The September 11th attack
Justice Department says second arrest warrant
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — With one man in custody in New York, authorities investigating this week's horrific terrorist attacks issued a second arrest warrant for a material witness and detained 25 people for possible immigration violations.
Associated Press
"We are beginning to understand the ways in which this terrible crime was committed," Attorney General John Ashcroft said yesterday.
A note reading "Peace" is taped to a name plate on the door of San Diego's Abdussattar Shaikh, who last year rented rooms to Nawaq Alhamzi and Khalid al-Midhar, both believed to have been aboard the American Airlines flight that crashed into the Pentagon.
Investigators expected to issue additional warrants, as the investigation into Tuesday's attacks shifts into higher gear.
"We are at a point where there will be additional and more frequent warrants," said Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker.
The Justice Department said yesterday that a second arrest warrant for a material witness in the hijackings investigation was issued by federal prosecutors in New York. The person had not yet been arrested at the time the warrant was announced.
Authorities made their first arrest in the case on Friday. A man described as a material witness in the attacks was taken into custody in New York. Officials speaking on condition of anonymity said the man arrested was the same person detained Thursday at John F. Kennedy International Airport with a fake pilot's license.
None of the 25 held on immigration violations has been formally charged, either on immigration counts or with crimes related to the four hijackings, Tucker said. Some but not all of the detainees who have been interviewed are cooperating with the FBI. All are in the Immigration and Naturalization Service's custody.
Tucker declined to say whether any of the 25 are suspected of being accomplices to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or whether they have significant information about the plot. "It's not clear in all cases how important their information is," said Tucker.
Among the 25 are two men detained at an Amtrak station in Fort Worth, Texas. They were interviewed by FBI agents, taken into custody and flown to New York.
The two boarded a flight Tuesday morning in Newark, N.J., as the four hijackings were under way, said a law enforcement source, speaking on condition of anonymity. The plane was grounded in St. Louis as the FAA halted all air traffic; the men then boarded an Amtrak train bound for Texas.
Associated Press
They were taken off during a routine drug search Wednesday night. Although no drugs were found, the men had box-cutting knives, authorities said, and also carried about $5,000 in cash, according to a federal official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Richard Surma, co-owner of a hotel in Deerfield Beach, Fla., holds a registration card signed by hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi.
The hijackers had used knives and box cutters to take control of the planes.
The official would not comment on whether the two from Texas were cooperating with authorities. The FBI searched a New Jersey apartment believed to have been the home of one or both of the men.
New Jersey is one of several states described as areas where there is "intense activity" in the investigation, said an official speaking privately. The other states are Texas, Florida, New York and Massachusetts, especially the Boston area.
Some of the 25 were detained because they were discovered to have immigration problems when FBI agents questioned them about the attacks. Others were arrested as part of unrelated investigations and came to the attention of authorities investigating the hijackings.
The immigration problems could range from overstayed or expired visas to being employed without a work visa. The detainees can be held for an indefinite amount of time, and there is no deadline for charging or releasing them.
Prosecutors sometimes hold foreign nationals on immigration violations as a way to buy time to investigate other charges.
Officials declined to say where the 25 were arrested or where they are being detained.
Among others who have been questioned or sought:
— Zacarias Moussaoui, who trained briefly at a Minnesota flight school and was arrested Aug. 17 on an immigration violation. ABC News reported that Moussaoui aroused suspicions of a flight instructor because he wanted flight simulator instructions only on how to fly a 747 in horizontal mode — not learn takeoffs and landings. He was moved Friday from a Minnesota county jail to an undisclosed location.
— Amer Kamfar, a flight engineer who listed a Saudi Airlines post office box as his address in FAA records, is being sought by the FBI. Kamfar was listed at various times as living at the same address in Vero Beach, Fla., as Abdul Alomari, one of the suspected hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11, which struck the World Trade Center's north tower.
— Agents have also interviewed three men in New Jersey carrying a large amount of cash and a one-way plane ticket to Syria, police said. The three — Ahmad Kilfat, 45, Mohammad Mahmoud Al Raqqad, 37, and Nicholas Makrakis, 27 — were in a red car that fit a description put out by federal authorities of a car that may have a connection to the terrorist attacks, according to a police official who requested anonymity.
The FBI is looking for more than 100 people who may have information about the attacks — two planes flown into the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and a fourth into the Pennsylvania countryside.
A few of those people have been located and interviewed, officials said.
"We are making the kinds of contacts and developing the information that allows us to describe this as proceeding with reasonable success," said Ashcroft, who met with President Bush and administration officials at Camp David.
Investigators have sent the flight data recorder and voice recorder from the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania to the manufacturer for analysis. The cockpit voice recorder of the jet that hit the Pentagon was badly damaged and may not provide much information, officials said.
In Germany, police found "airplane-related documents" in a suitcase they believe belonged to one of the hijackers, federal investigators said yesterday.
New details emerged yesterday about two hijackers who had been added to a terrorist watch list a few weeks before Tuesday's attacks. The Associated Press reported Friday that two men connected to Osama bin Laden, later identified as hijackers, were put on the watch list designed to prohibit them from entering the United States.
Law enforcement official said one of the men was Khalid Al-Midhar, a hijacker aboard an American Airlines flight that smashed into the Pentagon. Newsweek said Al-Midhar had been captured on a surveillance videotape in Malaysia meeting with one of the suspects in the Oct. 12, 2000 terrorist bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemeni.
Newsweek identified the other man as Salem Alhamzi, another hijacker of the American flight.
