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| Home Front: WoT |
| Minneapolis terror suspect faces fraud charges |
| 2005-12-09 |
| A Minneapolis man charged with lying to authorities in a terror probe is now charged with paying a U.S. citizen to marry him and using a green card from that marriage to try to get jobs in the Twin Cities. Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi was indicted on charges of possessing fraudulent immigration documents, according to papers scanned into the computer system Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis. In June 2004, Elzahabi was charged with lying to federal agents about sending walkie-talkies to Pakistan and helping to get a Massachusetts driver's license for a man later convicted of plotting to bomb American and Israeli tourists in Jordan. Elzahabi allegedly told FBI agents he taught sniping in Afghanistan and associated with Al-Qaida leaders. He pleaded not guilty and has been awaiting trial while his attorneys try to gain access to information that they contend is necessary for his defense. The new indictment alleges that Elzahabi tried to use the green card Sept. 6 and 21, 2001, in Ramsey County and Feb. 7, 2002, in Hennepin County. His Minneapolis attorney, Paul Engh, said the new charges don't add to the seriousness of the case and called them "tag-along" charges. U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger said the new charges were the result of an ongoing investigation into Elzahabi's conduct. He said the charges are not "an earth-shattering change to the nature of the indictment." Elzahabi, a Lebanese national, allegedly told authorities he entered the United States in the 1980s and paid a Houston woman to marry him, then divorced her after getting his green card. He allegedly told authorities he fought in Afghanistan and associated with Al-Qaida leaders, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man suspected of engineering deadly kidnappings in Iraq. Returning to the United States in 1995 after he was shot in the abdomen during combat, he worked in New York and Boston before going home to Lebanon and to Chechnya, where he joined rebels in fighting the Russians. He allegedly came to Minneapolis in mid-August 2001 and lived in a house near the University of Minnesota that was also home to a mosque. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |