STAR-TELEGRAM/RODGER MALLISON
Posted on 05/31/2003 11:28:27 AM PDT by Aaron_A
32 blades, no explanation
Mystery surrounds Pakistani who will be sentenced for carrying razor blades at D/FW
By Toni Heinzl Star-Telegram Staff Writer
FORT WORTH - Fazal Karim and the 32 double-edged razor blades he kept in a coiled belt in a cardboard box in his carry-on bag remain a mystery to the men who prosecuted and defended him in federal court.
A former computer programmer with the civilian-aviation authority of Pakistan, Karim, 37, lived with his wife and three young children in Houston, where he ran three cellphone stores.
Prosecutors say he returned to Texas from a four-week trip to Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates on March 5 and was waiting at D/FW Airport for his connecting flight to Houston when security screeners discovered the razor blades.
Government agents and prosecutors said Karim gave contradictory statements about why he was traveling with the razor blades, but authorities have presented no evidence suggesting that he plotted acts of violence or terrorism.
U.S. District Judge Terry Means scheduled Karim's sentencing for Aug. 25. Karim faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. A jury convicted him May 22 of making false statements about his legal status and of carrying and attempting to carry concealed dangerous weapons in air transportation.
For Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the case is one in a long line of examples of U.S. authorities engaging in ethnic profiling of Muslims in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"If that person had been a Norwegian businessman, he wouldn't be in the trouble Mr. Karim is in," Hooper said. "It sounds odd that somebody up to no good would bring 32 razor blades, which would increase his chances of being detected, when all he needed was one razor blade if he wanted to do harm."
Hooper said Muslims do not mind being screened at airports if the same standards are applied to everyone.
"It has been an ongoing concern that Muslims are singled out," Hooper said.
Federal officials say that Karim came to the attention of security screeners at D/FW because of his suspicious behavior and that lying to FBI agents and immigration officials, not his ethnicity or religious background, ultimately led to his arrest.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Schattman said the security screeners noticed that Karim appeared to dissociate himself from his carry-on bag. After he had placed it on the conveyor belt leading to an X-ray machine, Karim did not walk through the adjacent magnetometer but selected one farther away.
Not only were the razor blades artfully concealed within the belt, but the screener also noticed that Karim did not have a razor in his luggage, Schattman said.
"Our theory was that these were dangerous weapons he concealed to carry on the aircraft," Schattman said.
The Transportation Security Administration screeners initially confiscated the razor blades and let Karim proceed to the gate. However, after discussing Karim's behavior, they called in airport police and FBI agents, the prosecutor said.
When FBI agents questioned Karim about the razor blades, he offered three contradictory explanations, Schattman said.
First, Karim told FBI agents that he used the razor blades to shave the bottom of his full beard. Then he said they were for a friend in Houston named Mahmoud. Finally, he said he did not know the razor blades were in his bag.
"This is the first case at D/FW, to my knowledge, where we found razor blades in carry-on luggage where there is no razor in the bag," Schattman said.
In addition, immigration inspectors discovered that Karim's claim that he was a tourist visiting friends in Houston for a couple of weeks was a lie. Immigration authorities found out that Karim, a Pakistani national with Canadian citizenship, had lived in Houston for three years and did not have a residence in another country.
He had a one-way, $3,069 ticket from Karachi, Pakistan, to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, to Paris to D/FW and to Houston.
Schattman rejected any notions of ethnic profiling in the case. Since 9-11, though, aviation-safety cases are prosecuted more aggressively as a deterrent, Schattman said.
"If he had been Irish and Catholic, with the same set of circumstances, I believe we would have filed the same case and prosecuted it the same way," Schattman said.
Karim's attorney, Larry Brown, did not raise the issue of ethnic profiling at the trial, arguing that the blades were mistaken for weapons.
"Our position is that they were hygiene items, not weapons," Brown said. Brown said that other than lying about his legal status, Karim is law-abiding and had no criminal history.
Karim's youngest child was born in the United States. His wife and the two elder children might face deportation, Brown said.
"Mr. Karim wasn't the first one to ever show up at the airport with razor blades in his carry-on," Brown said. "Typically, travelers are not arrested but given the option of throwing the items in the trash or having them confiscated."
It was a different story in Karim's case because the blades were "artfully concealed," requiring screeners to notify airport police and the FBI, said Brian Turmail, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration in Washington.
"It is the same screening for every passenger."
Since February 2002, baggage screeners at U.S. airports have seized 5 million banned items, including scissors, knives, throwing stars and guns, Turmail said.
Toni Heinzl, (817) 390-7684 theinzl@star-telegram.com
STAR-TELEGRAM/RODGER MALLISON
Because of the stupid pretense that all persons are equally likely to be terrorists.
Agreed. Everyone who might possibly be a muslim terrorist should be thoroughly screened to ensure they are not a muslim terrorist, so we can prevent the next hideous act of muslim terrorism by muslim terrorists.
"First, Karim told FBI agents that he used the razor blades to shave the bottom of his full beard. Then he said they were for a friend in Houston named Mahmoud. Finally, he said he did not know the razor blades were in his bag.
"This is the first case at D/FW, to my knowledge, where we found razor blades in carry-on luggage where there is no razor in the bag," Schattman said.
In addition, immigration inspectors discovered that Karim's claim that he was a tourist visiting friends in Houston for a couple of weeks was a lie. Immigration authorities found out that Karim, a Pakistani national with Canadian citizenship, had lived in Houston for three years and did not have a residence in another country.
He had a one-way, $3,069 ticket from Karachi, Pakistan, to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, to Paris to D/FW and to Houston.
Schattman rejected any notions of ethnic profiling in the case. Since 9-11, though, aviation-safety cases are prosecuted more aggressively as a deterrent, Schattman said.
"If he had been Irish and Catholic, with the same set of circumstances, I believe we would have filed the same case and prosecuted it the same way," Schattman said."
With a handle and the double edged blades protruding....probably about 24 to 29 inches long....
sure could do a lot of damage close up in an aircraft weilding such a weapon
- CAIR are a bunch of a&&holes.
- What is this guy doing with these blades? I don't think they are good for anything but shaving and looking at his picture...
- Are these the type of blades in question?
Last time I was in Houston, I was dying from the heat and humidity. Probably going there to speed up the rusting process.
A spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations: The case is one in a long line of examples of U.S. authorities engaging in ethnic profiling of Muslims.
???
He broke the friggin law you nitwit.
"If that person had been a Norwegian businessman, he wouldn't be in the trouble Mr. Karim is in," Hooper said.
Oh, don't be so hasty. ansar al-Islam's Mullah Krekar is Norwegian and I wouldn't let him on a plane, either...
"It sounds odd that somebody up to no good would bring 32 razor blades, which would increase his chances of being detected, when all he needed was one razor blade if he wanted to do harm."
It seems odd to expect that a harmles person would need 32 razor blades, and if he was an honest person who had just goofed up, the razor blades would be in their original packaging and not hidden in a belt. Not to mention all the cock-and-bull stories the guy told about them. And why 32?
I'll tell you, Hooper, "why 32."
Whether this was a real effort to get on board to do harm or just a test, it's going to be much easier to slip enough razor blades for a team of terrorists through security if only one person gets on board. If security is randomly picking out people to search the chances of discovering one guy with 32 razor blades is much lower than catching several guys with their own razor blades. And after 911, the terrorists are going to need more people to control a flight than before in case there's some POPs* on board.
It also has the advantage, should the razor-blade bearer be caught trying to board, of letting the other cell members escape. Since they aren't carrying anything suspicious, it would be hard to come up with a pretext for detaining them. They live to terrorisze some other day.
Of course, if the terrorists can, they will use non-arabs to carry the blades, so as to avoid suspicion of there being more than one terrorist on board. In this respect if we profiled too much we would miss a Johnny bin-Walker cruising through.
* P#$$ed Off Patriots.
I was going to use them to cut something. I mean, I wasn't going to use them, someone else was. I mean, I didn't even know I had them in my bag. I mean, err... what's a razor blade? I've never heard of such a thing. I don't know how I got my airline ticket, either. Why was I even at the airport? How can you prove I wanted to hijack a plane if you can't even prove why I wanted to go to the airport? Help, help, I'm being racially discriminated against!
I'd be pretty sure that when a multiple weapon blockbuster like this turns up on a flight, every other passenger gets the triple scrutiny.
My favorite line in the story was:
It has been an ongoing concern that Muslims are singled out," Hooper said.
LOL! Well, when an Irish Catholic plows into the Sears Tower, we'll start pulling all of them out of line, too.
Good grief! Did they like the Democrat solution better? To send them all to internment camps till the end of the war?
So, pack them in your checked luggage. That is a totally bogus argument.
Even those are useful in keeping people nervous- there's no need to go for full-scale terrorism when you can hurt an industry by just putting out a little scare every so often.
The guy's not Joe Sixpack- he can't even keep his story straight on why he has 32 razor blades and no razor in his carryon baggage.
Scenario 3 is more likely. Richard Reid traveled around the Middle East with his shoes in dry runs to see if they could be detected, before his handlers put in the fuses and put him on a plane headed for the U.S.
Well at least this wasn't the case in 9/11. Even if it was true that only one of the men per flight was the boxcutter-bearer, most of the others had visa violations.
In the Pacific Islands, the islanders would make swords by embedding shark's teeth in a thin piece of wood
Take a pair of long, flat pieces of plastic, glue them together in the plane's toilet with the razor blades sandwiched between them, edges sticking out, and you have a moderately effective sword.
It can't be too hard to choose a "standard" location on all aircraft to hide blades which will not be noticed, but which can be found by future terrorists. Under the carpeting in the johns, behind fixtures, joints in trim, etc. Having one guy with an otherwise clean record make the deposits reduces the chances of discovery. On a trip with numerous connecting flights, blades can be dropped onto several aircraft and the frugal terrorist can even save money by buying tickets with numerous connections.
I hope they did check the other passengers to see if he had buddies.
It would probably be safe to say that Hooper is a slow-on-the-draw mouthy whiner that defends the Muslim position about as well as the Ratners defend libs.
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