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U.S. Gets Help Tracking Bank Moves in Bombing

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<i> From Associated Press</i>

A 25-year-old Palestinian-American chemical engineer arrested in the World Trade Center bombing was denied bail Friday after a judge ruled he could contact others who may have been involved.

Also Friday, German police agreed to help U.S. investigators follow a trail of money that was transferred from Duesseldorf to a New Jersey bank account shared by two suspects in the World Trade Center bombing.

At a court hearing in Newark, N.J., U.S. Magistrate Dennis Cavanaugh said releasing Nidal A. Ayyad on bail would pose a danger because Ayyad could communicate with others who may have been involved, but not yet arrested.

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Although the FBI thinks the money from Germany financed the attack, the original source of the funds and the motive for the bombing remain unclear. But investigators said they were making progress.

“We are in the right arena. We are in the right section. We’ve come down the right aisle and are in the right row,” said James Esposito, head of the FBI’s office in Newark. “And now we have to finish identifying who sat in that row.”

A spokesman for the German federal police, Thomas Rindsfuesser, said investigators would ask the Westdeutsche Genossenschafts Zentralbank in Duesseldorf about the transfer.

Henning Rautenberg, a bank spokesman, said $2,420.87 was transferred from his institution to a bank account in New Jersey held by the bombing suspects, Mohammed A. Salameh and Ayyad.

Rautenberg said his bank wired the money at the request of one of 500 member banks that belong to a cooperative banking system. Citing bank secrecy laws, he declined to identify the member bank or say who provided the money.

Rautenberg said that the bank makes more than a million transfers a day, and that the amount transferred to New Jersey “is not something that is out of the ordinary or that would raise any attention.”

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The Record newspaper of Hackensack, N.J., which first reported the transfer, said the New Jersey account was opened Jan. 21 at the National Westminster Bank of Jersey City, N.J., with a $414.98 deposit.

The total amount transferred remained unclear. A federal investigator told the Associated Press there probably were “several deposits under $10,000.”

Such deposits would avoid federal laws requiring reports of cash transactions over $10,000.

Finding the source might help investigators determine a motive in the Feb. 26 bombing that killed five people and injured more than 1,000. It was caused by a mixture of highly explosive chemicals that was taken to the basement of the trade center in a van.

In other developments Friday:

* Dogs searched the trade center’s rubble-strewn basement without success for a missing worker.

* Federal agents also searched the wreckage, looking for clues. A Port Authority police source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that several pieces of the van had been recovered, and that agents were reconstructing the vehicle.

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Salameh rented a yellow Ford van from a Ryder Truck office three days before the explosion, and reported it stolen about two hours after the blast.

Salameh, 25, is an illegal alien from Jordan who was arrested two weeks ago in Jersey City. Ayyad, 25, was arrested at home Wednesday in Maplewood, N.J. Both are charged with aiding in the bombing.

The two have attended services at the same mosque in Jersey City, and have been close to El Sayyid Nosair, who was convicted of a weapons charge in the shooting death of extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane.

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