N.J. Engineer Arrested in Blast at Trade Center

A 25-year-old chemical engineer of Palestinian descent was arrested Wednesday in connection with the World Trade Center bombing, becoming the third man detained in the case who has ties to a figure in the slaying of right-wing Jewish leader Meir Kahane.

Investigators also said that they have uncovered new evidence indicating that the bombing suspects might have received financial aid from abroad. One source said that several thousand dollars had been transferred by wire in recent months from Europe into a joint account held by Nidal Ayyad, the latest suspect in the case, and Mohammed A. Salameh, who was arrested last Thursday.

Ayyad, a naturalized American citizen born in Kuwait of Palestinian parents, was seized by federal agents in an early-morning raid on his home in the suburb of Maplewood, N.J. He was ordered held without bail after a federal court hearing in Newark.

Top federal officials said that Ayyad, like the other two men arrested in the case, had paid at least one jailhouse visit to El Sayyid A. Nosair, who was tried and acquitted for the 1990 slaying of Kahane. He is now serving a 22-year prison sentence on charges related to the murder.

Investigators now assume that the three men, who initially seemed to have little in common beyond their belief in Islam, were drawn together by their support for Nosair, knowledgeable sources said. As one top federal official put it: “Nosair, in (allegedly) killing the devil Kahane, seems to have united” a lot of people.

Kahane was a radical Zionist firebrand who advocated expelling all Palestinians from Israel and its occupied territories. The fiery rabbi was born in Brooklyn but emigrated to Israel, where he was a symbol of resistance to Palestinian rights in Israeli-occupied territories. He was slain after giving a speech at a midtown Manhattan hotel. Nosair was seen fleeing the scene and was arrested after shooting a postal inspector a block away.

Ayyad, a 1991 Rutgers University graduate with a major in chemical and biochemical engineering, was portrayed by authorities as the man who supplied the conspirators with their bomb-making expertise. He is employed by AlliedSignal Inc., in Morristown, N.J.

Ayyad has been an acquaintance of Salameh, who also is a Palestinian, for more than a year, officials said. It was not known whether he had a personal relationship with the other man being held in the case, Ibrahim A. Elgabrowny, Nosair’s cousin.

Authorities acknowledged, however, that they still do not know what may have motivated the attack on one of New York City’s most recognizable landmarks.

“To what extent they (the suspects) were philosophically linked or diabolically linked in terms of a cause, I can’t speculate,” a federal investigator said.

Nor do authorities believe that they have arrested all of the conspirators. “We believe there were other individuals involved,” said James Esposito, FBI special agent in charge for New Jersey.

According to the complaint against him, Ayyad accompanied Salameh on Feb. 23, the day he rented a yellow Ryder van that is believed to have carried hundreds of pounds of explosive materials into a subbasement of the World Trade Center.

Salameh had Ayyad’s business card in his pocket when he was arrested, officials said. In addition, the two men shared a bank account and Salameh telephoned Ayyad four times the day before the Feb. 26 bombing from the public storage locker where the explosive chemicals apparently were mixed.

According to investigative sources, the money from a European source was placed into the joint bank account and later withdrawn by Salameh, suggesting that they were receiving international support for their operation. These sources said that they do not know who had made the deposit.

Unlike Salameh, Ayyad is an employed family man whom authorities said may not be a part of the group of radical fundamentalists who are followers of Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, a blind Egyptian religious leader who now lives in Jersey City, N.J. Relatives said that Ayyad did not worship at Abdul Rahman’s mosque in Jersey City, although he may have met Salameh during a public appearance of the sheik.

Abdulaleem El-Abyad, information minister for the Egyptian mission to the United Nations, minimized the chances that Abdul Rahman played any role in the bombing. He said of Abdul Rahman: “He is a very dangerous man but he is desperate to stay in this country. He would not gain from such a thing.”

Because Ayyad and Salameh are both Palestinians, U.S. counterterrorism officials in Washington have been questioning whether the bombing might have been orchestrated by a radical but secular Palestinian group, rather than a fundamentalist cell.

When FBI agents stormed Ayyad’s white, three-story rented house at 6:42 a.m., they found him inside with his pregnant wife, his mother and two brothers. The three men were handcuffed and forced to lie on the ground outside. The women were treated more gently but were denied an opportunity to cover their heads with scarves as their religion dictates.

By the time he appeared for a hearing in the U.S. District courtroom of Judge Dennis Cavanaugh later in the day, Ayyad was wearing a blue shirt, gray sports coat and dark slacks. He was charged with “aiding and abetting” the bombing and is expected to be transferred to a Manhattan jail after further hearings.

He said very little during the proceeding. But family members who attended the hearing told reporters that they were certain he was not involved in the bombing.

“I’m sure he had nothing to do with it,” said Ayyad’s 17-year-old brother, Reziq.

His father, Abdel-Rahman Joseph Ayyad, added: “My son is a smart guy and he is not fanatical.”

Ayyad immigrated to the United States in October, 1985, and began studying at Rutgers shortly thereafter. His family followed him a few years later. He became a U.S. citizen in March, 1991, two months after his graduation from college, and was married last December in Amman, Jordan.

After his arrest, Ayyad was suspended without pay from AlliedSignal, where he worked in the engineering materials sector. Allied issued a statement saying that he had been hired with good references and that the company was cooperating with the FBI.

Mark Greenberg, an Allied spokesman, said that Ayyad was hired as a research engineer to translate laboratory achievements into manufacturing products. He worked with chemicals used in pharmaceuticals and paints.

A former professor, Jeffery Rankin, assistant dean at the Rutgers engineering school, said that Ayyad was enrolled in chemical engineering courses there that taught him about mixing explosives. He described Ayyad as a serious student.

Ayyad’s father said that he had been told by his 18-year-old daughter-in-law that Salameh came to their house in Maplewood “once in a while.” One neighbor told FBI agents about seeing a yellow Ryder truck in front of the house two weeks ago.

Employees at the Ryder office in Jersey City said that the two men who rented the van were driving a red Oldsmobile--apparently a rented car--when they came to lease the truck. That same car was parked in Ayyad’s driveway on Tuesday and later towed away by the rental agency.

According to the complaint, Salameh’s companion--believed to be Ayyad--returned to the Ryder rental office on Feb. 24 seeking repairs for one of the side-view mirrors.

On Feb. 25, the day before the bombing, the complaint said, Salameh and a number of other men visited a public storage locker where they are believed to have mixed the chemicals used to create the explosive detonated at the World Trade Center. The complaint said that Salameh was observed making several calls from a pay telephone near the locker on Feb. 25. Telephone records show that four calls were made from that telephone to Ayyad’s business number at AlliedSignal. Officials said that they believe Salameh was calling him for advice in mixing the chemicals.

Federal officials said that the storage locker was rented in the name of Kamal Ibrahim, which may have been a fictitious name. They said that a number of men, including Salameh, had access to it, leading them to believe that there were other conspirators.

In the complaint, officials listed what they found in the locker: “One hundred pound bags labeled Urea, numerous bottles labeled nitric acid, one plastic container labeled sulfuric acid, numerous other chemicals and compounds, a pyrotechnic fuse, tubing, graduated cylinders, flasks, beakers, filter paper, funnels, a mortar and pestle and stirring rods.”

Elgabrowny, the third man detained in the case, has been charged only with obstructing officers who arrested him.

In Washington, Secretary of State Warren Christopher called for a toughened immigration policy that would deny visas to “people who have elements of extremism in their background” and make it far easier to deport any immigrants who engage in terrorism.

Salameh was known to be living illegally in the United States with an expired visa. Likewise, Abdul Rahman is the subject of deportation proceedings.

Testifying to a House Appropriations subcommittee, Christopher added: “With modern electronics, I can’t believe that we can’t devise systems to let us know who is in the country.”