Sketch of Bombing Suspect: Devout, Naive, Doting Son

Suspected World Trade Center bomber Mohammed A. Salameh is a devout man of limited intelligence who spent much of his time on the telephone talking of money and religion, a former roommate and longtime acquaintance said Monday.

Ashref Moneeb, in an interview providing the most detailed look to date at Salameh’s recent past, said that the suspect also had strong views about American policy toward Muslims and that he was constantly calling his mother in the Middle East. He engaged in such loud and long conversations on the phone that Moneeb said he finally told Salameh to move out.

That was about a month before the New York bomb blast that thrust Salameh’s name into international headlines. Now the FBI is questioning everyone it can find who knew the previously obscure immigrant, including Moneeb, who spent three hours with investigators Sunday night after they had searched his apartment and checked it for fingerprints.

Moneeb declined to discuss what he told federal agents, but the latest descriptions of Salameh (pronounced sah-LAH-meh) provided to reporters by Moneeb and a neighbor, Mustafa Mohamed, characterize the suspect as a gullible man who was laughed at by mutual friends for being, as they called him, “stupid.”

Such accounts tend to support a theory, growing among some investigators, that if Salameh was involved in the explosion, he must have been acting with others more capable of building the bomb and planning and executing such a well-coordinated crime.

“Someone could have set him up--a very strong person,” said Mohamed, 41, a student who drives a limousine and programs computers. “He’s very innocent. He has a baby face.

“Some friends make fun of him. They say he’s not normal. He’s too calm to be normal.”

Both men stressed that Salameh was a devout Muslim whose entire library--about 20 books--consisted of the Koran and other religious books.

The only decorations on the walls of the simply furnished bedroom where Salameh lived from October until early February were simple white-paper posters that in black Arabic print quoted sayings from the Koran, the men said. One poster calls on believers to care for others so that God will care for them. Another commands believers to thank God for everything He gives, even if it is bad.

Like every Palestinian, Moneeb said, Salameh talked about “the idea of getting a little piece of his land back.” Salameh also seemed quite upset about the United State’s failure to help Muslims in Bosnia.

Salameh kept irregular hours, sometimes coming in late and sleeping late, and other times going to bed early and getting up early. He often made his own falafel and other ethnic Arabic foods, and he worked day jobs with Muslim construction firms, said Moneeb, 26, who has known Salameh for at least two years.

Both men said they considered it very unlikely that Salameh was involved in the bombing of the World Trade Center because he is a calm person who never seems angry nor violent.

“If you talked with the man, you would know that he would never do such a thing,” Mohamed said. “The reason he’s here in America is to earn money so he can send it back home and help his family. He’s disappointed in himself that he has not been able to get a better job so he can send more money. But it makes him happy that he has sent some.”

The two remarked on only one Salameh vice: his frequent telephone calls to his family, Palestinian refugees who live in Jordan, that ran up hundreds of dollars in bills.

“He’s a mother’s boy,” Mohamed said. “He loves to talk with his mommy.”

Mohamed said he believes that Salameh is not a personal acquaintance of Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, a blind Muslim cleric who advocates violent Muslim fundamentalism, because Mohamed and Salameh attended a sermon of Abdul Rahman’s a few months ago. Salameh stood in a cluster of people asking the sheik for advice, but there was no indication that the two men knew each other, Mohamed said. There had been earlier speculation that the sheik was somehow involved in the trade center explosion.

Even Mohamed’s 12-year-old son, Maged, who was born in the United States, was impressed by how frequently Salameh attended mosque and how little he seemed to have acclimated to life in America.

“He went to mosque to pray five times a day,” said Maged, who accompanied Salameh to mosque a few times and said that Salameh was very friendly to him.

He was surprised to learn how long his former neighbor has lived in America. “His English is very broken,” the articulate sixth-grader said. “He sure does not speak like he has lived here for six years.”

Moneeb, who is working on a double major in math and accounting at a local college and programs computers to support himself, had dark circles under his eyes and a shellshocked look on his face. He was obviously shaken by the ordeal of the search of his apartment and his interrogation by the FBI Monday night.

He had white paint on his hands from his attempts to cover up the black fingerprinting powder the federal agents had spread on the doors and walls of his small one-bedroom apartment.

Moneeb’s friends said his most recent fear is that he gave some of his clothes to Salameh before he moved out because Salameh did not have very many clothes. Now, Moneeb said, he worries that his clothes will connect him to Salameh and ruin the dream he left Cairo, Egypt, five years ago to fulfill.

In what sounds a lot like the classic American immigrant story, Moneeb came to America to study and improve his chances of getting a good job.

“I believed the future would be bright in America,” he said. His immigration application is pending.

“I have a life here,” Moneeb said. “I’m very scared about all this.”

Times staff writer William C. Rempel contributed to this story.