Posted on 02/02/2002 7:31:52 AM PST by veronica
American Jihad : The Terrorists Living Among Us by Steven Emerson
Orlando Sentinel Investigation finds a web of Orlando ties:
By Pedro Ruz Gutierrez, Roger Roy and Jim Leusner |
When people think of Central Florida they think vacations, beaches, sunshine and fun. They think Tomorrowland, Fantasyland and Adventureland.
Now as investigators continue to gather threads in the largest worldwide criminal probe in history, a picture is emerging of an ominous new theme in paradise: Terroristland.
"First we couldn't count votes. Now we're training terrorists," said one Florida law-enforcement official involved in the probe of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Amid the swirl of the 12-day-old investigation is jolting, if fragmentary, evidence of deeper links that may exist between Central Florida and people with documented ties to the suspected hijackers, the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, or his terrorist network, al-Qaeda.
America's international destination for millions of tourists each year provides perfect cover for Middle Eastern terrorists who need a base. The Orlando area's transient population and budding multicultural community offer anonymity, just a short drive from the flight schools where many of the 19 hijackers trained.
The investigation has produced a dizzying spin of names, far-flung locations, associations and mistaken or stolen identities. Fifteen of the suspected hijackers had links to Florida, and how many of those had ties to the Orlando area is not yet known.
Some of the bin Laden or hijacking investigation links hit close to home:
Ihab Ali, 39, a 1981 graduate of Oak Ridge High School in south Orlando, has been held for more than two years in connection with the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa. He allegedly passed coded messages to bin Laden's organization and took flight training in Oklahoma at the same school now linked to suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Ziyad Khaleel, 37, who lived in an apartment off Rouse Road in east Orange County in 1998 and 1999 and still has relatives here, purchased a $7,500 satellite telephone that somehow ended up with bin Laden in Afghanistan. Federal prosecutors said the phone was used by bin Laden and his associates before and after the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa.
Hady Omar Jr., 22, an Egyptian immigrant who had a unit in the Cedar Cove Apartments off Conroy Road this summer was arrested in Arkansas the day after the attacks because authorities linked his name to airplane reservations made for three of the dead hijackers. In an ironic confluence of global reality and Central Florida fantasy, Omar's apartment in southwest Orlando was barely a block away from the Holy Land biblical theme park.
Mohamed Atta, 33, the suspected ringleader and a pilot in the first suicide attack on the World Trade Center, may have had relatives or associates living in Central and South Florida for years. Among the possible relatives sought by federal investigators is Majed Atta, a former Winter Garden and Miami-area grocer who abruptly left the Orlando area last month and whose whereabouts are unknown. Local law enforcement authorities are also still on the lookout for Mohamed Atta's car, a red 1989 Pontiac Grand Prix two-door coupe reportedly spotted in downtown Orlando Sept. 15. The Florida tag number is D79DDV.
Two other men arrested in New Jersey and Chicago since the bombings -- Mohammad Mahmoud Al Raqqad and Nabil Al-Marabh -- have Central Florida ties. Al Raqqad, who bought a car in Palm Bay last March, listed a Titusville address, and also worked at a convenience store near Gainesville this year. Al Marabh lived in Tampa and worked as a cab driver in 1999.
Khalil Binladin, 43, whom authorities say is one of the 51 brothers or half brothers of the Saudi-born terrorist, has lived quietly off and on with his family since 1980 in west Orange County. The home is a 20-acre ranch with an 8-foot high concrete wall and electronic gate. Khalil and the rest of the bin Laden clan have been alienated from Osama for 10 years and are not associated with al-Qaeda. According to published reports, Khalil was one of several bin Laden family members allowed to leave the United States on chartered flights to Saudi Arabia last week.
Whether all the Central Florida fragments in the probe prove to be only incidental surface details or indicative of something deeper will only be known as the investigation winds forward.
"I would not be surprised if we discovered someone else here," said former U.S. Rep. Bill McCollum, a Longwood Republican who founded the U.S. House Task Force on Terrorism. "It's awful to think about. It's a wakeup call to us as a nation and to Central Florida in particular. I hope we'll learn from it and know we have people in our midst who are good, and people who are bad."
Links begin with cabdriver
In 1999, FBI agents whisked away Ihab Ali, an Orlando cab driver, to appear before a federal grand jury in New York investigating the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa. Although he refused to testify, Ali and his aliases came up at least 10 times during the trial in Manhattan, where witnesses and prosecutors portrayed him as a high-level contact for bin Laden. They said Ali, 39, kept in touch with bin Laden lieutenants in the United States and East Africa before the embassy bombings.
Whether Ali ever was part of a cell of bin Laden operatives in Orlando or Central Florida is unknown. Federal authorities have refused to comment on his case. He was indicted a year ago on criminal contempt and perjury charges for refusing to testify before a grand jury and denying that he communicated with bin Laden or his aides. Prosecutors produced letters Ali sent to those aides. He remains in custody.
What is known is that Ali lived a quiet life as a $500-a-week driver for City Cab Co. of Orlando, shuttling tourists and passengers between Orlando International Airport and local attractions.
After graduating from Oak Ridge, Ali briefly lived in California in the late 1980s. Then he surfaced in Peshawar, Pakistan. There he helped refugee-relief operations and joined guerrillas who fought the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan.
"He said he liked it because he got to shoot guns," said a relative. "He made it sound like he was fighting for their freedom."
Unknown to his family, Ali took flight classes at Airman Flight School in Norman, Okla., in 1993 and 1994.
That's the same flight school toured by suspected hijackers Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi last year before they enrolled at Florida flight schools.
And it's the same school that trained Zacarias Moussaoui last Spring. That Moroccan-born man is now being held and investigated as possible "20th hijacker" who could not take part in the Sept. 11 attacks because he was in jail in Minnesota.
Oak Ridge alumnus Ali later appeared in East Africa flying a plane bin Laden's associates bought in Arizona, according to court testimony.
Ali was co-pilot on a failed attempt to salvage a bin Laden plane that crashed at Sudan's Khartoum airport in 1994. He called a U.S. airplane manufacturer for spare parts but never followed up on the order.
Dogs purchased for bin Laden's bodyguard unit in 1994 were delivered to Ali in Khartoum. According to trial testimony, he was involved in an al-Qaeda plan to acquire uranium.
In 1996 and 1997, after returning to Orlando and getting his cabdriver's license, Ali exchanged faxed messages with former bin Laden secretary Wadih El Hage of Texas, ex-U.S. Army Sgt. Ali Mohamed of California and fugitive co-defendant Fazul Abdullah Mohammed using his relatives' phones.
Other family members have told the Sentinel they knew nothing about his travels here or abroad and haven't heard from him since the FBI picked him up at the Lake Fredrica Apartments off South Semoran Boulevard on May 19, 1999.
But they said he regularly calls his sick mother.
~~~End of part one. Part two continued to next reply. ~~~
Telephone for bin Laden.
Also linked to the terrorist leader is Ziyad Khaleel, the onetime resident of east Orange who ordered and purchased the satellite phone used by bin Laden and his associates before and after the 1998 embassy bombings, according to court testimony.
Ali and Khaleel -- both naturalized U.S. citizens -- did meet at a local mosque, a Khaleel relative who still lives in Orlando told the Orlando Sentinel Friday.
"They knew each other," the relative said.
He said the pair met during prayer sessions at the Islamic Society of Central Florida in east Orange County but did not socialize.According to testimony during the four-month trial of the embassy bombings -- which resulted in four convictions of suspected bombers and plotters -- Khaleel ordered a "Compact M" satellite phone from a Long Island-based company for $7,500. Khaleel's credit card was used to purchase more than 2,000 minutes of airtime used by bin Laden for calls right up to the week preceding the embassy bombings.
The phone was shipped to a bin Laden associate in London who forwarded it to Afghanistan in 1996. That associate -- Khaled Al-Fawwaz -- is awaiting extradition to the United States as a co-defendant in the embassy bombings case.
Khaleel's relative told the Sentinel the Palestinian-born Khaleel was motivated by money, not politics, when he bought the phone in 1996. He said he doubts the man had direct ties to bin Laden.
"The FBI came to my house and asked me some questions," he said. "I told them, 'If he did it, he did it for the money not for the cause of Allah.' "
The relative also said Khaleel was detained in December 1999 by authorities in Amman, Jordan, who were asked by the FBI to round up suspects before the Millenium celebration on Dec. 31, 1999.
"They kept him three or four days until the New Year passed," he said.
At the time, federal agencies described Khaleel as a "procurement agent" who was providing evidence about bin Laden's U.S. network.
Public records obtained by the Sentinel show Khaleel lived in the Orlando area for about a year before he was subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury in New York in 1999. He told what he knew about the satellite phone and was released, the relative said.
Shortly thereafter, he left the country with his wife and young daughter and took a computer-programming job in Saudi Arabia. He has not returned to the United States, according to the relative.
"He doesn't have any hatred toward Americans," the relative said. "In my two years with him, I never heard him say anything bad."
Local links to hijackers.
Even as investigators pursue a list of more than 100 possible suspects, associates and witnesses, they've been hampered by confusion over identities of many of them. The Saudi Arabian Embassy now says up to seven of the 19 names on the suspected hijackers list may be stolen identities. FBI officials acknowledged late last week that some of the hijackers may have been using assumed names or stolen identities.
That only adds to the seemingly impenetrable complexity of the probe in Florida.
For instance, federal agents are investigating the possibility that suspected hijacker Mohamed Atta also had family ties in Central Florida.
A South Florida federal grand jury issued subpoenas to Broward County court officials seeking records involving several people named Atta. They include Majed Atta, the former Winter Garden grocer.
Until the middle of this year, Majed Atta ran the Rainbow Grocery on Plant Street in Winter Garden. On Aug. 1, he and his family packed their belongings into a U-Haul and left their rental home near Lake Apopka. Majed Atta's former landlady said they moved just one week after Atta said he planned to buy the home from her and open a new grocery store in the Orlando area.
FBI agents said they do not yet know whether Majed Atta is related to Mohamed Atta or has any connection to the case.
Mohammad Mahmoud Al-Raqqad, the man arrested in New Jersey in the nationwide dragnet thrown out after the attacks, also has ties to Florida. But like many of those picked up since the attacks, it's not clear why authorities were seeking him.
Al-Raqqad, 37, was one of three men arrested outside the Newark, N. J., airport three days after the attacks. The hijacked jetliner that crashed in Pennsylvania left from Newark.
Authorities said the three men reportedly were carrying $11,000 and a single one-way ticket to Syria.
Authorities in New Jersey found abandoned a green 1993 Ford Taurus owned by Al-Raqqad. He purchased that car in March from Zach's Auto Sales in Palm Bay.
Dealership owner Teresa Elgamil remembered Al-Raqqad because he put down $1,100 in cash for the car and "he was very arrogant."
Elgamil said Al-Raqqad was clean-cut and well-educated, and said he was visiting from abroad.
Al-Raqqad's drivers license listed an address at a Titusville apartment, but no one there remembered him or recognized his photo.
The car he bought in Palm Bay was registered to an address in Morriston, a small town in rural Levy County, southwest of Gainesville. Police and a clerk at a BP Quick Save convenience store on U.S. Highway 27 in East Williston said Al-Raqqad worked there for a few weeks. The clerk said Al-Raqqad left the area six months ago.
Also still in custody is Hady Omar, the Egyptian immigrant who recently had the Orlando apartment near the Holy Land theme park. He apparently was linked to Mohamed Atta and two other dead hijackers through an airline reservation made from a computer terminal at a Kinko's copy shop in South Florida and was picked up for questioning in Arkansas last week.
Omar's wife, Candy Kjosa, said her husband was being questioned in connection with the hijackings but was not involved. Omar, who came to the United States from Egypt two years ago, moved to Boca Raton without his wife and daughter in May.
Omar and a man he worked with in Boca Raton, identified as Walid Hamad, had rented the apartment in Orlando this summer. The two were looking for a piece of property to open an antique shop, Omar's wife said, but they recently broke the lease on the apartment.
How all these men came to be in Central Florida, what they really did here and whether they ultimately will be connected to the hijackings remains to be seen. With so many leads being followed, and so much confusion over who is whom, they may just fade into history much as they once faded into the booming and increasingly anonymous landscape of Central Florida.
"With all the new housing, nobody knows their neighbor and nobody talks to anybody," said Mark Williams, a retired counterterrorism consultant in the Tampa area who worked closely with government task forces in Washington for seven years. "So when these guys come in, they don't raise any suspicion."
What used to be a small world, after all, is not so small anymore.
David Damron and Jim Stratton of the Sentinel staff also contributed to this report. Pedro Ruz Gutierrez, Roger Roy and Jim Leusner can be reached at 407-420-5411.
I'll post some more from my archives regarding this "Orlando connection" in this thread also.
WDBO - 580 AM Radio Exclusive: Egyptian American from Orlando, Suspected Terrorist Paymaster
By WDBO's Ron Hill
It's looking more and more as though without an Orlando man's help, last week's terrorist attacks may not have happened.
His name is Ahmed Badawi, and he is the 48-year-old Egyptian American that the FBI and Orange County deputies snatched from his east Orange County home last Saturday night, wrapped in cotton, and shipped yesterday to New York.
WDBO news has now learned that Federal investigators suspect Badawi may have been Osama Bin Laden's paymaster here in the U.S. for the operation that destroyed the World Trade Center and severely damaged the Pentagon.
Badawi owns and operates three businesses here at 36 South Semoran Boulevard on Orlando’s east side. Florida Sunny Summer Tours, through which investigators think he may have arranged all the travel for the terrorists and possibly pinpointed the aircraft to be hijacked. Ed's Drive Services, through which he moves cars, trucks and vans around the country. And, The Cash Station, a check cashing service through which, those investigators believe, he received and doled out the money needed to pay for pilot training, housing, travel, food and so forth for the terrorists.
He is thought to be part of what is known as a Hawala network...the Arab equivalent of Swiss banking, where large sums of money can be shipped between the 35 countries in which Bin Laden's terror network al-Queda operates, without any governmental officials finding out. So far Badawi has only been arrested as a material witness to the attacks but, I'm told, it's only a matter of time.
It appears that a lot of those sand bastard terrorists are in my neck of the woods, here in central Florida.
It's easy for them to fit in here with all the immigrants and tourists.
1-22-01: I saw Channel 9 talking about Ahmed Badawi on the noon news. --- (Badawi owns and operates three businesses here at 36 South Semoran Boulevard on Orlando’s east side. Florida Sunny Summer Tours, through which investigators think he may have arranged all the travel for the terrorists and possibly pinpointed the aircraft to be hijacked. Ed's Drive Services, through which he moves cars, trucks and vans around the country. And, The Cash Station, a check cashing service through which, those investigators believe, he received and doled out the money needed to pay for pilot training, housing, travel, food and so forth for the terrorists.) --- They said that he had finished his testimony before a Federal Grand Jury in White Plaines, New York as a "Material Witness", and was released.
1-23-01: I checked google's search engine for Florida travel agencies, Tours, etc. (I was only interested in owners from the middle east). One link was to "Highland Transportation" with headquarters in Orlando, Washington, and New York:
http://www.highlandtransportation.com/contactinfo_act.htm
Owner: Moammar El mubarak (aka Moamer Elmubark??)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ssu_world/messages
It sure is interesting that he has the same sort of interests in *the same cities* that Badwai does.
Coincidence?
It should read: 9-22-01 and 9-23-01. Sorry.
9-21-01: Go HERE to see a picture of the place of business of Ahmed Badawi, the Orlando man the FBI arrested who is/was suspected of having terrorist connections. This link is still good. I just tried it.
Mulder, where are you? FReepmail or hit my profile for e-addy.......FRegards
Click here: JIHAD IN AMERICA
My son said they use to have a kid from Paskistan and one from Afghanistan in his school but they have moved away now. Here at least they are getting the clear message to vamouse quick.
It's amazing but not surprising. Our government wants to be seen as "doing something".
In an article about the big security incident at the Atlanta airport it was revealed that the National Guard there were not allowed to "touch" passengers. So much for stopping a terr.
Also read somewhere that guardsmen tasked with defending an airport were not allowed to have thier magazines loaded in their weapons.
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