Attorney: Taping incident a mistake

The lawyer says two Bangladeshi men were videotaping a woman at the Port of Tampa.

By CURTIS KRUEGER

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 12, 2001

TAMPA -- It was all a misunderstanding, says the attorney for one of two Bangladeshi men who have been detained since being discovered videotaping on the grounds of the Tampa Port Authority.

Mohammed Abdul Malik was stopped by security officers near the Port Authority offices on Oct. 1, and has been detained since then along with a friend, Ilias Hossain Sarder.

Their detainments are part of a new crackdown on any activity at the Port of Tampa that seems suspicious, a policy that sprang into place after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

But Malik's attorney, Sepideh Eskandari, said her client was not involved in any kind of terrorist activity.

"They thought he was videotaping the security operations. It was just a misunderstanding."

She said as she understood the situation, Malik "was videotaping or photographing a lady" and "it just happened to be that they were suspicious of him." She did not know what relationship the woman might have had to Malik or Sarder.

Port security officers interviewed the men and later called Hillsborough sheriff's deputies. According to Sheriff Cal Henderson, the men said they had been taking video footage of the Florida Aquarium, which is near the Port Authority offices on Channelside Drive. But the Immigration and Naturalization Service later reviewed the videotape and didn't see any footage of the aquarium, Henderson said.

The men are being detained in a facility in Bradenton on immigration violations. Eskandari said Malik lives in Tampa and works for a shipbuilder and had erroneously thought his former employer had filled out the paperwork to keep his visa current.

"I believe as soon as we go before the judge or file a motion to release him without bond, the judge will go ahead and do that," she said.

- Times staff writer Amy Herdy contributed to this report. Curtis Krueger can be reached at krueger@sptimes.com or by calling (727) 893-8232.

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