mohamed Atta Atta, who had lived in Florida with Marwan Al-Shehhi, made his way up the Eastern Seaboard. After Tuesday's attack, police found Atta's Grand Prix in the parking lot of Boston's Logan International Airport. But that's not where Atta boarded his first flight Sept. 11. The day before, he rented a Nissan Altima at Logan and drove north, to Maine. In Maine, investigators believe that Atta and Al-Shehhi met up with other hijackers who came into the United States from across the Canadian border. Canadian authorities are working with the FBI to examine passenger manifests of the ferry that runs between Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and Portland, Maine. They believe some of the hijackers made their way into the U.S. on the ferry, just a day or two before the attack. The morning of the assaults, Portland airport security cameras clearly captured Atta and Al-Shehhi passing through the security check, police said. Each carried a shoulder bag. They boarded a 6 a.m. U.S. Airways flight to Boston, and would not have to pass through security again. After the attacks, police found Atta's red Grand Prix in the parking lot of Logan Airport and the rented Altima in Portland. They also found Atta's bag, which was checked in Portland but didn't make it onto the suicide flight. The bag contained a suicide note and a videotape on how to fly the Boeing 767. An FBI spokesman, Bill Crowley, said that the cockpit voice recorder found at the Pennsylvania crash site was in "fairly good condition" but had been sent to the manufacturer for help in extracting information after officials with the National Transportation Safety Board could not get sound from the device. The voice recorder found Friday in the Pentagon rubble was described by authorities as yielding no information because it was severely burned in the crash. Recording devices from the planes in New York have not been found. Authorities were searching for a Muslim cleric, Moataz Al-Hallak, who left the northeastern United States on Monday headed for Texas, the Associated Press reported. He was questioned by prosecutors in the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Federal investigators played down reports aired on TV networks Friday night that Boston, Atlanta and Richmond had been targeted by terrorists for unspecified attacks. - Information from Cox News Service, Associated Press, Boston Globe and Chicago Tribune was used in this report.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
