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Jihad Journalism: Detroit News’ Fabricated Terrorism “Reporting” May 11, 2005 By Debbie Schlussel “Former Terrorism Suspect is Deported: Moroccan . . . Was Forced to Leave,” screamed a sympathetic headline in Gannett’s Detroit News, last week. Problem is, the deportation of alleged Detroit terror cell member Ahmed Hannan never happened. Hannan is still here. And other details in the apocryphal article by Detroit News reporter David Shepardson were also wrong or made-up. The May 3, 2005 article claimed that Hannan—who planned to blow up U.S. tourist sites and a U.S. Air Force Base in Turkey—was deported two weeks before the...

Two Michigan men spied for the Iraqi government before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of the country, federal authorities said Tuesday. A grand jury indictment accuses Najib Shemami, 58, of Sterling Heights, of four espionage-related charges between March 2002 and early 2003, according to a statement by the U.S. attorney's office and the FBI. A criminal complaint filed against Ghazi Al-Awadi, 78, of Dearborn, claims he told the Iraqi intelligence in 1997 that he killed his son-in-law because the man belonged to an anti-Saddam Hussein political party. Both men were arrested Tuesday. Shemami and Al-Awadi are charged with conspiring to act...

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) - An Egyptian man who served as an imam at an Orange County mosque was arrested on immigration violations, federal officials said Friday. Wagdy Mohamed Ghoneim was arrested Thursday morning at his home in Anaheim, said Lori Haley, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He was held without bail at a federal detention facility pending an immigration court hearing next week. Ghoneim worked as an imam at the Islamic Institute of Orange County in Anaheim, Haley said. She described the pending charges against him as "administrative" but did not elaborate. A call to his defense attorney,...

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) - An Orange County mosque leader from Egypt who authorities said had given speeches that could be considered supportive of terrorist organizations agreed Tuesday to leave the United States voluntarily, giving up his fight to remain in the country. As part of the agreement with government attorneys, Wagdy Ghoneim avoids deportation in exchange for admitting he was in the United States in violation of his immigration status, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement. He must leave the United States by Jan. 7. By agreeing to voluntary removal, Ghoneim, the imam at the Islamic...

FBI agents yesterday raided the suburban Detroit headquarters of LIFE for Relief and Development (LRD), the largest Islamic charity in the country. I first wrote about the group for The Post in 2003. Back then, FBI Director Robert Mueller was set to give an award to Imad Hamad, who heads the Midwest chapter of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). But, after my Post article pointed out that Hamad was a subject in over a dozen terrorism-related investigations, the FBI revoked the award. One of those investigations concerned Hamad's close ties to LRD. Both the FBI and the then-U.S. Customs...

SOUTHFIELD, Michigan Federal counterterrorism officials on Monday raided the suburban Detroit offices of an international Muslim humanitarian organization. FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force agents executed search warrants at the headquarters of Life for Relief and Development in the Detroit suburb of Southfield. The warrants were based on a criminal assertion, but the affidavits in support of the warrants are sealed, William Kowalski, an assistant special agent in the FBI's Detroit office, told the Detroit Free Press. "The warrants have been signed off by a judge, and it pertains to an ongoing criminal matter," FBI spokeswoman Dawn Clenney told The...

SCATTERED AMONG the loose papers and bound files unearthed last week at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry in Baghdad was "letter no. 140/4/5," labeled "Confidential and Personal" and addressed to "The President's Office--Secretariat." The letter concerns George Galloway, a pro-Saddam member of the British Parliament, who founded a charity known as the Mariam Appeal, ostensibly to aid Iraqi children suffering under U.N. sanctions. The missive, from the Iraqi Intelligence Service, is a request that money be funneled directly to Galloway. It reads in part: His projects and future plans for the benefit of [Iraq] need financial support to become a motive...

SPC suspect jailed in Michigan The man, who tried to buy St. Petersburg College vehicles, has terrorist ties, police say. By NORA KOCH, Times Staff Writer Published October 28, 2004 A former Clearwater man who tried to buy an old ambulance and two surplus police cruisers from St. Petersburg College in August is an "affiliate of a terrorist organization," according to police documents obtained Wednesday. Abdalla Deiab, 51, was arrested in Michigan on Wednesday on a warrant charging him with failing to return a hired vehicle, a Largo rental car, Pinellas County sheriff's and Largo police officials said. In a...

Nageeb Abdul Jabar Mohammed Al-Hadi -- if that's even his name -- is just one of nearly 750 people U.S. investigators want to know more about in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. He has at least four aliases and two different birth dates. He is a Yemeni, with a Michigan driver's licence and a Detroit wife. He was on a plane from Frankfurt, Germany headed for Chicago when it was diverted to Toronto. He was arrested at Pearson International Airport and may be extradited to the United States to face two charges related to false passports and fraudulent misuse ...

FBI: Terror suspect plotted fuel attackAl-Marabh planned to blow up tunnelJail informant reported `martyr' bid JOHN SOLOMONASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON - Nabil al-Marabh, who ran a print shop with his uncle in Toronto, plotted to steal a fuel tanker truck and blow it up in one of the heavily travelled tunnels between New Jersey and Manhattan, FBI documents allege. Al-Marabh, 36, was arrested Sept. 19, 2001, in Chicago in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. His arrest prompted an RCMP raid of his uncle's copy shop on Charles St. in Toronto. The U.S. deported him...

FBI Says Case Against Three Men Evolving Three men arrested in the terrorist investigation raid of a southwest Detroit home could have been part of a plot to attack a U.S. military base, federal agents said Wednesday. Agents went to the home on Norman Street in southwest Detroit searching for Nabil Al-Marabh, a suspect who allegedly has ties to Osama bin Laden and two hijackers who crashed passenger jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Al-Marabh was not at the house, but agents found Karim Koubriti, Ahmed Hannan and Farouk Ali-Haimoud. FBI Uncovers New Information On Suspects Investigators...

<p>December 21, 2003 -- A U.S. Attorney is endangering the nation's only jury conviction of terrorists since 9/11. Tuesday, three men convicted in the first post-9/11 terror trial were supposed to be sentenced. Instead, these members of Detroit's "sleeper cell" may go free. Their defense attorneys are getting help from an unlikely source - U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Collins, the Justice Department's top official in Detroit, who is leading the way to overturn these convictions.</p>

DETROIT (AP) - The Justice Department is investigating possible misconduct by the lead prosecutor in the nation's first major post-Sept. 11 terrorism trial, according to a published report. U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Collins requested the investigation in November after discovering possible ethical violations involving Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino, the Detroit Free Press reported Saturday, citing sources it did not name. The allegations include withholding evidence from defense attorneys and trying to convince a court employee to get confidential information about a prisoner, the newspaper said. Convertino said Collins is trying to destroy his reputation and career. "This is so untrue,...

DETROIT, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- A Moroccan immigrant held in a Detroit jail as a terrorist suspect for three years has sued, claiming that he was deliberately fed pork and humiliated. Karim Koubriti's suit names Wayne County, five unnamed sheriff's deputies and one identified only as "Rojo," the Detroit News reported. "The actions of the Wayne County Sheriff's Department were completely outrageous," said Koubriti's lawyer, Ben Gonek. "They only added more insult to the injuries he was already sustaining by the federal government." Koubriti, in legal papers, claims he and four other alleged terrorists were strip-searched without need when other...

LONDON, Aug. 22 — American law enforcement officials are monitoring the activities of at least six groups in the United States they suspect are linked to Al Qaeda, senior government officials in the United States and Europe said this week. Most of the individuals whose movements and communications are being closely tracked are believed to be sympathizers of Osama bin Laden who may be engaged in low-level support activities for the Qaeda terror network, like raising money, relaying messages and recruiting new members, American and European officials said. The officials insisted that no evidence had emerged that any of the...

ETROIT, Aug. 29 — For nearly a year, the three foreigners picked up at an apartment here a week after the Sept. 11 attacks seemed like just another group of Arab men caught up in the government dragnet. They languished in prison while facing charges that seemed minor; federal agents had actually been looking for the previous occupant when they raided the apartment.But at least one thing appears to have separated the Detroit trio from hundreds of other Arabs swept up by the government in the last year: a cooperative witness. A fourth Arab man who once lived with...

August 29, 2002 4 Men Charged With Being in Terrorist Cell in Detroit AreaBy DANNY HAKIM ETROIT, Aug. 28 — The government indicted four Arab men in federal court here today, saying they were part of a terrorist cell operating in the Detroit area and were planning attacks in the United States, Jordan and Turkey. The men functioned as a support group for terrorist activity and a "sleeper operational combat cell," the indictment said. The cell's mission was to obtain weaponry and intelligence and establish a support network for terrorist activity, including mail drops and safe houses as well as...

Six men in America have been indicted on charges of supporting Islamic terrorist activities, including an alleged five-man "sleeper cell" in Detroit and a former worshipper at a radical mosque in London.   The MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas: police in Detroit found surveillance videos of the complex The grand jury indictments are the first time since September 11 that an alleged terrorist unit has been exposed. They also mark an escalation in the US authorities' investigation of links between militants in America and Britain.The suspected cell - some of whom worked at Detroit airport - are accused of...