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Concern over targeted questioning
By LEANORA MINAI It did not look good for Muhammed Bin Hasher Alghamdi. Two days after airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center, FBI agents questioned Alghamdi in his Pompano Beach apartment and found passports bearing different names, flight manuals and a calendar with Sept. 11 circled. "They have a lot of stuff that someone could think maybe, maybe he's connected," said his North Miami Beach attorney, Rhonda F. Gelfman. "He's absolutely innocent." Today, Alghamdi, a 30-year-old flight student from Saudi Arabia, is in a federal detention center in Miami on charges of steroid possession and passport and visa fraud. He is one of 104 people charged with crimes during investigations into the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. At least three of the people identified by the Department of Justice are from cities in Florida -- Jacksonville and Miami. And a fourth man, who lived in St. Petersburg this summer, faces federal charges in California. Some of what those people experienced may be in store for hundreds of others as the federal government begins a second wave of inquiries into terrorist activities, a development that is causing growing concern among people of Middle Eastern descent living in the United States. "I'm growing weary of the war mentality," said Rani Hasan, 21, vice president of Islam on Campus, a student organization at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "I'm feeling this tension. Everybody around here wants to get back to life as usual." Police, sheriff's deputies and agents with the FBI and Florida Department of Law Enforcement soon will begin going door to door to talk with 5,000 men ages 18 to 33 who are in the United States on temporary visas from Middle East countries. The men will be asked about visits to landmarks, sources of income and scientific expertise, among other things, and to give telephone numbers of friends and relatives. About 500 of the men live in Florida. Authorities are particularly interested in finding out whether anyone knows anybody involved in advocating, planning, supporting or commiting terrorist activities. But being questioned because of one's ethnicity or Arabic-sounding name is wrong, students say. And the idea makes them nervous. "I think it's intimidating," said Ambereen Shaikh, 21, who is from Pakistan and studies management information systems at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. "I know if someone would come up to me, I would be like, 'Oh my God, what are you thinking?' " At Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Middle Eastern students are being advised to stick around over the holiday break and not risk getting caught up in visa troubles overseas. If students must go, they're being told to take with them proof of their studies -- transcripts, advance registration documents and a university letter with a seal and signature. "We don't want anybody to go without that because they'll be grilled at the port of entry," said Judy Assad, director of international services at Embry-Riddle. Federal officials stress that the upcoming interviews are voluntary, fact-finding surveys, and that the 5,000 people they want to talk to nationwide are not suspects. "If somebody feels uncomfortable, and they don't want to answer the questions, they don't have to," said Steve Cole, spokesman for federal prosecutors in the Middle District of Florida, which includes 8-million people from Naples to Jacksonville. In the canvass immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, inquiries led to criminal charges against 104 people. "I personally feel they targeted the Muslims and people from the Middle East," said Gelfman, the attorney for Alghamdi, the Saudi Arabian flight student in Pompano Beach. Alghamdi, now in federal custody in Miami, had the same last name as one of the terrorists who helped hijack United Airlines Flight 175 and crash it into the south tower of the World Trade Center. The FBI agents knocked on Alghamdi's apartment door at 7 p.m. Sept. 13. "They started asking questions: 'Where are you a citizen from? Is it true you're taking flying lessons? How long have you lived at this address?' " Gelfman said. The agents asked if they could search his apartment. They found steroids, which, his attorney said, did not belong to him. They found identification bearing different names and learned he had overstayed his visa. And agents found a calendar with Sept. 11 circled. The date was circled, though, because he and his girlfriend contend that was the day Alghamdi was supposed to move to another apartment. In a case with a St. Petersburg tie, Nabil Sarama, a Palestinian, was arrested in Orlando on Sept. 16 after police found him near a pay phone used to make bomb threats. He lived in St. Petersburg until July. A search of Sarama's suitcase turned up a kit capable of making as many as 12 box cutters -- similar to those used by the Sept. 11 hijackers -- and six identification cards or driver's licenses from Florida, Georgia and California. Sarama faces charges of visa and passport fraud. Finally, Egyptian Sherif Khamis was in the United States illegally on Sept. 11 when a border patrol agent pulled him off a Greyhound bus in Jacksonville for a routine round of questioning about his travel documents before he continued his trip to New York. Khamis made a big mistake. He lied to the border patrol agent and said he did not have his Egyptian passport when it was in his pocket all along, authorities said. Two hours later, the airliners slammed into the World Trade Center towers. Khamis pleaded guilty and faces five years in federal prison for providing false information to a federal agent. "While he was sitting over in the border patrol office, that's when the first plane hit the tower," said Maurice Grant, his federal public defender in Jacksonville. "As far as I can see, he's just caught up in that event." -- Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report, which includes information from the Orlando Sentinel. Leanora Minai can be reached at minai@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8406.
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