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© St. Petersburg Times, published November 5, 2001
WASHINGTON -- A suspected al-Qaida operative observed meeting with hijacker Khalid Almihdhar in Malaysia in 2000 has been detained in the Middle East for questioning in connection with prior terrorist attacks, the Associated Press reported Sunday.
The man was being questioned by intelligence agents about his possible contact with the hijacker, his suspected involvement in the USS Cole bombing and a foiled plot to bomb a hotel in Jordan filled with Americans during the millennium celebrations, officials said.
The man was videotaped by Malaysian security authorities in a January 2000 meeting with Almihdhar and other supporters of Osama bin Laden and his network.
At the time, neither Almihdhar nor the man now in custody were known to be connected to terrorism. Officials did not provide the man's name. They said he has not been charged with any offense.
However, the meeting took on new significance this past summer when information developed in the bombing of the Cole suggested the man now being held in the Middle East might have been connected to the plot, the AP reported.
The CIA in August then placed Almihdhar and one of his associates, Nawaf Alhamzi, on a terrorist watch list, but immigration officials discovered the two soon-to-be-hijackers were already in the United States, officials said.
Almihdhar and Alhamzi weren't located before they boarded an American Airlines jetliner on Sept. 11 that crashed into the Pentagon.
The man recently detained is very important because he's a midlevel operative in the al-Qaida network, the AP reported, citing a retired intelligence official.
He was arrested in the Gulf region within the past two weeks and was taken to Jordan, where he's being interrogated, the AP reported.
An official said the man is linked to three terrorist operations: the planned millennium bombing at the Radisson hotel in Jordan, the Cole bombing and, now, the Sept. 11 attacks by virtue of his being videotaped in Malaysia with two of the hijackers, the AP reported.
The arrest of the suspected al-Qaida operative in the Middle East comes as the CIA and FBI continue to seek out and detain people linked to the hijackers through phone contacts, Internet communications and financial transactions.
Federal prosecutors say a Pakistani man who was detained in Detroit and is being held on a voter registration fraud charge in North Carolina has been connected by evidence to two of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Intiaz Ahmed Siddiqui, 31, was arrested in the Detroit area and was indicted last Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Greensboro, N.C., on one count of voter registration fraud, according to Lynn Clower, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office.
CHICAGO -- A 27-year-old man carrying seven knives and a stun gun was arrested trying to board a flight at O'Hare International Airport, police said Sunday.
Subash Gurung, a Nepal native, was arrested Saturday night before boarding a United Airlines flight to Omaha, Neb., said police spokesman Thomas Donegan.
He was charged with unlawful use of a weapon and attempting to board an aircraft with weapons, both misdemeanor charges.
Gurung, questioned by police and the FBI, was released from custody at 4:30 a.m. Sunday.
Donegan was unsure what authorities learned while questioning Gurung, saying they apparently "didn't have reason to keep him." He has no previous arrests in Chicago.
Gurung had made it past the security checkpoint at O'Hare but airline employees in the gate area searched his bag in a routine check and found the lock-blade knives and the Taser gun, Donegan said.
Donegan was unsure why Gurung was headed to Omaha.
The FBI declined to comment.
United spokesman Joe Hopkins wouldn't say why Gurung was searched, but said it was part of regular security procedures.
"The United employees did a great job of intercepting this guy with the weapons and preventing him from boarding the flight," Hopkins said.