Accounts of 2 detainees' plans in Texas differ

The two men detained in Fort Worth and held as material witnesses in the Sept. 11 attacks were planning to work in San Antonio, their friends say. SAN ANTONIO - Two men held as material witnesses in the terrorist attacks after being stopped in Fort Worth told police that they planned to be in Texas for only a short time, but friends in San Antonio said they believe that the pair was planning to stay in the state for good.

Mohammed Jaweed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan had talked several times by phone to two owners of convenience stores in San Antonio, and they had secured jobs at the Quick Trip Food Store here, several of their friends said Tuesday.

With their employment lined up, Azmath and Khan boarded a plane in Newark on Sept. 11 - the day of the attacks - and headed for Texas. After their flight was grounded in St. Louis, they switched to an Amtrak train, which was going to San Antonio.

Friends say they thought Azmath and Khan, once in San Antonio, would go to work immediately. "They were going to stay," said Rashed Mazhar, a convenience store clerk who once lived with both men in a modest apartment in Jersey City, N.J.

But when stopped Sept. 12 at the Fort Worth Amtrak station, Azmath and Khan were "extremely nervous," with Azmath saying they were going to San Antonio "to stay at least one month," and Khan saying they planned on being in San Antonio for only one week, according to a police report.

Although friends in San Antonio said Azmath and Khan's trip to San Antonio was largely for business reasons, the report said Azmath told officers that "he was traveling on pleasure to see a friend," referring to Mazhar.

Azmath and Khan were detained after their train made a scheduled stop on the edge of downtown Fort Worth. One of the initial reasons for holding them, investigators have said, was that Azmath and Khan gave conflicting statements about their plans.

The police report also noted that both men said "no" when asked whether they were carrying knives or "large sums of currency," yet officers found them to be carrying nearly $5,600 in cash, two box cutters in a briefcase and a small pocketknife.

Federal authorities have said that, among the hundreds of people detained in the terrorist investigation, Azmath and Khan, who are natives of India, may be among the very few who could shed some light on the attacks. Officers initially took them into custody on allegations that they violated immigration laws.

The FBI is also suspicious because Azmath and Khan had shaved their bodies. Letters were found among the belongings of several of the terrorist hijackers that said "shave excess hair from the body."

Mazhar's uncle, Mohammed Haq, said he believes that Azmath and Khan have done nothing wrong, and that they had been planning to come to San Antonio for "four or five months," but kept postponing the trip.

When they finally started out for Texas, "then this happen," said Haq, referring to the attacks.

Earlier report from the same paper and author:

THE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM

October 25, 2001, Thursday

HEADLINE: Pair on train were initially drug suspects

BYLINE: JACK DOUGLAS Jr.; Star-Telegram Staff Writer

SUSPECTS: Law enforcement officials weren't looking for terrorism connections when they approached two men aboard an Amtrak car in Fort Worth.

FORT WORTH - It was Sept. 12, and the country was reeling from the terrorist attacks as Mohammed Jaweed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan sat on a train rolling toward Fort Worth.

As the train approached, local police and federal officers assembled at the downtown Amtrak station, preparing to question the men as to why they had purchased one-way train tickets at the last minute, with cash, in St. Louis.

The officers said in a report that they were looking for drug dealers, not for terrorists tied to the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and outside Washington.

They were simply working their beats, searching for travelers booking last-minute one-way travel with cash, rather than credit cards, to minimize their paper trails.

The way Azmath and Khan purchased their train tickets was "consistent with that of drug and drug asset couriers," a Fort Worth police report says. Officers also thought, incorrectly, that they had found the men's names on a computer list of known narcotics dealers. Officers stepped onto the arriving train at 4:30 p.m. with no idea that rather than drug dealers, they would catch two men - Azmath and Khan - who remain jailed in New York as material witnesses in the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history.

Of the hundreds of people detained since Sept. 11, Azmath and Khan are among the few who authorities suspect may have inside knowledge about the attacks.

A police report obtained by the Star-Telegram states Azmath was "extremely nervous," and Khan's "hands were visibly trembling and his breathing was rapid" when officers approached them on the train.

"I did not have anything to do with New York," police quoted Azmath as saying after he was told that they only wanted to question him about his travel plans.

Knowledgeable law enforcement sources said Khan and Azmath were carrying stringed pouches, meant to hang around their necks, that contained passages from either the Muslim holy book, the Quran, or some other type of "Islamic prayer of repentance."

The report says officers also found a "prayer rug and other religious paraphernalia."

At the time of their arrests, Azmath and Khan had their hair cut short, were cleanshaven and, according to sources, had shaved the rest of their bodies.

Area Muslim leaders said religious items are often carried by members of their faith to ward off evil. They said they were puzzled, however, by the shaved bodies.

"Very strange," said Basheer Ahmed, chairman of the Muslim Community Center for Human Services in Bedford.

Sources said Azmath and Khan may have been preparing for death. The authorities cited notes left behind by some of the terrorists that included what appeared to be instructions on what they were to do before their suicide missions.

Those notes, which have been released by the Justice Department, included a portion that carried this instruction: "The previous night, shave the extra hair from the body [and] pray."

The details surrounding Azmath and Khan have gained national attention, including a report by The Wall Street Journal that old magazines were found in their modest apartment in Jersey City with cover stories about biological weapons and poison gas. According to The New York Times, documents from the apartment are being tested by the FBI for signs of anthrax.

Additionally, The Washington Post has quoted senior FBI officials as saying that Khan and Azmath are among the few detainees who have been offered leniency in exchange for information about international terror suspect Osama bin Laden or his operation. With Khan and Azmath refusing to cooperate, authorities are considering whether to send them to another country where they might be tortured, the Post reported.

Through interviews with law enforcement sources and a Fort Worth police report that details the events of that day, the Star-Telegram has pieced together details of the surprising arrests of Khan and Azmath and the trail that led to them.

Azmath's "pulse in his neck was visibly pulsating rapidly and [he] broke out into a sweat above his brow" when confronted by the officers, says the report, which also recommends commendations for local officers.

It says Azmath told officers that he and Khan were going to San Antonio to visit a friend and planned to stay "at least one month."

When questioned separately by the officers, the report says, Khan "was very nervous and evasive ... about his travel plans" and refused to say who he planned to visit in San Antonio, and that he expected to stay only a week.

Khan voluntarily opened his briefcase, where police found two "box-cutter type knives," $2,400 in cash, an open package of hair dye and "new clothing, still in plastic wrapping," the report says.

It said Azmath was carrying $3,188 in cash and a small pocketknife.

A search of the men's luggage revealed "receipts for money wires to the subjects and numerous empty cash envelopes, with dates hand written on them," the report says. There was also "paraphernalia that could assist in the altering of the appearance of the subjects" and "numerous passport photos of Azmath."

The Justice Department has issued no official statement about the status of Azmath and Khan, except to say that they remain in custody in New York charged with minor immigration violations, including carrying bogus passports.

"I have no new information on these two individuals," was all Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden would offer as comment in Washington.

Law enforcement authorities say Azmath and Khan were passengers on TWA Flight 679, which took off from Newark, N.J., on the morning of Sept. 11.

About the same time, hijackers were commandeering other planes in the sky, including one that had departed from Newark.

The eventual destination for TWA 679 was San Antonio, with a scheduled stop in St. Louis. While in St. Louis, the plane was grounded, as was every other flight in the country.

An official involved in the investigation in St. Louis said authorities have studied whether Azmath and Khan had planned to hijack Flight 679, but then changed their plans when all of their accomplices did not arrive.

But the official, who did not want to be identified, acknowledged that it was little more than a police theory.

"We'll never know for sure unless they confess," the official said.

Azmath and Khan may have had companions who went in different directions when their flight was grounded, according to sources with law enforcement and the airline industry.

FBI agents have searched for some of the passengers on that TWA plane who did not appear on Sept. 13 for the rescheduled flight. One man was taken into custody in St. Louis when he attempted to purchase an airplane ticket, using a credit card belonging to either Azmath or Khan. The identity of that man, and what the government has done with him, was not immediately known.

Julia Bishop-Cross, a TWA spokeswoman in St. Louis, said the airline would not discuss the flight taken by Azmath and Khan.

With their flight grounded, Azmath and Khan bought train tickets in St. Louis at the last moment on Sept. 12, using cash for a one-way boarding pass and leaving blank a space on a form that asked for their phone numbers. That aroused the suspicions of officers in Fort Worth, who were monitoring ticket sales in St. Louis as part of a routine search for drug dealers.

Later, Azmath and Khan told officers that the box cutters in the briefcase were used to open boxes at a newsstand they operated in New York City's Penn Station.

They also told authorities that their jobs paid them each about $300 a week, a small wage considering the large amounts of money found in their bank accounts, several sources said.

They said Azmath and Khan each have failed polygraph tests. But several FBI agents have said that many of the people who have been detained have failed such tests, suggesting a problem in the way questions have been asked or, possibly, representing a mistrust of American law enforcement.

FBI agents have traveled to Hyderabad, India, the hometown of Azmath and Khan, where they have questioned the men's relatives.

Azmath's uncle, Mohammed Jahingir, said agents told him "not to worry, that he would call us, [and] that he would be released."

But for the family, the frustration grows as time passes, Jahingir said.

"He hasn't called us," he said. "There has been no communication telling us how he is. When will they come home?"

Staff writer Ginger Richardson and researcher Jan Fennell contributed to this report.

Jack Douglas Jr., (817) 390-7700 jld@star-telegram.com

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