Intelligence agents in the Middle East have been questioning a suspected al-Qaeda operative who was observed meeting last year in Malaysia with hijacker Khalid Almihdhar and other supporters of Osama bin Laden, officials said.
The man has been detained and is being questioned about his possible contact with the hijacker, his suspected involvement in the USS Cole bombing and a foiled plot to bomb a hotel in Jordan filled with Americans during the millennium celebrations, officials said Sunday.
Officials did not provide the man's name. They said he has not been charged with any offense.
Malaysian security authorities videotaped the man in a January 2000 meeting with Almihdhar and other supporters of bin Laden's network. At the time, neither Almihdhar nor the man now in custody were known to be connected to terrorism.
The meeting took on new significance this past summer when information developed in the bombing of the Cole suggested the man held in the Middle East might have been connected to the plot, officials said.
The CIA in August then placed Almihdhar and one of his associates, Nawaf Alhazmi, on a terrorist watch list, but immigration officials discovered the two soon-to-be-hijackers were already in the US, officials said.
Almihdhar and Alhazmi weren't located before they boarded an American Airlines jetliner on Sept. 11 that crashed into the Pentagon.
The man recently detained is "very important" because he's a midlevel operative in the al-Qaeda network, a retired intelligence official said.
He was arrested in the Gulf region within the past two weeks and was taken to Jordan, where he's being interrogated, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The official added that the man is linked to three terrorist operations: the thwarted millennium bombing at the Radisson hotel in Jordan, the Cole bombing and, now, the Sept. 11 attacks by virtue of his being videotaped in Malaysia with two of the hijackers.
The arrest of the suspected al-Qaeda operative in the Middle East comes as the CIA and FBI continue to seek out and detain people linked to the hijackers through phone contacts, Internet communications and financial transactions.
Federal prosecutors say a Pakistani man who was detained in Detroit and is being held on a voter registration fraud charge in North Carolina has been connected by evidence to two of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Intiaz Ahmed Siddiqui, 31, was arrested in the Detroit area and was indicted last Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Greensboro, North Carolina on one count of voter registration fraud, according to Lynn Clower, a spokeswoman for the US Attorney's office.
"He said he was a US citizen when indeed he was a citizen of Pakistan," Clower said.
During a detention hearing last week in Detroit, Assistant US Attorney Jane Terbush said the government had information that linked Siddiqui to at least two of the hijackers.
Terbush said the government considers it a "very, very serious matter."
Attorney Neil DeBlois, who is representing Siddiqui, said Friday his client has been held since Sept. 22 on a relatively minor charge just so the government can try to build a case of terrorism against him.
DeBlois said his client is an electrical engineer who came into the US legally in July 2000 for work. He was employed in California and recently accepted a job in Grand Rapids.
In a seven-page affidavit provided to DeBlois, an FBI agent wrote that Siddiqui visited an Internet travel site at the same time as one of the hijackers, and the pair may have communicated, DeBlois said. He said the affidavit "reads like a cheap novel."
NO HUMAN ERROR: After the incident, the Coast Guard Administration said it would obtain uncrewed aerial vehicles and vessels to boost its detection capacity Authorities would improve border control to prevent unlawful entry into Taiwan’s waters and safeguard national security, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday after a Chinese man reached the nation’s coast on an inflatable boat, saying he “defected to freedom.” The man was found on a rubber boat when he was about to set foot on Taiwan at the estuary of Houkeng River (後坑溪) near Taiping Borough (太平) in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), authorities said. The Coast Guard Administration’s (CGA) northern branch said it received a report at 6:30am yesterday morning from the New Taipei City Fire Department about a
IN BEIJING’S FAVOR: A China Coast Guard spokesperson said that the Chinese maritime police would continue to carry out law enforcement activities in waters it claims The Philippines withdrew its coast guard vessel from a South China Sea shoal that has recently been at the center of tensions with Beijing. BRP Teresa Magbanua “was compelled to return to port” from Sabina Shoal (Xianbin Shoal, 仙濱暗沙) due to bad weather, depleted supplies and the need to evacuate personnel requiring medical care, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) spokesman Jay Tarriela said yesterday in a post on X. The Philippine vessel “will be in tiptop shape to resume her mission” after it has been resupplied and repaired, Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, who heads the nation’s maritime council, said
CHINA POLICY: At the seventh US-EU Dialogue on China, the two sides issued strong support for Taiwan and condemned China’s actions in the South China Sea The US and EU issued a joint statement on Wednesday supporting Taiwan’s international participation, notably omitting the “one China” policy in a departure from previous similar statements, following high-level talks on China and the Indo-Pacific region. The statement also urged China to show restraint in the Taiwan Strait. US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and European External Action Service Secretary-General Stefano Sannino cochaired the seventh US-EU Dialogue on China and the sixth US-EU Indo-Pacific Consultations from Monday to Tuesday. Since the Indo-Pacific consultations were launched in 2021, references to the “one China” policy have appeared in every statement apart from the
More than 500 people on Saturday marched in New York in support of Taiwan’s entry to the UN, significantly more people than previous years. The march, coinciding with the ongoing 79th session of the UN General Assembly, comes close on the heels of growing international discourse regarding the meaning of UN Resolution 2758. Resolution 2758, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1971, recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the “only lawful representative of China.” It resulted in the Republic of China (ROC) losing its seat at the UN to the PRC. Taiwan has since been excluded from