INVESTIGATION: Mystery Detroit contact arrested

A mystery man from Detroit who went by the name of Jalali was arrested Friday in Iowa by federal authorities probing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The man, whom authorities identify as Youssef Hmimssa, was caught by the U.S. Secret Service in Cedar Rapids, said a spokeswoman in the FBI's Detroit office. Extradition to Michigan will probably be sought, she said.

Cops look into hazardous waste

By Eric Lichtblau | National correspondent

Posted September 26, 2001

WASHINGTON -- Law-enforcement officials, identifying a new weapon that they fear terrorists could deploy, have charged 20 people nationwide with fraudulently obtaining hazardous-material licenses, and they have begun scouring terrorist "watch lists" to hunt for others.

Several of the people who obtained or tried to obtain the hazardous-material licenses "may have links to the hijackers" who crashed four planes on Sept. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

"Terrorism," Ashcroft said, "is a clear and present danger to Americans today."

A hazardous-material license, or "endorsement" as it is known, allows a commercial driver who has passed a written test to haul large amounts of gasoline, diesel fuel, chemicals, explosives and other substances that can be dangerous or flammable.

Authorities became concerned about the threat after discovering that a suspect in the Sept. 11 attack investigation, who was arrested near Chicago last week as a material witness, had obtained a commercial license from the state of Michigan last year allowing him to haul hazardous materials on 18-wheelers.

Of the approximately 20 people who have been charged since the terrorist attacks for using fraudulent documentation to obtain hazardous-material licenses, it was unclear how many had been arrested. Justice Department officials refused to release any additional information on the suspects, saying that court documents in the cases had been sealed by court orders.

FBI field offices around the country began Tuesday searching hazardous-material licensing data from state motor-vehicle records and matching it against a list of nearly 400 people who authorities think may have information on the case. Agents were instructed to follow up on anyone who showed up on both lists.

Investigators are seeking to determine whether the hijackers or people associated with them may have hatched a scheme to hijack trucks hauling hazardous chemicals, according to a law-enforcement official who asked not to be identified.

The hazardous material issue is only the latest lead that authorities are pursuing in an effort to track down the types of weapons of mass destruction that terrorists might employ.

Already, the FBI has chased down tips and put out warnings about crop-dusters, flight-training schools, firetrucks and bogus airline work credentials. In the case of the crop-dusters, federal authorities grounded the agricultural planes for two days because of evidence that some of the hijackers were reported to have shown unusual interest in them.

Federal officials have not imposed any bans or severe restrictions on hazardous material haulers -- an industry that moves an estimated 3 billion tons of material each year and is considered vital to many areas of the U.S. economy.

But in recent days, the FBI has told local police to be on the lookout for suspicious activity involving hazardous waste haulers; Food and Drug Administration officials have met with a major trucking association to brainstorm ideas for improved security; and the Department of Transportation has asked haulers to take extra safety precautions.

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta asked haulers to keep hazardous-materials shipments away from populated areas if possible, but many haulers noted the need to deliver gas and other cargo to urban centers.

Meanwhile, in Germany, a Syrian-born businessman whose firm was listed by President Bush as having suspected links to terrorism on Tuesday denied any role in the attacks on the United States.

Mamoun Darkazanli's import-export business was on a list of individuals and organizations whose assets were ordered frozen Monday by Bush, an effort to smash the financial network of international terror groups.

Darkazanli said he once worked for the man accused of being terrorism suspect Osama bin Laden's finance chief, but that the deal had fallen through.

Darkazanli said he had contact with Mamdouh Mahmud Salim in the mid-1990s -- a one-time business deal for a radio transmitter for Sudan. However, he said, the deal fell through.

"He just paid for my work," he told reporters at his apartment in Hamburg, Germany. "Afterward, I never heard from him again."

Darkazanli was named in German media reports this week as having contacts with Salim, who was arrested in Munich in 1998 and turned over to the United States as a suspect in the bombing earlier that year of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

German federal prosecutors said Tuesday that they did not have enough evidence to open a formal investigation against Darkazanli, who also denied any involvement in the attacks in New York and Washington.

Watch Out for Jackboots and Swagger Sticks

Before his speech, on September 20, 2001, George Bush Jr. kissed Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Everyone knows he should have kissed her because she was the deciding vote in the Florida ballot issue, which formally brought Bush Jr. into the White House. Later during the speech, Bush announced the creation of a Cabinet level position called "Office of Homeland Security."

The Office of Homeland Security will initially be run by former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge. It should be noted that Ridge himself got in trouble a few years ago for praising the efficiency of the Third Reich's civilian administration. Ridge also spoke highly of Mussolini's ability to keep the Italian trains running on time. Now Ridge will be the guy running the Office of Homeland Security.

Although it hasn't been made public yet, there is a proposal being prepared. The Bush administration, however is playing it smart. They're being cautious by whipping up public support first. Later they will announce some of the more sinister activities of this agency.

According to an inside source, the "Office of Homeland Security" will operate three divisions. One will be a plain-clothes division similar to the FBI, which will be called the State Security Division (SSD). Ironically SSD is the same acronym as the former East German Secret Police.

The second division of the Office of Homeland Security will be a smaller uniformed division, which currently remains nameless. It will act as a defacto State Political Police.

By the way, Ridge wants the uniforms of this State Political Police division to be modeled on existing state trooper uniforms - except done in black.

If you've ever seen New Jersey or Pennsylvania State Police uniforms, they have dark blue pants and lighter blue uniform on top. They also have those old-fashioned pants that bag out like the old German or Gestapo pants. They'll have jet-black jackboots, and black uniforms with lots of gold insignias indicating the Power of the State. Of course, "State" here is used in the context of the American Nation State.

The third division of the Office of Homeland Security will be called the Office of the United States Air Marshals (Air Marshal Services.) They will have to federalize the new air marshal service because security on aircraft is currently being provided by state police. The problem, of course, is that there will be jurisdictional issues.

The actual name of this agency, Office of Homeland Security, is very reminiscent of 20th century era German/Fascist and Russian/Communist secret police agencies. In America, "Homeland" is a neuter word. In German, however, the word is translated as "Vaterland" (Fatherland), while in Russian, the word is "Rodina" (Motherland). In both cases, these words can be translated into the English neuter word -- "homeland."

There is no precedent for the use of this word "homeland" in the United States Government.

This new agency will also operate "with extralegal authority." They will then be able to act under suspension of habeus corpus and under suspension of the right against self- incrimination, the Fifth Amendment privilege, and also the Fourth Amendment privilege.

That power will be in their charter -- they can act in an extra-legal authority, in certain cases, where the security of the "homeland" is "threatened."

The Bush Administration is essentially laying the foundation for a whole new classification of law. That's why, in his speech, Bush purposely never used the words "national security." He did this deliberately so as not to confuse the two.

With this new agency, the seeds are being sown for a new classification of law that will most likely be called "Homeland Security Law." Nobody knows what it will be called yet. But this is obviously what they're doing. Anyone, who knows the Bushes for what they are, can see that this will be the groundwork for a new, more powerful, more sinister agency, wherein all sorts of covert activity, illegal and not, will be extant.

In order to take the concept of "illegal" covert activity away, they are laying the foundation for a whole new separate body of law that will be parallel to, but above, the National Security Acts.

The Office of Homeland Security will be a separate agency, not under any other agency, not even under the Department of Justice. It will be the most senior agency in the Cabinet. It will probably fall somewhere between the Department of State and the Department of Defense, or somewhere between Treasury and Defense. In terms of authority, it will be called a "Super Agency," which implies it will not be under anyone. It will act as a coordinating agency, but will be above the FBI, CIA, NSA, and DIA. This will, of course, create a whole new set of turf war battles. But no agency head - in this post-WTC environment - will dare say anything against it because they'd lose their job.

Ridge will most likely be a political figurehead. He was probably given this job as political payback for Bush. It hasn't been decided yet, but one of the names that has been mentioned (and I certainly hope it doesn't happen) is Barry McCaffrey. If they put that old nazi in charge, watch out! Meanwhile back in the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, there was a large party of old generals visiting from the Department of Defense and everybody was laughing. They're all interested in seeing what corporations will be getting the new contracts.

With that in mind, the Al Martin Raw website will remain vigilant to see who gets all the new contracts to create this new agency. These will be contracts not only for a whole new office building, but the furniture as well as contracts for electronic components, surveillance equipment, weapons, etc. Let's see which corporations get these contracts, how many shares the Bush family trust has in these corporations, and how much money the so-called "winning" bidders contribute to right-wing think tanks and institutes.

The Office of Homeland Security will have its own helicopters. Even the FBI doesn't have its own helicopters, but has to borrow them from the GSA pool. The Department of Justice doesn't have any of its own helicopters either.

The new Office of Homeland Security helicopters will be painted a matte black and have digitized red lettering that says State Security, dark tinted windows, and numerous aerials and dishes with a big searchlight on the front. Bell Helicopters is supposed to get the new contract to produce this new super-surveillance helicopter. Supposedly they'll have the most sophisticated surveillance electronics ever made. This equipment will include gear that people don't even know has been invented yet.

It can't happen here? Watch out for jackboots and swagger sticks

Sept. 29, 2001, 12:07AM

Foreign student tells of beating by inmates in Mississippi cell

By EDWARD HEGSTROM

It was supposed to be an express bus, a quick ride from Houston back to New York for fall classes.

Instead, Hasnain Javed, 20, a Pakistani college student, was detained in Alabama for carrying an expired visa and then shipped off to a county prison in Mississippi last week.

He said he was housed in a large dormitory cell with hard-core criminals who called him "bin Laden," stripped him naked and beat him so badly that they ruptured his eardrum, broke a tooth and fractured his ribs.

"I was crying; I was terrified," Javed said in recalling his experience at the Stone County Correctional Facility in Wiggins, Miss. "I have never been arrested."

The FBI office in New Orleans acknowledged mounting a preliminary inquiry into the incident, though a more thorough investigation would be conducted out of the FBI office in Jackson, Miss.

"The FBI looked into this matter," said Sheila Thorne, an FBI spokeswoman in New Orleans. "It has been passed on to Jackson for action."

New Orleans civil rights attorney Mary Howell asked the FBI to investigate the incident as a hate crime. Both the attorney and her client questioned whether the guards did enough to stop the attack, which they contended continued 20 minutes after Javed rang an alarm bell.

Since the inmates knew Javed was from a Muslim country, Howell believes he was singled out as a form of irrational retaliation for the terrorist acts of the week before.

The case also raised questions about the practice of detaining noncriminal immigrants in jail cells with convicted criminals, Howell said. Though the INS has a policy against jailing people who have an expired visa in the same cell with violent criminals, immigrant rights advocates say that happens all the time.

"We have heard of many cases where detainees have been beaten up and even raped by convicts," said Hussein Sadruddin, a Dallas-based attorney with the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights.

The INS would not comment on the specific case. Lt. Charles Gardner of the Stone County Correctional Facility also refused to comment.

Javed's problems began the week of the hijackings, which disrupted his plans to fly back to New York after visiting his aunt and her family in a Houston suburb. He attends community college outside New York City. The college confirmed that he is enrolled.

Afraid to fly, Javed caught a bus leaving Houston on the night of Sept. 18. When the bus arrived in Mobile, Ala., the next morning, Border Patrol officers circulated in the bus terminal looking for illegal immigrants. They detained Javed after discovering that he had an expired tourist visa.

Javed said he and a few other detained immigrants -- he believed they were Mexicans -- were told that they would be transported to an INS regional office in New Orleans. But the government later decided to stop at the Mississippi prison along the way to hold them overnight. They were put in a cell with about six men who appeared to be Americans. Javed said a guard later told him that they were Mississippi convicts.

"As soon as I entered the dormitory, the inmates looked at me strangely," he said.

One inmate walked up, said, "You better get out of here," and then punched him in the face so hard that he broke a tooth, Javed recalled.

Javed ran to an intercom to plead for help. A guard answered, and Javed said he feared he was going to be killed. There was no response, he recalled.

Two inmates beat him, called him bin Laden and bashed his head against a wall, Javed said. The inmates then made him go to his bed, but they soon attacked him again, he said. They stripped him, held him down and beat him. This time, most of the inmates joined in, he said.

Four guards finally appeared after what Javed figured was 20 to 25 minutes. Instead of rushing in to break up the fight, the guards stood at the doorway. Javed said he ran to them for protection.

It was then he realized how much his body hurt. "I couldn't even feel my head," he said.

Howell said the incident raised serious questions about whether there was some sort of "collusion" between the inmates and the guards.

Javed said he was taken to a nurse after the beating, but he was not allowed to see a doctor. He was then placed in a small solitary cell.

Two days later, he was transported to the INS headquarters in New Orleans and released after posting a $5,000 bond.

Javed's aunt, who asked not to be named, went to Mississippi as soon as she learned that he was being held there. But she was denied access to him.

"Why is he being put here?" she said she asked administrators. "This is a correctional facility for criminals." She never got an answer.

Karen Kraushaar, an INS spokeswoman in Washington, said the agency has a policy against putting noncriminal detainees with criminals, though it only applies to those held by the INS for more than 72 hours.

Javed, who originally came to the United States for high school, is now back staying with his aunt, awaiting an INS hearing next month.

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