Ali,

Given my ignorance of foreign affairs, I try to pick up threads at the point, to borrow Kohman’s phrase, that “parallel investigations of BIF and other organizations int he United States picked up pace.”

Benevolence International Foundation (“BIF”) had long been of keen interest to the FBI in connection with its investigation of the threat of biological, chemical or radiological terrorism. One of the founders of BIF in 1987 was Bin Laden’s late brother-in-law, the late Jamal Khalifa. Cooperating witness Jamal al-Fadl told Patrick Fitzgerald and the FBI that in 1992, Bin Laden sent him from Bin Laden’s headquarters in Sudan to Zagreb, Croatia, to gather information about the prospects of jihad in Bosnia. In Croatia, he met with Enaam Arnaout (who the next year would become the head of the BIF
in the US), and al-Qaeda operative Abu Abdel Aziz Barbaros. In 1994, when Khalifa was arrested in northern California where he was visiting, he was traveling with BIF President Mohammed Loay Bayazid. Bayazid reportedly was looking to buy enriched uranium. Bayazid listed BIF’s Chicago-area office as his residence. Years earlier, Bayazid had left Kansas City to go to Pakistan and then Afghanistan. Bayazid, a Syrian, was one of the founders of both Al Qaeda and BIF. He was at the meeting at which Al Qaeda was founded.

Khalifa’s personal organizer had the numbers for Khalid Mohammed, regional Al Qaeda operative Hambali, and the 1993 WTC bomber Ramzi Yousef. Khalifa’s name was also written on a bomb making manual in the possession of one of the WTC 1993 bombers. Egyptian Ayman Zawahiri visited the area the next month on a charity fundraising trip. Thus, authorities have long alleged that Al Qaeda has sought to develop weapons of mass destruction – and charities like the Benevolence International Foundation have been at the center of such allegations for years. When the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman was arrested, he had Khalifa’s business card along with $62,000 in cash in a suitcase. One idea the Bojinka plotters had, as evidenced by draft letters on Ramzi Yousef’s laptop, was to attempt to free an imprisoned brother by threatening a chemical or poisonous gas attack. When Al Qaeda gets what it thinks is a good idea, they tend to stick with it.

Barbaros spoke alongside Ali Ali Al-Timimi at IANA conferences in the mid-1990s in exhorting young men to jihad. A Justice Department indictment explains that Barbaros told Fadl that “al-Qaeda’s goal in Bosnia was to establish a base for operations in Europe against al-Qaeda’s true
enemy, the United States.” Around this time, BIF began providing food, clothing, money and communications equipment to fighters in Bosnia. The blind sheik’s son, who would serve on the 3-member Al Qaeda WMD committee, spoke alongside Al-Timimi in 1993 and again in 1996.

In 1996, al-Fadl, who had been involved in an earlier attempt to buy uranium for Bin Laden along with Bayazid, defected from al-Qaeda. There are 900 pages of transcripts of conversations in videotaped teleconferences. The FBI agents and prosecutor Fitzgerald did not realize the marshals who set up the video teleconferences were taping.

An FBI Special Agent in an affidavit in the prosecution of the BIF head, Arnaout, alleged that Arnaout “has a relationship with Usama Bin Laden and many of his key associates dating back more than a decade, as evidenced by cooperating witnesses and seized documents.” He continued “various persons involved in terrorist activists – specifically including persons trying to obtain chemical and nuclear weapons on behalf of al Qaeda – have had contacts with BIF offices and personnel.” The agent opined that Arnaout was a trusted associate of Bin Laden and also Gubuddin Hekmatyar and once involved with Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami organization. For a time, the BIF head administered funds for Bin Laden but later had a personality conflict with Al Qaeda military commander, Egyptian Mohammed Atef. Atef came to head the plans to weaponize anthrax. A folder recovered in another BIF trash search in December 2001 contained handwritten notations in Arabic indicating that BIF had a field office in Zagreb, Croatia for relief operations support of jihad in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In the prosecution of BIF head Arnaout, the agent recounted that in an April 1999, the FBI recovered from BIF’s office in Palos Hills, Illinois, a February 1999 article in the Seattle Times concerning smallpox as a biological terrorism weapon. The sections of the text indicating that
authorities were poorly prepared for a biological attack involving smallpox were highlighted. Although I do not see the referenced article from February 1999, on March 15, 1999, for example, there was a news article explaining that the idea that smallpox was a threat took hold when Ken Alibek said that Russia had produced tons of anthrax, along with smallpox. The FBI at some point apparently realized that if one wanted to gain access to what this defector knew about weaponizing anthrax, one would merely have to apply to be a graduate student down the hall from him – which is exactly what Falls Church, VA Salafist Ali Al-Timimi did.

In 2000, Chechen military commander associated with Bin Laden’s CBRN aspirations, Ibn Khattab solicited funds on the Al Qaeda website, qoqaz.com. Mirrored by a North Brunswick, NJ webmaster Mazen Mokhtar, the website said that funds should be routed through one of two charities. One
of the two charities commended by the website for this purpose was BIF.

In the New York City area, BIF was represented by Saffet Abid Catovic. Catovic was a boy scout troop leader, religious teacher, hospital administrator, and senior Bosnian diplomat and “Minister Counsellor” at the Bosnian Mission to United Nations in Manhattan. New York City police found
his New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation business card among the personal effects of the blind sheik’s bodyguard, El Sayyid Nosair, after Nosair assassinated militant Jewish leader Meir Kahane. Mr. Catovic worked as a budget director at a New York Hospital. In a videotaped religious
lecture, Catovic introduced and praised Siddig Ali (who was later convicted of a central role in a fundamentalist conspiracy to bomb New York landmarks in 1993). Siddig Ali spoke on the subject of “Jihad: The Forgotten Duty.” Catovic spoke alongside Mazen Mokhtar at a jihad summer camp in Pennsylvania in 2000 in which he explained that a timeframe for the US to become a caliphate was 2-5 years.

Yusuf Wells, who was a BIF fundraiser, visited Northern Virginia over the April 14-15, 2001 weekend. The previous month he had been at Iowa State University on a similar visit. On April 15, 2001, he was brought to a paintball game. In the second season, they had become more secretive after
an inquiry by an FBI Special Agent was made in 2000 of one of the members about the games. Part of BIF fundraiser Wells’ job involved writing reports about his fund raising trips. In his April 15, 2001 report he writes:

“I was taken on a trip to the woods where a group of twenty brothers get together to play Paintball. It is a very secret and elite group and as I understand it, it is an honor to be invited to come. The brothers are fully geared up in camouflage fatigues, facemasks, and state of the art paintball
weaponry. They call it ‘training’ and are very serious about it. I knew at least 4 or 5 of them were ex US military, the rest varied.. Many were confused as to why I had been ‘trusted’ to join the group so quickly, but were comforted after my brief talk. Some offered to help me get
presentations on their respective localities.”

After the anthrax mailings, former FBI agent Jack Cloonan and several colleagues arrived in Khartoum, Sudan in November 2001 to interview al-Douri and Bayazid. He was part of a joint FBI-CIA team. Cloonan has said Douri and a second Iraqi laughed when asked about possible bin Laden ties to Saddam Hussein’s regime, saying bin Laden hated Saddam. Bin Laden viewed Saddam as “a Scotch-drinking, woman-chasing apostate.” Both al-Douri and Bayazid lived in Tucson during the early 1990s.

On December 14, 2001, in the afternoon, three immigration agents arrested Rabih Haddad, head of Global Relief Foundation, at his Ann Arbor home on a minor immigration violation. The FBI made related raids of BIF offices in connection with the search for evidence that Bin Laden was
planning further attacks in the US and developing weapons of mass destruction such as weaponized anthrax. United States Attorney Fitzgerald’s original plan did not call for searches or “takedowns of the GRF or BIF offices in Illinois.” Instead, the 9/11 Commission found, the FBI had
intended to listen using electronic intercepts to the reaction to the searches by the charity personnel. Their hand was forced, however, by the reporter’s call to Global Relief Foundation.

The Newark, NJ BIF office was searched in mid-December 2001 at the same time the BIF and Global Relief Foundation offices in Illinois were searched.

The charity investigation remained shrouded in secrecy until June 2002 when a helicopter emerged out of the clouds circling about Adham Hassoun’s car not not far from his residence in Sunrise, Florida. “They thought I was somebody important. They thought they hit the jackpot.” FBI
agents questioned him initially when it was discovered that he had been the American representative for the publication Nida’ul Islam. “Brother Adham Hassoun” was listed as the publication’s subscription officer. Hassoun explained “I called these people and told them, ‘Take my name off there’.”
Hassoun was the founder of BIF in the US, in Plantation, Florida in 1992 before it was moved to Chicago.

The government alleged that Adham Hassoun, a computer programmer, had allegedly planned an assassination, provided material support to terrorist groups, and was a member of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman’s Islamic Group. Hassoun, a Palestinian of Sunrise, Florida born in Lebanon, allegedly tried to recruit Egyptian Mohammed Yousseff, a friend of Padilla’s. Hassoun had ties to charitable groups with alleged links to terrorist groups. The authorities did not want to arrest him and instead wanted to see where he might lead them. Their hand was forced when a Miami reporter called him to ask him about Padilla and they thought he might flee. It is suspected that Hassoun was among those who would be assisting Zacarias Moussaoui in a separate mission, totally separate to 9/11.

Mohammad Javed Qureshi, a Muslim from Pakistan and founder of the School of Islamic Studies in Sunrise, was Padilla’s former boss. As manager of a Taco Bell he hired Padilla to make Tacos about the time Padilla converted to Islam. ”With this latest arrest it leads me to believe that
there is a cell or organization recruiting Muslims for terrorist activities,” Javed told a local newspaper upon news of Padilla’s detention. ”We need to look into Egypt and see where he went,” he told New York Times, “and then put the two and two together. Are there recruiters here?
Yes. Have I met them? No. But .. the recruiters are out there. I’m trying to find them myself.”

The FBI investigation of Mr. Hassoun began after the arrest of supporters of the blind sheik Abdel-Rahman in Brooklyn revealed the existence of a network in North American supporting Islamic fighters worldwide. Thousands of telephone calls between those charged in the Miami
case were monitored by the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies over more than a decade. No one was arrested until June 2002 and no charges were brought until October 2004. Phone calls related to financial support of individuals willing to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Eritrea and
Somalia. A November 2005 indictment details numerous checks payable to Global Relief Foundation to fund “tourists” from 1998 – 2001.

An associate of Jayyousi, Hassoun helped distribute the Islam Report in South Florida and looking for young recruits willing to become mujahidin to fight overseas for extremist Muslim causes, according to the FBI. According to court papers, Hassoun had been under FBI investigation since a
January 1993 telephone call between Hassoun and the blind sheik. Like Hassoun, Jayyousi, a Jordanian national and naturalized U.S. citizen, was a strong supporter of Abdel- Rahman. Jayyousi frequently spoke with the jailed sheik by telephone in 1994 and 1995. Shortly after Rahman’s arrest, Jayyousi (aka Abu Mohammed) founded the American Islamic Group, which published the Islam Report. The newsletter carried news about the sheik and recounted the exploits of jihadists around the world.

Jayyousi, who lived in San Diego, Detroit, Baltimore and Egypt during the probe, also used the Islam Report to raise money for Muslim extremists through nonprofit organizations to include Save Bosnia Now, later renamed to American Worldwide Relief. Jayyousi was interviewed by FBI agents
eight times between 1995 and 2003 about his activities but was not charged until April 2005. He was released on bail – the only defendant in the Miami case to win pretrial release. Jayyousi was dismissed from his job as Assistant Superintendent of DC Public Schools in the Spring of 2001.

Co-defendant Kassem Daher, another follower of Sheik Rahman, lived in Le Duc, Canada and helped distribute Jayyousi’s Islam Report in Canada. According to the FBI, Daher left Canada for Lebanon in May 1998 and is still there, having been detained in 2000. According to the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, Daher had contact with Vanguards of Conquest member Jaballah and involvement with EIJ activities. After 9/11, an article in the Arabic newspaper Sharq al Awsat reported that Lebanon had received a request from Canada through Interpol for information on eight people, including a man described as a “partner of Daher’s” – Ahmad Khadr (“al-Kanadi”). Thus, there appears to have been a coordination between the “al-Kanadi” and Florida networks. The “Florida cell” had connections to Jaballah and would have been concerned over his detention to a security certificate, along with EIJ member Mahmoud Mahjoub.

The federal government charged that Adham Hassoun recruited Padilla into Islam and possibly into al Qaeda. Padilla started studying Islam at the Darul Uloom Islamic Institute and the al-Iman mosque. An outspoken Palestinian activist living in the area, Hassoun had quit his job as a
computer programmer to oversee the opening of a Muslim charity, Benevolence International Foundation, in Plantation. Although only recently incorporated in the U.S., the charity had existed for a couple of years in previous incarnations – with branches in Pakistan, the Sudan, Saudi Arabia and the
Philippines. The group can be traced back to the wealthy Saudis who founded its predecessor groups, two sheiks with strong ties to Osama bin Laden. The same two sheiks underlie the views espoused by the Islamic Assembly of North American formed in 1993. One of the two sheiks, al-Hawali, was in touch with Al-Timimi in fall 2001 in connection with having his views heard and understood by the US Congress.

CBS reported that “US officials describe Hassoun as an important link not only to the Padilla investigation, but possibly to a suspected US-based al-Qaeda network awaiting orders for future attacks. Sources said domestic intelligence intercepts have now convinced officials that such a
network of al-Qaeda fund-raisers and operatives exist in the United States.” Senator Richard Shelby (Republican, Ranking Member, Intelligence Committee) said: “I-I fear that it’s a lot more widespread than we originally thought, and there are probably other terrorist cells that could be affiliated with
them, other groups besides al-Qaeda.”

BIF Canada was founded by Mahammed Khatib, an employee of the International Islamic Relief Organization. International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) is a Saudi charity that Canadian agents allege was involved in financing Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The Manila office of the IIRO
was headed by Khalifa, bin Laden’s brother-in-law. Muslim World League and IIRO had an office at 360 Washington, the location of Al-Timimi’s Dar Arqam. The Canadian BIF chapter shared an office in Toronto with IIRO’s parent organization, Muslim World League, and both Canadian groups were run by the same man.

Dating back to its founding, BIF is connected to World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) in Falls Church, Virginia, which was run by Bin Laden’s nephew. 50 FBI agents raided WAMY offices in late May 2004. The Washington Post explained:

“Sources said the raid was part of an investigation into whether the group’s operations around the world have financial and other ties to terrorists, but the scope of the probe could not be learned because the case is under court seal.” Abdullah bin Laden incorporated WAMY’s U.S.
branch in Falls Church in 1992, became president and was listed on forms until at least 1998. A volunteer board member who had just received his computer sciences doctorate from George Mason University was arrested on immigration charges. He was expert and had published on computer security protocols. The WAMY official and newly minted GMU computer security PhD left for Saudi Arabia in July under a plea agreement.

An arrest warrant then issued for a former Falls Church, Virginia resident, Dr. Hassan Faraj, on immigration charges on June 29, 2004. He had been working as an intern and resident at hospital in Manhattan for the past three years.

The Syrian-born doctor, Hassan Faraj, formerly worked for the Al Qaeda front charity, BIF, in Zagreb, Croatia. He had gone to medical school in Zagreb, graduating in 1995 apparently. He was accused in late June 2004 of supporting an Al Qaeda operative who after 9/11 asked the doctor to support
his application to come to the United States. Dr. Faraj was listed in 2002 as an author of a key article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (“JAMA”) about the fatal anthrax inhalation exposure of 61-year-old Kathy Nguyen. She had worked in the stockroom of Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital (MEETH), which was a subsidiary of Lenox Hill. The article concluded that although her workplace had been searched for traces of anthrax, it was unknown how Kathy Nguyen had been exposed. It is still unknown how Kathy Nguyen was exposed to anthrax – and an association of BIF under these circumstances is still of keen interest.

For now….

1. I think there was something in the Israel press in 2001 on the raids. I can’t seem to find the reference, though. It gets cited a lot, though. Maybe from Yedi’oth.

2. Bosnia was huge for the global jihadis in the early and mid-1990s. Once things started to wind down in Afghanistan, ca. 1989, it became the most popular place to train for western and Arabic-speaking jihadis. More hospitable than Chechnya, and not under ISI’s thumb, like Kashmir.

There was a reticence to discuss it during the 9/11 hearing, as U.S. policy had been to turn a blind eye to the influx of jihadis and to Iranian arms shipments; possibly, too, as it was a cause dear to the hearts of many (clueless) American journalists. Nonetheless, Bosnia is one of the best documented areas from the 1990s: due to the documents produced by the Hague trials and the wealth of other materials generated by EU and US military and intel. We can pretty much reconstruct events on a day to day basis.

Domestic U.S. law enforcement has not been much interested in looking too closely at Americans who fought there, or more recent immigrants who arrived to the U.S. from there. Heck, Hooper and Awad from CAIR went in the winter of 1993, to Zenica. And there was only one reason to go the Zenica in 1993…. In the large town where I live, I’ve known at least a dozen guys who fought there, under Saudi aegis, including two important imams. One has since fled the country (links to both WTC I and WTC II). The other is currently under indictment.

Here’s Kohlman ::

Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe

To underscore that point, the Bosnian government freely cooperated with United States authorities on a number of high-profile and successful terror raids in local areas. A NATO officer explained what was to unfold in an article later published in a United States military newspaper: ‘These raids were small . . . Two to three guys on surveillance, a few SUVs drive up, a few guys go in quietly, bag ‘em, tag ‘em, and drag ‘em out to SUVs and then on to the detention facility.’ As described, on 25 September, at 3:30 a.m., six United States special forces Green Berets travelling in four rented SUVs stopped outside the Hotel Hollywood in a suburb of Sarajevo. The soldiers smashed open the front door of the hotel with weapons drawn, and seized two Middle-Eastern men sleeping inside: Hamed Abdel Rahim al-Jamal, a Jordanian, and Al-Halim Hassam Khafagi, an Egyptian. Both were deported to their respective homelands about 10 days later.

– 219 –

Nine hours later, the same six United States commandos repeated their raids at the local headquarters of the Saudi High Commission for Relief in Ilidza. Despite its close links to the government of the Saudi Arabia, the High Commission was still allowed to be raided ‘because it seemed to be a meeting point and a central location for some of the guys [SFOR intelligence agents] were trailing or monitor- ing,’ according to one NATO source. Aided by supporting Italian carabinieri stationed with the military police, the Americans arrested two more suspects and seized a number of intriguing documents. The NATO officer added: ‘That’s when we discovered the extent that NGOs are used as a cover for some suspicious activities.’ Representatives of the American government reportedly confronted the Saudi ambassador in Sarajevo with the damning evidence, who was ‘surprised, and [he] promised to look into it.’ The United States subsequently asked the Bosnian government to officially shut down the local operations of four Islamic charities, including the Saudi High Commission.11

Encouraged by the results, SFOR counter-terrorism operations continued on 27 September with a raid of the Visoko airfield, northwest of Sarajevo. This action was quite significant; it consisted of at least two to three M2 Bradley armored fighting vehicles, thirty to forty Humvee jeeps, and eight to ten armed combat helicopters. According to United States military officials, their intelligence had indicated that Visoko airport served as a hub for ‘organizations that supported transnational terrorist organizations.’ One of their chief concerns was the prospect of crop-dusting aircraft being retrofitted for germ warfare.

In fact, a few days later, their fears that Visoko was hiding an anti-Western terror plot proved to be well founded. Between 17 and 21 October, Bosnian authorities detained at least eleven Islamic militants linked to the international north African sleeper cell network who were plotting a crude aerial attack on two American military bases in Bosnia: Eagle Base and Camp Connor. An unnamed NATO source was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as stating that the terrorists were suspected of planning to collect a small armada of light planes and helicopters from Visoko airfield, and suicide-crash them into the foreign military installations. The information had come from an intelligence intercept on 16 October in Sarajevo on a conversation discussing United States bombing in Afghanistan and ‘what the response should be’ in Europe. After a discussion of hitting a collection of Ameri- can and British targets in the region, the callers ended with a definite, ‘Tomorrow, we will start.’ The apparent ringleader of the group of primarily Algerians and Egyptians was a 41-year-old Algerian named Bensayah Belkacem, (also known as Majed). American intelligence had become familiar with Belkacem through monitoring of the satellite telephones of a number of his terrorist cohorts in Afghanistan. Police who raided Belkacem’s various local residences found Algerian and Yemeni identity papers, blank passports, and, according to Bosnian Interior Minister Muhammad Besic, the telephone numbers of senior Al-Qaida terrorist

– 220 –

recruiters and Bosnian war veterans Abu Zubaydah and Abu el-Ma`ali.12 A closer look at his cell phone records revealed that Belkacem had also called locations in Afghanistan at least seventy times in the month following September 11.

One of the other eleven suspects arrested included the recently pardoned Saber Lahmar, a known GIA terrorist who had already been imprisoned for his role in terrorist acts in Bosnia. On 19 October, a local Bosnian news magazine reported that a telephone number ascribed to Abu el-Ma`ali was found among Lahmar’s belongings at the time of his arrest.13 Lahmar was also a known employee of the Saudi High Commission for Relief.14 The involvement of the charities in the plot, especially as parallel investigations of BIF and other organizations in the United States picked up pace, was no longer ignored. The Saudi High Commission came under obvious scrutiny, and its role became exposed in preying on the poor and destitute and using its vast weapon of wealth to aggressively propagate strict Wahhabi Islam. In July 2001, the High Commission publicly disclosed that over nine years, it had collected $600 million for its programs in Bosnia.15 It has yet to offer a credible explanation for where the lionshare of that money went.

United States officials, aided by novel enthusiasm on behalf of the Bosnian government to crack down on their former Arab allies, were finally starting to uncover the truth about the staggering recruitment and financial arms of the loosely assembled Arab-Afghan movement, despite being hidden by a humanitarian face. Saber Lahmar’s arrest was particularly embarrassing for the Bosnian government, as he had already been in their custody for his past acknowledged role in the local north African sleeper cell terrorist network. His pardon from jail in 2000 seems to have been a grave error by the Bosnian government; indeed, it nearly cost the lives of potentially hundreds of United States and British peacekeepers in the Balkans.16 The discovery of the Visoko airport terror conspiracy caused a minor-furor both in the Bosnian press, and also in Western capitals still reeling from the shock of the devastating 11 September suicide hijackings. European governments were particu- larly concerned about the notion that a new similar airborne plot was being hatched so close to home. Almost immediately, the United States and UK temporarily closed their embassies and consulates in the region until a renewed strategic assessment could be completed about potential terrorist threats lurking in Bosnia. On 17 October, BiH Foreign Minister Lagumdzija was immediately dispatched to Belgium for high-level talks with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

11. Naylor,SeanD.‘RoutingOutTerrorisminBosnia.’ArmyTimes,10December
2001, p. 12.
12. McGrory, Daniel. ‘Bin Laden aide arrested in Bosnia.’ The Times (London),
11 October 2001.
13. Habul,Emir.‘ReactionsinSouthEastEuropetotheattackson11September.’
AIM (Alternative Information Network) Press. http://www.aimpress.org. 22
October 2001.
14. Purvis, Andrew. ‘Targeting “Eagle Base.”’ Time, 5 November 2001, p. 36.
15. Schwartz, Steven. Op. cit., pp. 189–90.
16. Rubin, Daniel. ‘NATO: Terrorist attacks against U.S. installations in Bosnia averted.’ Knight Ridder News Agency. 25 October 2001.

The New York Times

November 6, 2004 Saturday
Late Edition – Final

U.S. Letter Tries to Establish a Doctor’s Links to Terrorists

BYLINE: By SABRINA TAVERNISE

SECTION: Section B; Column 3; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 729 words

In a letter submitted to a federal judge yesterday, prosecutors outlined what they said were ties linking a Syrian-born American doctor, who has been charged with lying to obtain American citizenship, to terrorism and suspected members of Al Qaeda.

Still, no new charges have been brought against the man, Hassan Faraj, of Brooklyn, and his lawyer belittled the letter as a scare tactic and called the allegations flimsy.

Mr. Faraj, 39, was arrested in June and charged with naturalization fraud. Prosecutors accuse him of lying to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, when he applied in 1993 to come to the United States as a Bosnian refugee. He was later released on bail.

Mr. Faraj worked for three years until June as a resident in internal medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital, a hospital spokeswoman said.

”The government loves to dangle all the buzzwords because it’s very seductive,” said the lawyer, Stanley Cohen. ”Quite frankly, Judge, it means nothing. There’s nothing new.”

In the letter, addressed to Judge Kiyo Matsumoto, prosecutors in the office of the United States attorney for the Eastern District charged that Mr. Faraj tried to help a man they say was a suspected Qaeda associate enter the United States.

They also raised questions about what they said were shredded blueprints of Washington-area sites found in his apartment and about his association with a Muslim charity group in Croatia.

Formally, the letter was drawn up to request that Judge Matsumoto order Mr. Faraj taken into custody because of what prosecutors said was a risk that he might flee the country.

Judge Matsumoto ordered yesterday that Mr. Faraj be electronically monitored, but he delayed a decision on whether he will be held until the next hearing, set for Nov. 10.

The letter also provided a look into the prosecutors’ thinking on the case. Terror-related charges would carry years of jail time, while Mr. Faraj faces a maximum of six months in jail and deportation under the current naturalization fraud charges, his lawyer said.

Nationwide, federal prosecutors have had mixed results prosecuting terror cases.

In Detroit last year, two men were convicted on terrorism charges in a prominent case, whose handling later came into question.

In February, a federal judge in Virginia acquitted an American who had been accused of taking part in a ”jihad network” in Virginia.

An assistant United States attorney, John Buretta, the prosecutor who argued the case yesterday, declined to comment on why Mr. Faraj had not been indicted on any terror-related charges, saying only that an investigation into his activities is continuing.

Among the questions raised in the letter were prosecutors’ claims that Mr. Faraj worked for and later donated money to a Muslim charity, Benevolence International Foundation, whose assets were frozen in December 2001 after the government designated it a terrorist organization.

It gained national attention when its director was charged with terrorism, and Attorney General John Ashcroft went to Chicago to announce the indictment.

Mr. Cohen argued that the charity was a United Nations-registered entity at the time Mr. Faraj worked there and that his subsequent donations mentioned by prosecutors totaled just $750.

In addition, a federal judge in Chicago declined to convict the organization’s director, Enaam Arnaout, a Syrian-born American citizen, on terrorism charges.

”Indict him and arrest him and charge him with terrorism,” Mr. Cohen said.

”They don’t because they can’t prove it.”

Mr. Cohen said the destroyed blueprints had belonged to Mr. Faraj’s older brother, a civil engineer, who had lived with Mr. Faraj for several years but had moved out this summer.

Prosecutors also said Mr. Faraj had tried to help a man they identified as a suspected Qaeda associate enter the United States in December 2001 by filling out an affidavit agreeing to sponsor the man. It was not clear from the letter if the man had eventually entered the United States, or what his precise connection was to Al Qaeda.

Mr. Faraj, a soft-spoken man quick to smile, said he had provided the affidavit as a courtesy for a friend who knew the man, Amir Abdulrazzak.

Sitting outside the courtroom half an hour early for his hearing yesterday, Mr. Faraj said: ”I have nothing to be afraid of. They have nothing else to do but to make things up.”

When Aafia SIddiqui was asked about her emails to Adnan and others, she insisted on fleeing the country before a second planned FBI interview. She screamed to her husband “Are you trying to get me killed?” (Scroggins, WANTED WOMEN, 2012)

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/287/7/858

Dr Hasan Faraj who was an author on the above JAMA paper on the death of anthrax victim Kathy Nguyen was arrested.

By way of the background you mention (see Schinder, Unholy War, p. 284), in October 2001, NATO forces raided the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia and seized before-and-after photographs of the World Trade Center, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole; maps of government buildings in Washington; materials for forging U.S. State Department badges; files on the use of crop duster aircraft; and anti-Semitic and anti-American material geared toward children. An employee of the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia and another cell member was in telephone contact with Osama bin Laden aide and al-Qaeda operational commander Abu Zubayda. The employee’s planned immigration to the United States was going to be sponsored by Dr. Hassan Faraj, who worked at the hospital where the first New York inhalational anthrax victim died. The doctor was a co-author of a leading article in the Journal of American Medical Association (“JAMA”) about the causes of the woman’s death. Dr. Faraj lived in the building next to Al-Timimi until 1999 when he moved to Brooklyn to take an internship at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan.

An arrest warrant issued for a former Falls Church, Virginia resident, Dr. Hassan Faraj, on immigration charges on June 29, 2004. He had been working as an intern and resident at hospital in Manhattan for the past three years.

The Syrian-born doctor, Hassan Faraj, formerly worked for the Al Qaeda front charity, BIF, in Zagreb, Croatia. He was accused in late June 2004 of supporting an Al Qaeda terrorist. He was listed in 2002 as an author of a key article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (“JAMA”) about the fatal anthrax inhalation exposure of 61- year-old Kathy Nguyen. She had worked in the stockroom of Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital (MEETH), which was a subsidiary of Lenox Hill. The doctor, Hassan Faraj, was an intern there at the time and then finished his residency at Lenox Hill in 2004. The article explained that an epidemiological study of her workplace and residence had not turned up any explanation of how she was exposed. The United States government charged Dr. Farah with immigration violations, accusing him of providing aid to a supporter of Osama Bin Laden and making false statements. In early November 2004, federal prosecutors alleged that they found shredded blueprints for a suburban Washington overpass in a bag in his Brooklyn apartment. His lawyer claimed that they were from his brother, a lecturer at an unidentified Washington-area university who had left the country. Prosecutors said that Faraj’s duties included running recruits to camps in Bosnia. In November 2004, the Daily News reported that “Computers seized at the foundation’s office in Chicago contained a deleted file stating, ‘Hassan has spent substantial amount of time with us in Bosnia . . . and had said that he is willing to do anything.’”

In an April 11, 2005 letter (provided to me by intelwire.com, an Assistant United States Attorney explained to a federal magistrate the “defendant had engaged in repeated fraud in pursuing a medical career in this country, including lying to obtain his Virginia medical license.” The Virginia medical licensing website, there is a Consent Order confirming that he had surrendered his license. His license in Connecticut was also allowed to expire that year after it had been granted.

The AUSA in the 2005 letter explained that on June 29, 2004, the defendant had been arrested on charges of falsely obtaining his United States citizenship, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 1425. The defendant gained his citizenship in part because he had fraudulently obtained asylum. The government summarized:

“To get asylum, the defendant claimed that he was a Bosnian citizen, that his Bosnian wife … had been killed by Serbs during the Balkan conflict, that he had been studying medicine at Sarajevo University in Bosnia, and that he had been forced to flee Bosnia due to the conflict. These claims were a sham. The defendant was not a Bosnian citizen, [his wife] never existed, the defendant never studied medicine at Sarajevo University, and the defendant was not forced to flee Bosnia (indeed, he did not even reside in Bosnia, but rather in Croatia).”

At his initial appearance on June 30, 2004, the defendant was released pursuant to an agreed upon bail amount of $100,000, co-signed by two sureties.

On August 12, 2004, the defendant was indicted on the immigration charge. Sitting outside the courtroom in November 2004 before his hearing on whether his bail would be revoked, Mr. Faraj told the New York Times reporter: “I have nothing to be afraid of. They have nothing else to do but to make things up.”

In early November 2004, the government learned that the defendant had violated his pre-trial release conditions by making false statements in his August 2004 Virginia medical licensing application. The defendant made at least two false statements to the Virginia board: (i) falsely asserting that he had not engaged in any plea bargaining in any matter; and (ii) falsely asserting that he had never been censured or warned in regard to his medical background. The February 2007 Consent Order in Virginia explains that he had been warned about his job performance on February 28, 2003.

The government argued that false statements to the Virginia board were part of a larger pattern of medical fraud by the defendant, dating back several years. In essence, the defendant satisfied two other essential medical requirements beyond the state licensing requirement through fraud: (i) fraudulently securing a required medical residency position at Lenox Hill hospital, and (ii) fraudulently securing a required certification from the Educational Committee for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMGO). The government contended that in 2001, the defendant told at least two significant lies to secure the residency. “First, in his personal statement and application submitted to Lenox Hill, the defendant falsely claimed that, “[f]rom January 1996 to January 1997, I did an internship in Zvijezda Hospital in Zagreb where I rotated in all departments.” The government continued: “In fact, the defendant did not intern at that hospital and was in the United States eleven months of the twelve he was supposedly doing the internship in Croatia.”

The defendant engaged in similar fraud, the government explained, in his submissions to the Educational Committee for Foreign Medical Graduates, which regulates the practice of foreign medical graduates in the United States. Among other things, the defendant falsely asserted to the ECFMG that he was an intern at yet another hospital in Croatia in 1996, the Venograd Hospital. The defendant even went so far as to submit a fraudulent certification to ECFMG that he interned at Sestre Vinogradska (Sisters of Misericordy) hospital in Croatia from September 1, 1996 to January 31, 1997.

The good doctor came under suspicion, in part, because of his support for suspected foreign terrorist Amir Abdulrazzak. Associated Press reported in November 2004 that “Sources familiar with the case said Abdulrazzak’s immigration documents were found on a computer recovered during a raid by U.S. Special Forces on a building in Bosnia housing the Saudi High Commission for Relief, an independent group linked to the Saudi Arabian government. The building, also known as “Mecca House,” was targeted after intelligence reports indicated terror suspects using it as a meeting house were planning to attack U.S. and NATO targets in Bosnia, according to a 2001 report by Army Times, a weekly for military personnel.”

In the 2005 letter to the federal magistrate, the Department of Justice formally provided additional detail:

“In the fall of 2004, the government discovered that the defendant used his fraudulently-obtained United States citizenship in January 2002 to sponsor the attempted entry into the United States by suspected foreign terrorist Amir Abdulrazzak, also known as Amir Amrush. At the time, Amir Abdulrazzak was an employee of the Saudi High Commission for Refugees (SHCR) in Bosnia. In October 2001, just a few months before the defendant’s sponsorship of Abdulrazzak, NATO forces raided the SHCR Sarajevo office where Abdulrazzak worked. The search recovered computers containing, among other things, the following information:

– confirmation of Abdulrazzak’s SHCR employment, including as acting manager of SHCR

– Abdulrazzak’s obtainment of software to hack into Hotmail e-mail accounts;

– an inventory of chemical protective clothing;

– anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda;

– a German magazine article regarding Usama Bin Laden’s travel to Bosnia in 1993; and

– documents concerning the appearance of United States State Department identification.

Due to SHCR’s terrorism ties, the Saudi government eventually closed the SHCR Sarajevo office.”

The government claimed that “the defendant’s attempt to assist Abdulrazzak was only the most recently known example of the defendant’s support for terrorism-related organizations.”

As noted above, when he was not sponsoring Al Qaeda operatives, he was serving as a listed author on an article in a prestigious journal addressing the epidemiological puzzle of the anthrax spores that infected a fellow Lenox Hill employee Kathy Nguyen — who worked in the stock room at MEETH. It seems that one never knows what one is hiding in the closet.

Attorney Stanley L. Cohen represented Hassan Faraj. “The defendant had nothing to give and wouldn’t become one of their snitches,” Cohen told the press in November 2004. Attorney Cohen was the law partner of radical attorney Lynne Stewart, who represented blind sheik Abdel-Rahman. The blind sheik’s son, Mohammed Abdel-Rahman, was on Al Qaeda’s 3-member WMD committee. Mohammed was in frequent contact with the blind sheik’s paralegal, Post Office employee Abdel Sattar. He would use Lynne Stewart as a “dove” to send messages to his father. The blind sheik once bemusedly said that they’ll stop using doves when the US stops using secret evidence. Mohammed Abdel Rahman was captured on February 13, 2003 in Quetta, Pakistan, and that had quickly led to the seizure of anthrax spraydrying documents at the home of a bacteriologist and the raid on Ali Al-Timimi’s townhouse on February 26, 2003. According to the February 2007 Virginia Consent Order, two days later — “on or about February 28, 2003″ — Lenox Hill had issued a warning to Dr. Faraj about his job performance.

Those massive searches and numerous arrests would be enough to distract even the most committed doctor from their work. On that day — the day Al-Timimi’s townhouse was searched — 100 agents came here and simultaneously interviewed 150 people.

See also

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9500E2DE123CF935A35752C1A9629C8B63

In a letter submitted to a federal judge yesterday, prosecutors outlined what they said were ties linking a Syrian-born American doctor, who has been charged with lying to obtain American citizenship, to terrorism and suspected members of Al Qaeda.

Still, no new charges have been brought against the man, Hassan Faraj, of Brooklyn, and his lawyer belittled the letter as a scare tactic and called the allegations flimsy.

Mr. Faraj, 39, was arrested in June and charged with naturalization fraud. Prosecutors accuse him of lying to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, when he applied in 1993 to come to the United States as a Bosnian refugee. He was later released on bail.

Mr. Faraj worked for three years until June as a resident in internal medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital, a hospital spokeswoman said.

FBIS :: Translating London Al-Sharq al-Awsat in Arabic 6 Mar 99 p 5

[...]

Nonconventional Weapons [subhead]

The most controversial point in the confessions of the defendants from
the Albanian fundamentalist group was the confirmation that pro-Bin-Ladin
elements had obtained germ and biological weapons by post at a cheap
price. Factories in the former Eastern Europe supply viruses that cause
fatal diseases, such as E-Coli and Salmonella, without checking the
identities of the purchasers. The important thing for them is payment of
the invoice in advance. One of the organization’s members secure an offer
to supply samples of anthrax gas [as published] and other toxic gases
from a factory in a Southeast Asian country. The germs were offered at a
price of $3,685, including shipping costs. A laboratory in Indonesia
exported serums to the Islamic Moro Front, which has close ties with
pro-Bin-Ladin groups and with Arab Afghans and Balkans [as published]. It
is believed that the Moro Front has large quantities of toxic gases.
In another part of the investigation the defendants said that a
laboratory in the Czech Republic had agreed to provide samples of the
lethal butolinum germ at $7,500 a sample. The laboratory did not query
the purpose for which this lethal substance would be used. The security
services’ report on this point said that it is possible to use a
microscopic quantity of these viruses [as published] to kill hundreds of
people by inhaling it or eating contaminated food.

The security services monitored contacts that elements abroad made with
members inside the country to urge them to carry out new operations
against police officers with the aim of undermining security. The
security authorities exerted great efforts to monitor these elements and
succeeded in getting back 12 leading members from Albania, another group
from Arab and African countries, in addition to defendants seized in the
[Nile] Delta area as they were preparing to carry out new operations,
specially the al-Minufiyah group. The latter included ‘Amr ‘Ali, Sayyid
Jum’ah, Majid Muhammad Mulukhiyah, Muhammad ‘Abd-al-Mu’min Yusri, ‘Ali
‘Abd-al-Raziq Abu-Shanab, Sa’id Muhammad ‘Abd-al-Ghaffar, and Muhammad
‘Abd-al-Mun’im, in addition to Ahmad Sayyid Ibrahim al-Najjar, who was
sentenced to death in the Khan al-Khalili case. Among the arrested
defendants were Jad Abu-Sari’ al-Qannas, Samir al-’Attar, Sabri Ibrahim
al-’Attar, Mahmud al-Sayyid ‘Abd-al-Dayim, Muhammad Husayn, Ashraf ‘Ali
Isma’il, Samir ‘Abd-al-Mun’im, Hasan Muhammad Hasan, ‘Abdallah Muhammad
al-Bakri, Sayyid Muhammad ‘Ali Mansur, Muhammad Muhammad Shalgham, ‘Imad
Ahmad Hasanayn, ‘Awad Hasan Mutawalli, Na’im ‘Abd-al-Na’im, Hisham
Abazah, and ‘Ali al-’Arif.

[...]

SOURCE: http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1999/03/990306-cairo.htm

Cf. also Islamic Terror and the Balkans – Shaul Shay – Google Books – http://goo.gl/y1wFM
Probably used the FBIS report.