Russian Plane Searched at JFK Airport
— -- Russian Aircraft Searched at JFK Airport
N E W Y O R K, Oct. 23 — An Aeroflot aircraft fromRussia was searched at John F. Kennedy International Airport inNew York today for possible radioactive material butnone was found, law enforcement officials said.
They said the flight from Moscow with 176 passengers onboard landed about 2 p.m. in New York and wasinvestigated after Russian authorities called U.S. authoritiesand said an individual on the plane should be searched.
"Based on information that we received earlier today, wehave an interest in interviewing a passenger on that plane,"FBI spokesman Jim Margolin said. "We believe this should beresolved within a couple of hours."
One suspect was taken into custody, said Gordon Johndroe,spokesman for the White House Homeland Security Department.
"Information was received that led federal authorities tosearch the plane. The plane has been cleared and released toAeroflot for use. All runways are operational," Johndroe saidin Washington.
Agents from the FBI, U.S. Customs and the Port Authority ofNew York and New Jersey met the plane. Passengers were takenoff the Boeing 767 as the search was conducted.
One official said the suspect was being questioned aboutpossible smuggling and it appeared unlikely to be terroristrelated.
— Reuters
Man Charged With Perjury for Allegedly Lying About Attack Plan
D E T R O I T, Oct. 23 — A man who told federal agents a month beforeSept. 11, 2001, that an airplane attack was being planned onWashington is facing trial on perjury charges for allegedly lyingto a grand jury.
Gussan Abraham Jarrar, 42, a Jordanian, told the Detroit FreePress in a jail interview that nobody would listen to his warning.
An FBI report acknowledges that Jarrar gave vague statements inAugust 2001, but said agents determined he had no real informationand simply fabricated details of a nonexistent terrorist cell toliven up his jail stay.
"If they would have given me a chance, I would have found outwhat was going to happen," Jarrar told the newspaper.
According to the Aug. 30, 2001, FBI report, Jarrar predictedterrorists would "carry out a suicide plane bombing attack on theWhite House, Washington, D.C., sometime during the holiday season,2001, possibly Thanksgiving and or Christmas."
"He either had knowledge or he's an amazing soothsayer," hislawyer, Donald Ferris, said.
FBI spokeswoman Dawn Clenney in Detroit said Jarrar wastedvaluable FBI resources. Federal authorities spent monthsinvestigating his claims.
"He liked to talk," Monroe County Assistant Prosecutor KennethSwinkey said Tuesday. "He claimed he had a lot of informationabout criminal activity and literally took our sheriff's detectivesfor a ride."
At the time he talked to federal agents, Jarrar was being heldon a drug charge.
Called before a grand jury in Detroit on Aug. 16, 2001, hetestified that he and seven other men planned to blow up theMackinac Bridge, the federal building in Detroit and the CedarPoint amusement park at Sandusky, Ohio. He claimed the group,called Whatever It Takes, was an anti-Israeli organization.
Jarrar said he learned of the planned Washington attack fromdocuments he found in a briefcase in a vehicle he repaired for anassociate of the group.
The grand jury said he lied about the existence of the group,falsely claimed he bought parts to make pipe bombs and fabricated aletter he claimed had been written by a member of the plot.
Each charge is punishable by five years in prison and Jarrarcould be deported if he is convicted. His trial is scheduled fornext week.
— The Associated Press
President Bush Signs Defense Spending Bill
W A S H I N G T O N, Oct. 23 — With strokes of his pen today, PresidentBush signed into law a bill giving him the tools he wants to wagean expensive, no-end-in-sight global fight against terror andpossibly Saddam Hussein.
"Our nation faces grave new dangers, and our nation must fullysupport the men and women of our military who confront thesedangers on our behalf," Bush said before signing legislationproviding a hefty increase in defense spending and financing formilitary construction projects in 2003.
"The bill says America is determined and resolute to not onlydefend our freedom but to defend freedom around the world, thatwe're determined and resolute to answer the call to history andthat we will defeat terror," Bush told a Rose Garden audience ofmostly uniformed military personnel, along with a handful oflawmakers.
The spending measures were the first of their kind to become law— three weeks after the start of the 2003 budget year. Lawmakers who were deadlocked over spending decisions andanxious about midterm elections left Capitol Hill last week tocampaign. They plan to finish the other 11 required spending billsin a lame-duck session after the Nov. 5 voting.
The $355.4 billion defense bill, approved with overwhelmingsupport to provide most of what Bush requested, increases spendingby more than $34 billion over the previous fiscal year. Bush sought$367 billion, but ran into bipartisan resistance to his proposalfor a $10 billion fund he could tap without congressional input forcombating terrorists overseas.
"It's the largest increase in defense spending since PresidentReagan was the president," Bush said Tuesday as he stumped forcandidates in Bangor, Maine.
"Any time the United States of America sends our youngstersinto harm's way they deserve the best pay, the best training andthe best possible equipment. ... It doesn't matter how long ittakes to defend freedom, we'll do it. ... We have a duty to futuregenerations of Americans to make this land secure."
With the military moving toward a war footing with Iraq, thedefense measure increases spending in almost every area, fromweapons procurement to payroll. It includes a 4.1 percent pay raisefor military personnel and almost all the $7.4 billion Bushrequested to keep developing a national missile defense system.
The defense bill also provides $3.3 billion for 15 C-17transport aircraft, $2.3 billion for two Aegis destroyers, $3.2billion for 46 Navy F/A-18 E/F fighters and $3.5 billion tocontinue developing the Joint Strike Fighter. Another $249 millionis allotted for Navy Tomahawk cruise missiles, a prime weapon inthe Persian Gulf War.
Nonmilitary federal programs are operating on last year'sbudgets, under a fourth temporary funding bill that is good throughNov. 22.
— The Associated Press
Lawyer Calls Case Against Islamic Charity Leader ‘Assault on Islam’
D E T R O I T, Oct. 23 — A lawyer for the jailed head of
a U.S.-based Muslim charity group that has been branded a
foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government said
Tuesday his client was the victim of an "assault on Islam" by
the Bush administration.
"Rabih Haddad is not a terrorist. He's not in any way, form
or shape associated with terrorism," said the lawyer, Noel
Saleh.
"This is just a totally unjustified assault on Islam, on
Islamic Americans, and upon persons who believe that the
American system of justice is the correct system of justice —
in that it allows for dissent, it allows for having differing
points of view," Saleh said.
"Unfortunately, the Bush and Ashcroft administration doesn't
seem to believe that, and no longer believes in the basic
tenets of our constitution," he said.
Haddad, a native of Lebanon and Michigan-based co-founder
of the Global Relief Foundation, has been under arrest since
December for overstaying his tourist visa.
He is one of hundreds of detainees whose proceedings have
been kept largely secret, as part of the Bush administration's
anti-terror campaign after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World
Trade Center and Pentagon last year.
On Friday the U.S. Treasury Department put Global Relief on
its list of Specially Designated Global Terrorist
organizations. In doing so, it alleged the group has
well-established ties to Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda
network, the shadowy group suspected of orchestrating the Sept.
11 attacks.
Saleh, who spoke to reporters after a bond hearing for
Haddad in a federal immigration court, said the government has
offered no solid evidence of a link between Global Relief and
al Qaeda or any other terror group.
"The government has been investigating Global Relief since
1997 and they really haven't shown us much of anything," he
said.
The immigration judge who presided over Haddad's bond
hearing said he would rule on a request for his release later
this week. Haddad was to appear in court again today,
however, for a hearing on his request that he and his family be
granted political asylum in the United States. Government
prosecutors are expected to request his immediate deportation
to Lebanon.
During a bond hearing Tuesday, Immigration and Naturalization Services attorney Marsha Nettles said Haddad was not eligible to seek political asylum because he did not apply for it within a year of entering the United States.
But defense attorney Ashraf Nubani said the 41-year-old Ann Arbor resident can apply for asylum because Lebanon's political climate has changed since Haddad left, and that his case's publicity would make him a target of human rights violations.
"We have a war and it's not a war against al Qaeda," said
Saleh, who called the case against Haddad "this travesty of
justice."
"It's not a war that's limited against terrorism. They've
expanded the definition of that war ... It's a war against
Islam."
— Reuters
Moussaoui’s Ex-Roommate Sentenced for Lying, Agreed to Testify
N E W Y O R K, Oct. 23 — A former roommate of Zacarias Moussaoui who
admitted he lied to investigators about their activities together
was sentenced Tuesday to time served.
Hussein al-Attas, 24, had pleaded guilty in July to lying about
Moussaoui to FBI agents before and after the Sept. 11 attacks. He
agreed to testify against him.
Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker who was arrested in
Minnesota the month before the attacks when a flight school became
suspicious, faces a death penalty trial as an alleged conspirator
in the attacks.
Al-Attas testified in July that on several occasions Moussaoui
"expressed a general desire to participate in Jihad," or holy
war.
Al-Attas also said then that Moussaoui, who went by the name
"Shaqil," sought to persuade him to go to Pakistan to speak with
Islamic scholars and others who believe that Islam favors
participation in Jihad.
In a letter to U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey before
Tuesday's sentencing, al-Attas apologized, saying he was "in a
state of shock and confusion when I lied to law enforcement
agents."
"All I was trying to do was to distance myself from a situation
that didn't really involve me," he said. "Still, I should have
been truthful and let the truth take care of me."
Mukasey sentenced al-Attas to time served, though he will remain
in custody the rest of the year as a material witness for the
Moussaoui trial.
Al-Attas, a Yemeni citizen, lived in Norman, Okla., with
Moussaoui in the summer of 2001. They became roommates after
Moussaoui enrolled at the nearby Airman Flight School. Later,
Moussaoui asked al-Attas to drive him to Eagan, Minn., a
Minneapolis suburb, where he enrolled in a flight school there.
Alexander E. Eisemann, a lawyer for al-Attas, said in a letter
to the judge that his client "was nothing more than a good person
who reacted inappropriately when he found himself in the wrong
place at the wrong time."
Eisemann said it was a natural reaction for al-Attas to try to
lower his profile after Sept. 11 to distance himself from Moussaoui,
although it was a mistake in judgment to make false statements.
Moussaoui was arrested Aug. 16 in Eagan, Minn., after
administrators at the flight school there became suspicious of his
intense desire to fly jumbo jets despite his poor flying skills.
Al-Attas was taken into custody with Moussaoui for questioning for
two days, released, and then detained again on Sept. 11.
Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, is the only
person charged with conspiring to help 19 hijackers who plunged two
passenger jets into the World Trade Center, a third into the
Pentagon and a fourth into a Pennsylvania field.
— Reuters
Pentagon Prepares to Release Guantanamo Terror Detainees
W A S H I N G T O N, Oct. 23 —The U.S. government is preparing to free a
small number of prisoners from its high-security jail in Cuba, in
what would be the first release of combatants who are no longer
considered a terrorist threat, Secretary of Defense Donald H.
Rumsfeld said Tuesday.
"There are some people likely to come out of the other end of
the chute," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon press conference.
Other officials said on condition of anonymity that it could be
within days.
Rumsfeld said officials were vetting the prisoners to make sure
they were not candidates for prosecution, no longer of any
intelligence value, and not a threat to the United States and its
allies.
The first batch to be let go includes "a relatively small
number" of men, he said, adding that he didn't know their
nationalities.
Pakistani officials have said a visit to the prison turned up a
number of Pakistanis who do not represent a threat to the United
States.
The government, a major U.S. ally in the counter-terror war, has
asked the men be allowed to return to Pakistan. It's unclear how
many other countries have sought release of their nationals.
"We vetted them and gave our assessment ... that some of the
detainees did not pose a threat" to the United States, said Asad
Hayauddin, spokesman for the Pakistan Embassy in Washington.
There are reported to be some 58 Pakistanis in Guantanamo, 100
Saudi Arabians, a dozen Kuwaitis and so on. In all, the United
States is holding 598 men from 42 countries who it has labeled as
enemy combatants, saying it may legally hold them until the end of
hostilities. It hasn't made clear whether that means the end of the
campaign in Afghanistan or the entire global war, which is expected
to go on for years.
It was unclear whether the men to be released would be freed
completely or simply transferred to some other country for
detention, Rumsfeld said.
The U.S. government has said for months that some of the
prisoners might eventually be prosecuted, released to other
countries for prosecution or held indefinitely.
Though rules for military tribunals were announced nearly seven
months ago, no one has been ordered sent before a tribunal for
trial.
Some of the men have been held for nearly a year since being
rounded up during the air war that opened the military campaign in
Afghanistan on Oct. 7. Transfers from Afghanistan to Guantanamo
began in January.
The main task with them over the months has been to interrogate
them for information that might help prevent future attacks and
catch other suspects, officials have said.
"Over the course of our efforts against terrorism, we expect
there will be numerous releases, and presumably transfers, to other
countries," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis said,
declining to give further detail.
One official said that for safety reasons, no transfer will be
announced until the prisoner or prisoners have safely arrived
wherever they are being sent.
Officials fear al Qaeda will track down anyone who is released
and try to get information from them, forcibly if need be, on such
things as U.S. interrogation methods, security procedures, details
of other detainees and any potential weaknesses in security at
Guantanamo.
Up until now, transfers into Guantanamo have been one-way trips
for the vast majority of prisoners. The only ones acknowledged sent
out by the U.S. government so far have been a man with mental
health problems and prisoners determined to be Americans, who were
sent for detention in the United States instead.
— The Associated Press