Other US officials said last week that they had evidence that a US (California State University, Sacramento)-educated biochemist and retired Malaysian army captain, Yazid Sufaat, 37, provided US$35,000 in Kuala Lumpur in the fall of 2000 to Zacarias Moussaoui, a French national of Moroccan descent, who has been charged in Alexandria, Virginia, with conspiring with the September 11 hijackers. Sufaat is also said to have met in January 2000 with two of the hijackers, Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhamzi, who piloted the plane that struck the Pentagon. He is among two dozen alleged Muslim extremists detained in Malaysia since December.
Born and educated in California, Hijazi had been radicalized through college contacts he met at the Islamic Assistance Organization in Sacramento. He concluded that the country of his birth was the enemy of Islam. Violence was the means to confront it. Hijazi traveled to Afghanistan, where he trained at bases run by al Qaeda. From there, he easily traversed continents with his U.S. passport. He worked as a cab driver in Boston, where he allegedly knew Nabil Al-Marabh, who was detained in Chicago last Wednesday in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. He came to Amman, where he assembled weapons, chemicals and other supplies from Syria, Europe and elsewhere.
And what has he, and his lab partners, been doing in their spare time?