Mystery man in 9/11 terror case

Who is Ali Al-Marri? FBI links him to hijackers

By RICHARD T. PIENCIAK

DAILY NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

In the 16 months since the Sept. 11 attacks, thousands of Middle Eastern men have been questioned and detained by the FBI.

Many Americans have wondered what became of these people. How many were actually terrorists? How many were actually rabid followers of Osama Bin Laden's jihad against America?

One of them, Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri — a 37-year-old from Qatar who returned to the United States on Sept. 10, 2001, less than 24 hours before the World Trade Center attacks — has become the target of a massive terrorism investigation.

FBI agents first questioned Al-Marri at his West Peoria, Ill., home Oct. 2, 2001. They asked him about a steamer chest he had shipped to the United States from his homeland and about his enrollment in a master's degree program at Bradley University in Peoria. The chest had only clothes and spices in it, and there was nothing particularly troubling about his college enrollment

But over the next year, agents weaved a circumstantial web of evidence around Al-Marri. According to court papers reviewed by the Daily News, his laptop computer contained:

An Arabic prayer asking God to protect Osama Bin Laden.

Audio files of lectures by Bin Laden and his associates advocating martyrdom and support for the Taliban.

Other lectures urging opposition to Jewish and Christian control of Palestine, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, while advising how to train in Bin Laden's Afghanistan camps.

A note in Arabic proclaiming: "Neither the U.S. nor anyone living in it will dream of security/safety before we live it in Palestine and before the infidel armies leave the land of Mohammed."

Photos of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Arab prisoners held in Kabul. Extensive evidence of credit card fraud.

Links to Web sites on hazardous chemicals and how to buy them, weapons and satellite equipment.

On Dec. 23, Al-Marri was charged with making false statements to the FBI by denying that he had called a telephone number in the United Arab Emirates that has been linked to Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, and Mustafa Ahmed Al-Hawsawi, a fugitive suspected of financing the hijackers.

Al-Marri also is charged with lying to federal agents when he said he had not been in the United States from 1991 to 2001, when in fact he was here in the summer of 2000. During that time, the government contends, Al-Marri created a phony company — AAA Carpets — out of room 209 in the Time Out Motel in Macomb, Ill., under the name Abdullakareem A. Almuslam.

By using the false name and the stolen Social Security number of a woman, authorities charge, Al-Marri opened accounts at three banks in Macomb for his fictitious business. He also is accused of using stolen credit card numbers found on his laptop to process fraudulent transactions through the AAA business.

In court papers, federal prosecutors Michael McGovern and Jonathan Kolodner say it also has been established that while Abdullakareem Almuslam was scheming in Illinois with his AAA Carpet firm, an Ali Al-Marri took an American Airlines flight from Peoria to Chicago's O'Hare and then on to LaGuardia Airport on Aug. 18, 2000. Al-Marri flew from New York to Chicago the next day and did not connect with a reserved flight to Peoria, the records show.

The FBI also says it now knows how Al-Marri came to the United States and left in 2000. Lufthansa Airlines records show that an Ali S. Al-Marri traveled from Dahman, Saudi Arabia, to Frankfurt and on to O'Hare on May 25-26, 2000, and flew from Frankfurt to Dahman on Aug. 21, 2000. It is not known how Al-Marri got from the United States to Germany.

Al-Marri, who arrived here on a student visa to study for a graduate degree in computer information systems at Bradley, would represent a new terrorist profile. Unlike the 19 loners who attacked Sept. 11, Al-Marri arrived in the U.S. 16 months ago with a wife from Saudi Arabia and five children, ranging in age from 9 months to 9 years.

Who is Al-Marri

He carries a passport from Qatar, an American ally in the Middle East that will serve as an operations center to run any war against Iraq.

He first came to the United States in 1983, enrolled at Bradley in the summer of 1987 and received a bachelor of science degree Dec. 21, 1991, majoring in management and administration, according to a spokeswoman at the college.

He is believed to have two elderly parents in Qatar. It is unclear how he afforded the journey to America and his education.

Shortly after graduation, Al-Marri returned to his homeland.

Steamer chest & cell phone

Like so many other Middle Eastern men living in the United States at the time, Al-Marri became a so-called person of interest to the FBI within a week of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The FBI office in Peoria had received a lead from its Indianapolis office regarding a steamer chest that Al-Marri had shipped to the United States. The Peoria office also had gotten a call from a salesman at US Cellular who expressed concerns regarding Al-Marri's cell phone account.

FBI agents Nicholas Zambeck and Robert Brown began a preliminary investigation and discovered that the Social Security number used by Al-Marri also was being used by two others, someone in California and someone in Illinois. They also found a discrepancy in the date of birth on his enrollment form at Bradley. Al-Marri had first said he was born Feb. 3, 1965, and on a later form listed his date of birth as Sept. 24, 1965.

About 4 p.m. on Oct. 2, 2001, the agents visited Al-Marri at his two-bedroom apartment in West Peoria.

When the agents knocked on the back door, a small boy peeked through the window, then answered the door. Moments later, Al-Marri appeared dressed in a traditional kaftan. Once inside, the agents noticed the steamer chest. Al-Marri confirmed that he had shipped it from overseas. The agents looked inside and found the clothing and spices. When asked, Al-Marri said he was unaware of any problems with his Social Security number. He also said that in Qatar, when he was born, official records listed only a year of birth, not a month and specific day. After Al-Marri produced his Qatar passport for review, Zambeck gave the man his business card and the agents departed.

The FBI returns

The FBI continued to look into the background of Ali Al-Marri, and on Dec. 11, 2001, agents paid him another visit.

The agents said they still had questions about his date of birth and enrollment at Bradley. Al-Marri's wife was not wearing her veil and, according to custom, could not be seen uncovered by male strangers. The agents waited while Al-Marri took his wife into the master bedroom.

Zambeck explained that it would be best if Al-Marri came to the FBI office for the reinterview. The agent suggested that Al-Marri bring along his college and immigration documents.

And while they were at it, Zambeck wondered, could he and Brown take a look around the a˝partment?

Al-Marri agreed to the requests, according to testimony the agents gave at a suppression hearing in September.

In a bedroom, the agents found about a dozen VHS tapes. Al-Marri told them they were for the children. Brown asked whether he could take two of the cassettes back to the office, and Al-Marri agreed.

Before the agents could look in the master bedroom, Al-Marri had to move his wife again, this time into the bathroom.

Once inside the master bedroom, the agents noticed a large monitor hooked up to a laptop computer. Zambeck asked whether they could bring the computer to the office to look at it, and Al-Marri agreed to that request as well. Al-Marri slipped the laptop in a carrying case.

The three men next went outside for a search of Al-Marri's green minivan. Inside, the agents found a hand-held global positioning system and his Qatar passport.

Before they could leave for the FBI office, Al-Marri told the agents, he needed to go back inside and change into Western garb. He said he also needed to pray.

Al-Marri said he planned to break the Ramadan fast that evening at dinner with his family. He wanted to make sure he would be back in time.

"It shouldn't take long at all," Zambeck replied, according to court documents. Once inside the FBI office, Al-Marri was asked about his travels within the United States, phone calls he had made overseas and his travels abroad. He told the agents he had not been in the United States during the period between his 1991 departure after graduating college and his return Sept. 10, 2001.

According to a joint statement issued by the FBI and federal prosecutors in Manhattan and Springfield, Ill., during that interview Al-Marri specifically "falsely denied knowing Al-Hawsawi and denied ever calling the United Arab Emirates telephone number."

Before ending the conversation that evening, Zambeck made clear that he was not satisfied with Al-Marri's answers. Zambeck wasn't saying, but by that point the agency had obtained Al-Marri's cell phone records and the Lufthansa airplane manifests from 2000.

Zambeck warned Al-Marri that lying to a federal agent could lead to a lengthy prison term and keep him from his family for a very long time.

With the interview finally over, Al-Marri and Brown waited for Zambeck in a public hallway on the seventh floor.

"Do I get my computer back tonight?" Al-Marri asked.

"No, not tonight," replied Brown.

Zambeck and Brown drove Al-Marri home after 10 p.m., presumably well past the dinner hour for his children.

Before saying good night, the agents asked him to return the next day for a polygraph test. Al-Marri agreed.

The FBI posted a surveillance team overnight outside the residence, in clear view.

Conflicting evidence

When Zambeck returned in the morning, Al-Marri mentioned a desire to consult a lawyer and with someone at his country's embassy. When they got back to the Peoria FBI office and Al-Marri met with the polygraph expert, he refused to take the exam.

As the agents waited for instructions from terrorism task force prosecutors in New York, Al-Marri was kept waiting in an office through the early afternoon.

Shortly after 3 p.m., Zambeck and Brown told Al-Marri that one of their colleagues had found two folded pieces of paper in his laptop carrying case.

The agents said that about three dozen credit card numbers were written on both sheets, along with the owners' names, expiration dates of the cards and the brand names — Visa or MasterCard.

Al-Marri looked at the sheets and told the agents the handwriting was not his and that he knew nothing about the papers, according to court documents.

"Al-Marri then asked if he could go home," wrote Jonathan Etra, an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan. "Al-Marri also stated that as soon as he left the interview, he immediately was going to leave the United States with his family."

Back in Manhattan, Etra gave his approval to arrest the Qatari man as a material witness in the government's Sept. 11 investigation.

Al-Marri would be held in the Peoria County Jail for several weeks, then flown to New York and placed in the Special Housing Unit at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a five-minute walk from where the World Trade Center towers once stood.

A search warrant

On Dec. 14, 2001, two days after Al-Marri's arrest, Zambeck and other FBI agents executed a search warrant at the suspect's apartment. They found more potentially incriminating evidence.

Inside an almanac, they found business cards to mark pages depicting major U.S. dams, reservoirs, waterways and railroads.

The agents also seized a copy of an Arabic prayer that calls for the defeat of the "villainous" Christians and Jews and seeks victory for Muslims in Palestine, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Chechnya.

Bad bytes

FBI computer expert Connie Lawler analyzed everything on Al-Marri's 80-gigabyte hard drive. In addition to the anti-American, pro-Taliban rhetoric, she found files containing more than 1,750 credit card numbers. None of the numbers belonged to Al-Marri.

She also collected the bookmarked Web sites and found sites related to computer hacking, fake driver's licenses and credit card fraud, according to a federal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Lawler also discovered a series of programs that hackers can use to gather information and intelligence about someone else's computer. In addition, she found proxy software that can be used to hide a user's origin and identity when connected to the Internet.

After more than a month of such data analysis, federal prosecutors in New York were ready to make their next move against Al-Marri. On Jan. 28, he was arrested and named in a one-count complaint charging him with unauthorized possession of "more than 15" access devices — the credit-card numbers — with the intent to defraud. He was indicted on the charge Feb. 6.

Nine days later, the federal government filed a sealed document in Al-Marri's case. A second one would be filed May 30. Those documents remain sealed.

New charges

As the scheduled trial date for the credit card fraud case approached — it had been set to begin tomorrow — prosecutors had a decision to make. They had to turn over their evidence to the defense within 14 days of the start of trial.

Instead, Al-Marri was arrested a third time — Dec. 23 — on charges relating to the attempted calls to the 9/11-related number in the United Arab Emirates and the phony AAA carpet company he ran in Illinois in 2000.

The latest charges could bring Al-Marri closer to the Sept. 11 conspiracy, but his attorney, Richard Jasper, does not agree.

"The government, in its understandable concern to investigate this crime that was committed on 9/11, has made some mistakes — and they've made big mistakes," Jasper said during a court proceeding last year. "I think they are going to make a mistake here with Mr. Al-Marri."

As a result of the new complaint, the trial has been postponed. A conference has been scheduled for 4 p.m. tomorrow to decide what happens next.

Meanwhile, Al-Marri's wife and children are living in Washington, their bills being paid by the government of Saudi Arabia.

Originally published on January 11, 2003