Posted on 12/18/2001 10:41:03 AM PST by Hoboken
Neighborhood tired of suspicions and fear
By Falasten M. Abdeljabbar
Standing in the unkempt hallway of her apartment building at 6 Tonnelle Ave. in Jersey City, Sousan Achou is visibly angry.
"My husband was thrown into jail like a dog for two months, for no real reason," she says in Arabic, holding her 11/2-year-old daughter Tasnim's hand. "It's unfair."
Abdoul Salaam Achou, a 37-year-old Syrian immigrant and bakery deliveryman, and another neighbor were detained Sept. 15 after the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the FBI raided the 13-unit Journal Square apartment building.
His visa had been expired for two weeks and he was held at Hudson County jail in Kearny until voluntarily leaving Nov. 19 for Australia, where he had previously lived and where he holds a valid visa.
Center of attention
Achou and his neighbors drew the attention of INS after two former residents of 6 Tonnelle Ave. were picked up on a train the day after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Syud Gul Mohammed Shah, also known as Ayub Ali Khan, and Mohammed Jaweed Azmath, two Indian immigrants who had worked at a Newark newsstand and lived together in an apartment two floors above the Achous, are still in custody at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Brooklyn.
The pair were found to have box cutters, hair dye and over $5,000 in cash when apprehended on an Amtrak train in Fort Worth, Texas, on Sept. 12.
Both were accused last week of having a part in a scheme that defrauded credit card companies of $472,000. The charges - not linked to Sept. 11 - carry potential sentences of 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
According to published reports, Shah did not fail a FBI lie detector test, and the pair explained the cash by saying they had lost their jobs and were preparing to begin a new life in Texas. Shah said the hair dye was to cover his graying temples, and both men said the box cutters were tools they used in their work at the newsstand.
Azmath and Shah also said that body lice was the reason they shaved their underarms. Investigators believed shaving body hair was part of a hijacker ritual - details of which are found in al-Qaida training manuals.
A third Tonnelle Avenue roommate, Muhammad Aslam Pervez, 37, has been arrested and charged with lying to FBI investigators during interviews on Oct. 10 and 12 about more than $100,000 in deposits and withdrawals from his personal bank account between 1995 and early this year. Pervez is a naturalized U.S. citizen and worked at S&S News at Newark Penn Station with Azmath and Shah until September.
While conducting a search of the fourth-floor apartment, the FBI and INS also took Abdou Tageldin, a 35-year-old Egyptian national and the Achous' next-door neighbor.
Tageldin, a dishwasher at a New York diner who came to America with his wife, Amal, and 18-month-old daughter, Layla, over a year ago, was detained for having an expired visa and later released on $10,000 bail. The Tageldins declined to be interviewed.
Suspicion
Since the mid-September raid, the four-story brick building on Tonnelle Avenue and the surrounding area has become a hotbed of suspicion. Residents, many of whom are of Middle Eastern descent, say they have been under intense scrutiny from the FBI, INS and members of the media, with camera crews and reporters from news agencies all over the world appearing in and around the building.
Many residents, exasperated by the almost-constant media presence, refuse to speak to reporters knocking at their doors, some cautiously peeking through the peepholes.
The smells of kabobs cooking and the sounds of crying children fill the winding, littered stairway. A solitary baby stroller sits in the vestibule, above a newly installed front door window, replacing the one that residents say was shattered by FBI agents during the raid. Women in head scarves walk past the front door, many pushing strollers.
On the fourth floor, where Azmath and Shah lived, padlocked apartment 402 has a message hurriedly scribbled in Arabic on the door, advising the landlord where the keys are. The words "Mohammed is not here for some reasons" are written in English underneath this message.
A telephone number with the words "THE SUPER" are scrawled on the wall near the superintendent's office but the phone has been disconnected, and repeated knocks on the office door go unanswered.
Building owner Mohammed Abo-Rabouh declined to comment, saying he is "tired" of the media attention given to the building.
Journal Square Councilman Steve Lipski, who drove past the building after the raid out of curiosity, said he found it difficult to believe that the four-story structure could be linked to any terrorist activity. Many of his Middle Eastern and Muslim constituents are concerned about the increased suspicion they say they feel in what he calls "one of the most diverse wards in the city," he says.
Masjid Al-Salaam, the Kennedy Boulevard mosque where Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman - convicted of planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and plotting to attack other New York landmarks - did not return repeated calls for comment about the recent wave of investigations surrounding the area.
"Some other residents who are not Arab or Muslim have said to me that we as a country need to be more careful about who we let in," said Lipski, adding that African-Americans, Asians and people of Italian and Irish descent also live in the area.
Muslims "feel that the eyes of the world are looking at them," he said. "There is a feeling of uncertainty."
Businesses
The uncertainty has extended to surrounding businesses, with a video store owner and a diner employee claiming that suspected hijackers Mohammed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi patronized businesses in the area.
Atta, the suspected terror ringleader who is believed to have driven American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, was seen in Journal Square in June, according to Sip Avenue video store owner Rumpaul Guyadeen, who says he rented a video to Atta and an unknown woman.
A waiter at the VIP Diner across the street from 6 Tonnelle, meanwhile, told an Associated Press reporter that he served Al-Shehhi - the man investigators believe rammed United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower of the World Trade Center - numerous times. The diner owner discounts the possibility.
The FBI says that reports of the pair in Jersey City are "unconfirmed," but for some locals, the damage has already been done.
A banner proclaiming Ramadan bargains, etched in elaborate Arabic calligraphy, hangs in the butcher section of Port Said Halal Grocery on Sip Avenue, but to no avail.
"Business has been completely dead since everything happened," said employee Osama Naggar, noting that he has nothing to do with "the other Osama."
"Ramadan is usually our busiest time of year, but even longtime customers are afraid to come around here anymore," he said in Arabic, referring to the Muslim holy month of fasting that ended Sunday.
Naggar, who came from Egypt five years ago, said FBI agents showed him pictures of all the terror suspects soon after the raid, but he recognized none. "That's another reason why people are afraid to come here now - they're afraid the FBI is going to be in the area and just take them away if they don't have the right paperwork on them," he said.
"Everything's different now," Naggar said, standing among mounds of dates and bags of ground Arabic coffee.
Walking in the lobby of her Van Reypen Street apartment building, Beatrice Liu, who lives across the street from 6 Tonnelle Ave., said the investigation "frightened" her.
"I never expected to be a neighbor with terrorism," she said, adding that soon after the raid, she noticed that women in head scarves and Arabic-speaking children stopped congregating in the street.
"I guess they were afraid people were going to bother them," she said.
Liu said that since the investigation, she has considered moving away and has begun looking for apartments. "I'm not sure I want to live here anymore," she said.
New baby
As for Achou, the detained Syrian, going to Australia was the "best option" for him, according to his lawyer, Lamiaa E. Elfar, an immigration attorney based in New Milford.
Since the departure was voluntary and not a deportation, the travel costs - including an $1,800 plane ticket - lie with the detainee, said Elfar. Achou's wife said a predominantly Syrian mosque in Paterson helped her raise the money to send her husband to Australia.
The wife, who was eight months pregnant when her husband was taken, gave birth almost two months ago to a boy she named Abdoul Salaam - after his father.
She said she took the newborn to the jail once, and her husband saw the baby through a glass partition.
"He wasn't even allowed to hold him," she said, standing in the small living room of her apartment. A half-packed suitcase sits on the sofa and her husband's somber-looking framed picture hangs on the wall. The mother of two said she has become disillusioned with life in America.
"If we would have known America was going to do this to us, we never would have come here," said Achou, weary-looking and with a dark scarf wrapped around her head. "America has become a land of troubles for us."
Achou - who said she has until the end of this month to leave her $700-a-month one-bedroom apartment - plans to join her husband in Australia with their two children and begin anew there.
Elfar, the attorney, said the Achous will not be barred from returning to the United States, but Achou said that is the furthest thing from her mind.
"I never want to come back to this country again," she said. "We've suffered here too much."
No real reason? He violated his visa. That's illegal, you stupid towelheaded b!tch.
Unfair? Thousands of people were murdered just for being American. Thousands of children will never see their mommy or daddy again - not just in two months, but never. Deport this waste of oxygen.
If they break the law, they take a fall.
One wonders what would be the result if they were to do illegal acts in their country of origin?
His visa had been expired for two weeks and he was held at Hudson County jail in Kearny until voluntarily leaving Nov. 19 for Australia, where he had previously lived and where he holds a valid visa.
Sounds to me like there was a perfectly legitimate reason to throw her husband in jail. I hope she follows him back to Australia.
Too bad. your husband broke the law and you all paid the price. Go to Austrailia and break the law and see how fast they send you back to Syria.
I spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours making sure that I followed every single immigration law when I married my wife (Filipino).
If these folks had followed the law, they wouldn't have 'sufferred' so much.
I have also come to the conclusion a long time ago that America begins at the Delaware.
Had read Azmath and Khan hadn't worked at the newsstand in a while. So the boxcutters wouldn't have been for the newsstand.
Who carries boxcutters in their pockets on a train?
Hey, that's life as an illegal alien...in any country.
Business smile at the ID and SSN fraud because they need the cheap labor. Credit card companies have taught immigrants how to steal from them because the companies have such lax verification and anti-fraud programs (its cheaper to write off the losses, they'd rather focus on the new business).
Very sad indeed. All but one of my relatives voted for McGreevey as they claimed that he cared for "working people." I myself sent money to Brett's campaign, hoping that the tide would turn in his favor. It never did.
Exactly. If you and I are together, and if I have a box cutter, what are the chances that YOU would have one, too?
Arab terrorists?
Do either of you live in NJ? I do. My parents worked for Schundler. But he never had a chance. Know why? Because he was an outsider. The "good, old" establishment RINOs hated his guts after he trounced their boy, Bob Franks, but good in the primary. They never supported him. That's the reason he lost.
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