From Associated Press
Nabil al-Marabh was No. 27 on the FBI’s list of terror suspects after Sept. 11. .... Al-Marabh served an eight-month jail sentence and was sent in January to his native Syria .... One FBI report summarized a high-level debriefing of a Jordanian informant named Ahmed Y. Ashwas that was personally conducted by the U.S. attorney in Chicago, signifying its importance. The informant alleged al-Marabh told him of specific terrorist plans during their time in prison. ... Internal FBI and Justice Department documents reviewed by AP show prosecutors and FBI agents in several cities gathered evidence that linked al-Marabh to: - Raed Hijazi, the Boston cab driver convicted in Jordan for plotting to blow up an American-frequented hotel in Amman during the millennium celebrations of 1999. Al-Marabh and Hijazi were roommates at the Afghan training camps and later in the United States, and al-Marabh sent money to Hijazi.
- The Detroit apartment where four men were arrested in what became the administration’s first major terror prosecution after Sept. 11. Al-Marabh’s name was still on the rental unit when agents raided it. The men were found with false IDs and documents describing alleged terror plots.
- Several large deposits, withdrawals and overseas wire transfers in 1998 and 2000 that were flagged as suspicious by a Boston bank. The Customs Service first identified al-Marabh in 2001 for possible terrorist ties to Hijazi. FBI documents said Al-Marabh denied being affiliated with al-Qaida. But he acknowledged receiving "security" training in rifles and rocket-propelled grenades in Afghan mujahedeen camps, sending money to his friend Hijazi, using a fake address to get a truck driving license and buying a phony passport for $4,000 in Canada to sneak into the United States shortly before Sept. 11. .... At one point in late 2002, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in Chicago drafted an indictment against al-Marabh on multiple counts of making false statements in his interviews with FBI agents. Justice headquarters declined prosecution. Fitzgerald declined through a spokesman to discuss the reasons.
| That's a good sign they were either draining him or trading him for someone/something else... |
Fitzgerald then tracked down Ashwas, the Jordanian who because of minor immigration problems had spent time with al-Marabh in a federal detention cell in 2002. Fitzgerald had the man flown to Chicago and oversaw his debriefing along with FBI agents from Chicago and Detroit, documents show. Ashwas alleged that during one of his encounters he helped persuade the prison psychiatrist to prescribe al-Marabh an anti-anxiety drug called Claripan and that al-Marabh began talking more freely, the FBI reported.
The FBI summarized Ashwas’ allegations: - Al-Marabh said he aided Hijazi’s flight from authorities and sent him money, plotted a martyrdom attack in the United States and took instructions from a mystery figure in Chicago known only as "al Mosul," which means "boss" in Arabic.
- Al Mosul asked al-Marabh to attend a driving school in Detroit with Arabic instructors so he could get a commercial truck driver’s license, and arranged for al-Marabh to live in the Detroit apartment later raided by the FBI as a terror cell.
- Al-Marabh said he and Hijazi planned to steal a fuel truck from a rest stop in New York and New Jersey and detonate it in the heavily traveled Lincoln or Holland tunnels, but the plan was foiled when Hijazi was arrested.
- Al-Marabh acknowledged he had distributed money - as much as $200,000 a month - to the various training camps in Afghanistan in the early 1990s. The FBI and prosecutors confirmed some aspects of Ashwas’ account, including that al-Marabh had been at the Detroit apartment, had trained at at least one Afghan camp and had gotten the truck driver’s license. Fitzgerald wasn’t alone in his efforts to try to bring a case against al-Marabh. Prosecutors and FBI agents in other states sought to get enough evidence to prosecute him. In Detroit, prosecutors developed evidence but weren’t allowed to bring a case connecting al-Marabh to the terror cell there. .... |