Man detained as essential witness

Ex-airline food worker denies link; 9 arrested in hazardous-material investigation

09/27/2001

From Staff and Wire Reports

INVESTIGATION DEVELOPMENTS • Mohamed Abdi of Alexandria, Va., was ordered by a U.S. magistrate to be held without bail as a material witness. His name and phone number were found in a car registered to one of the 19 hijackers. • European officials continued to crack down on terrorism suspects, with arrests in Spain, Britain and the Netherlands in an effort to link Osama bin Laden to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. • Three men were arrested in western Washington state for investigation of identity theft in connection with the terrorist attacks. The men were accused of falsely obtaining documents that would have allowed them to transport hazardous materials. • The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has asked securities firms to check their records for any links with the 27 people and organizations whose U.S. assets were recently frozen.

WASHINGTON – The government increased its pressure Wednesday on a former airline catering worker whose name and phone number were found in a car registered to a hijacker, persuading a federal court to detain him without bail.

Prosecutors described Mohamed Abdi of Virginia as an essential witness and said "he may be more." Mr. Abdi's lawyer said his client knew nothing about the Sept. 11 attacks. Attorney Joseph Bowman said Mr. Abdi was just "a guy trying to make his way" who had "his name found in an unfortunate place."

Mr. Abdi's name and phone number were on a Washington road map found in a car registered to Nawaq Alhamzi, identified by the FBI as one of the hijackers who commandeered the American Airlines flight that crashed into the Pentagon.

Mr. Abdi was arrested on forgery charges unrelated to the attacks. Mr. Bowman said that evidence linking him to the hijackers was sketchy, at best. A woman who answered the telephone at Mr. Abdi's Alexandria, Va., address said she did not speak English and hung up.

Also on Wednesday, nine people were arrested and accused of fraudulently obtaining commercial driver's licenses permitting them to carry hazardous material, the Justice Department said. Although all of the warrants were issued in Pennsylvania, where the fraudulent documents allegedly were obtained, the arrests occurred in Michigan, Washington and Missouri. None of those arrested Wednesday has known connections to the attacks, said Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden

A day earlier, Attorney General John Ashcroft cautioned Congress that fraudulent commercial licenses had been obtained by "several individuals, including individuals who may have links to the hijackers." Later, a senior department official said 20 people had been charged with fraudulently obtaining such licenses.

In the Virginia case, FBI Special Agent Kevin W. Ashby testified that when Mr. Abdi was arrested, he had a piece of newspaper containing an article about Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian convicted of conspiring to bomb the Los Angeles airport as part of a millennium terror plot.

Investigators said the name "Mohumed" and a phone number registered to Mr. Abdi, a security guard and naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia, were written on a map found inside the car parked at Dulles International Airport, where American Airlines Flight 77 took off.

Agent Ashby said Mr. Abdi "could offer no explanation" for how his name and phone number turned up on a map in a terrorist's car. When pressed, Mr. Abdi said he donated his car to the Salvation Army in 1999 and that perhaps he had left the map behind, the agent said.

However, Mr. Abdi in 1999 did not have the phone number found on the map, Agent Ashby testified.

Agent Ashby said Mr. Abdi worked for an airline catering company at Washington's Reagan National Airport in the early to mid-1990s. Since 1994, Mr. Abdi has worked as a security guard for Burns Internal Security, which is owned by Securitas of Chicago.

A Burns official said Mr. Abdi had no criminal record and wasn't stationed at an airport during his time with the company.

Mr. Abdi has lived with his wife and two daughters in a two-bedroom unit at the Auburn Village apartment complex the last two years, neighbors said.

A quiet pair

A warrant for his arrest was issued Sunday, and Mr. Abdi was taken into custody Monday, Mr. Davis said.

Robert Smith, 33, said he had not seen Mr. Abdi for several days and thought it was strange.

Mr. Smith and other neighbors described Mr. Abdi as an affable, soft-spoken man who kept mostly to himself.

His wife, they said, was reclusive, never speaking to anyone outside her family. "She didn't go anywhere without him," Mr. Smith said.

After a separate hearing, U.S. Magistrate Welton Curtis Sewell granted the government's request to detain Herbert Villalobos, who was arrested Monday in Arlington, Va. Mr. Villalobos was charged with helping hijacker Abdulaziz Alomari obtain a fraudulent Virginia ID card.

In other developments:

• A federal prosecutor in New York said Al-Badr Al-Hazmi, a San Antonio radiologist who was detained for nearly two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks and released Tuesday, never was a subject of the investigation. Dr. Al-Hazmi "voluntarily answered all questions put to him," said U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White. "He was not and is not a subject of this investigation."

• The Daily Oklahoman reported that one of the people being held in the investigation, Zacarias Moussaoui, signed up this year to work out at the University of Oklahoma's physical fitness center. Mr. Moussaoui, 33, is under investigation because he wanted to practice steering – but not landing – on a jumbo-jet simulator in Minnesota. He was detained Aug. 17 on an immigration violation and remains in custody.

He took flying lessons last spring at a Norman, Okla., flight school, the owner said last week.

Staff writer Terri Langford in Alexandria, Va., and The Associated Press contributed to this report.