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Friday, Jan 9, 2009
Their arrest was covered by every major news organization, as law enforcement officials assured reporters that the men had important information about the terrorist network behind the World Trade Center hijackings. Two anonymous investigators told the Dallas Morning News that "credible witness accounts" indicated the two Indian men "were seen with one hijacker at a mosque in Brooklyn, N.Y." Some sources even hinted to the press that the men were connected to last year's anthrax attacks.
When information emerged that the men had lost their jobs last summer managing newsstands at the Newark train station, where they routinely used box cutters, and were moving to Texas to open a fruit stand, CNBC's Dan Abrams mocked their alibi as "the old fruit-stand defense."
But after interrogation during a nine-month detention, it became clear that neither Shah or Azmath had anything to do with the deadly events of Sept. 11.
Should that really have come as such a shock, simply based on what was known publicly at the time? For instance, the fact that the men were from India, which has few documented ties with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, should have raised a red flag. They are Muslim, but the terrorist plot was carried out predominantly by Saudis who arrived in America shortly before the attack; Azmath spent most of the 1990s living in the United States.
Meanwhile, it hardly seems significant that the men appeared "very nervous" while being detained in Fort Worth. Most immigrants in that situation would be nervous, especially in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11.
According to the New York Daily News, the duo actually showed up at the Newark airport with tickets for the wrong day and had to pay an extra fee to fly on Sept. 11 -- hardly the work of a tight-knit terrorist group. As for the much-reported hair dye, it turned out to be "For Men Only" used to cover both men's graying temples.
By December, any hint of terrorist connections evaporated when the Daily News quietly reported that a federal immigration judge, over the government's objections, had ordered Shah voluntarily deported, which meant he was free to apply for a visa to return to America. That's hardly the type of sentence that would be handed out to an al-Qaida operative.
As for Azmath, last week he pled guilty to fraud that cost credit card companies $58,000. He will be sentenced this summer and may be released for time already served. The Washington Post covered the news with a 300-word AP dispatch.
The same day last January that Azmath originally pled not guilty to the credit card charges in New York, Abdallah Higazy was being set free in a nearby courtroom.
Five days earlier, on Jan. 11, federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Higazy, an Egyptian-born student, with perjury after he denied owning a ground-to-air radio transceiver recovered at a downtown hotel that has unobstructed views of the World Trade Center. Initial reports said the radio was found inside a locked hotel safe, along with a Quran and a passport, in the hotel room where Higazy was staying on Sept. 11. Higazy had been held as a material witness since Dec. 17, when he returned to the hotel to pick up possessions he left behind when all guests were ordered to evacuate the building. The FBI confronted him about the radio, which was found by a hotel employee.
After three sets of interviews, FBI interrogators got him to confess that the radio was his; then they charged him with making "false, fictitious and fraudulent statements" and interfering with the Sept. 11 investigation. Prosecutors insisted Higazy and his radio were "potentially a quite significant part" of an investigation into "the most serious crime in the nation's history." U.S. Magistrate Judge Frank Maas, citing a "very strong case" and Higazy's incentive to flee, ordered him held without bail.
Five days later, another hotel guest, a U.S.-born private pilot unaware of the case against Higazy, showed up to claim the handheld radio he'd left behind on Sept. 11. FBI investigators re-interviewed the hotel employee who found the radio. He changed his story; suddenly the radio wasn't found in a locked safe, but on a table in plain sight.
Higazy was released.
And then there's former Boston taxi driver Nabil Almarabh, a detainee once considered a "notorious" associate of Osama bin Laden, who was held in solitary confinement for more than eight months without seeing a judge or being assigned a lawyer, according to the Washington Post.
Last year, Almarabh's alleged terrorist activities were front-page news. In October, following the lead of anonymous federal investigators, the Boston Globe reported that Almarabh was probably one piece of an intricate al-Qaida terrorist cell operating in Boston.
Today, instead of facing terrorism allegations, Almarabh is facing charges of making a false statement about his citizenship and using a fake document to enter the country. If he pleads guilty, he will face a shorter prison term than the one he has already served behind bars since September.
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