Terror Probe Hovers Over Arizona

Well before the trail of a suspected Sept. 11 skyjacker drew investigators to this Phoenix suburb, the FBI had its eye on Zakaria Soubra.

The 25-year-old Lebanese national, one of the few Middle Eastern students at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University north of here, suspects it might have been his visit to a shooting range with an American-born veteran of jihads in the Balkans and the Middle East. Or his membership in a London-based group calling for governments around the globe to be removed in favor of a single, pure Islamic state.

Or maybe it was his association with several fellow Muslim flight school students, some of whom attend a prayer group Soubra formed and who also were questioned by the FBI within hours of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Although confidential government records show more than two dozen current and former Arizona residents have come under federal scrutiny--or have been targeted for questioning since the East Coast attacks--only one, picked up overseas, is suspected of having a direct link to terrorist activity.

Indeed, the government’s anti-terrorism efforts here open a window on the difficulties of identifying cells or individuals who are truly dangerous.

As the FBI investigated tips involving small groups of Middle Easterners here who espoused radical beliefs, a young Saudi, who authorities believe steered a jetliner into the Pentagon, moved through this same college town, largely unnoticed.

Hani Hanjour was in his early 20s when he first came to Arizona in the mid-1990s to take flight training at local airfields. He kept to himself, having limited contact with the outside world.

Even in private conversations, one former roommate recalls, he never signaled strong religious or political views.

The public stridence of a Zakaria Soubra, who expounds religious arguments to justify suicide bombings in the Middle East, and the disciplined stealth of a Hani Hanjour, who silently planned mass murder, illustrate a fundamental challenge to America’s counter-terrorism efforts.

Pursuing radical activists and determining when their rhetoric might cross into illegal or violent activity is tricky--legally and tactically--federal officials say.

“There are people who just keep popping up” and whose case files are repeatedly opened and closed because prosecutable crimes can’t be found, said one senior federal law enforcement official who has worked counter-terrorism investigations. “We’re not interested in their religion. We’re just interested in violent activity, when it crosses a line into violent acts.”

Soubra, for example, insists that hijacking commercial airliners and killing U.S. civilians is prohibited by his faith--at the same time he calls for Islamic world domination.

For investigators, the failure to pick up warnings before last month’s plot makes clear they must concentrate on an additional, far different chore: identifying devoted killers trained to blend in.

“They don’t stand out. And they especially don’t stand up and say, ‘We hate America,’ ” says professor Steve Cimbala, who teaches national security and intelligence studies at Pennsylvania State University.

Officials say there is no foolproof way to zero in on those who are actually threatening as opposed to ardently dissident, especially with time and resources stretched thin.

Arizona has had its mix of both.

Among those who have been sought or monitored in the Phoenix area in recent weeks is a family man who records indicate has been scrutinized several times in connection with international terrorism probes. The man did not respond to requests from The Times for an interview, but neighbors say the FBI and police questioned them after the attacks about activities at the man’s home.

Another is a Sierra Vista man, who lived near the Mexican border and left the U.S. in 1999, according to records. He is described as a weapon expert and is suspected of scouting terrorist targets in the Southwest.

Yet another is Malek Seif, a Djibouti national whom federal authorities reported receiving flight training in the Phoenix area at the same time as Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian arrested last month by English authorities. Raissi is suspected of overseeing pilot training of four of the suspected 19 hijackers. Seif left the U.S. in late August and was arrested in Marseilles, France, in early October as part of an anti-terrorist crackdown, according to records and interviews. After two days, he was released because of a lack of evidence that he had knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks, a French law enforcement official said. He is still believed to be in Europe.

Since Sept. 11, two other Phoenix-area residents have been detained on immigration charges, and a material witness in the case has been indicted for lying about whether he knew Hanjour.

FBI officials here refuse to discuss their terrorism investigations, before or since the attacks.

One apparent reason for the agency’s focus on the Tempe area is its growing, somewhat transient Muslim community.

Many Muslim students are attracted to Arizona State University and the large Islamic Cultural Center nearby. The center serves as a hub of religious and social activity and includes the first gold-domed mosque in the Phoenix area.

Long before Sept. 11, federal agents sought to tap into the Muslim community for information.

One former Arizona State Muslim student recalled agents first showing up at his home in 1998, after the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, to interview him--and try to cultivate him as a source.

In recent years, agents also have been interested in potential threats, apparently focusing in part on a mysterious figure, known among young local Muslims only as Abu Muhajid, which translates roughly to “the Fighter.”

Muhajid, described as a white, American Muslim, often shared tales of Islamic holy wars in Chechnya and Bosnia, say those who met him. He could not be found in recent days, and those who know him say he has disappeared.

“He had experience in jihad,” Soubra said. “He used to report what other Muslims” were suffering.

Soubra believes it was his own association with Muhajid and their visit to a local shooting range that first brought FBI agents to his door in early 2000.

“They said they saw me hanging out with a person who was dangerous to society,” he recalled last week. Since then, federal agents have periodically returned to Soubra and his associates, interviews show.

After a Saudi friend began visiting Soubra’s apartment, the FBI showed up a second time, asking who the visitor was. Just days after he moved out, agents were at Soubra’s landlord’s office, asking more questions.

“They just said they were checking him out,” recalled the apartment owner, Bill Stromberg.

Within hours of the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, agents showed up at Embry Riddle to interview Soubra and several other Muslim students who know him.

“They asked all kinds of questions about” Soubra, said Ahmad Alhulaisi, a Palestinian studying aeronautical engineering.

Alhulaisi is among several current and former Embry Riddle students on lists of people the FBI has been keeping tabs on since the skyjackings. Earlier this month, he was detained for questioning during a Prescott traffic stop, a law enforcement source confirmed.

Alhulaisi complained about the delay and being under such scrutiny. But he acknowledges he was speeding home after one of his weekend road trips to nightclubs in Southern California frequented by Middle Easterners. “I love L.A.,” he says. He is less enthusiastic about Soubra’s Friday prayer meetings. “He is religious. . . . Me and my roommates are not strict like that.”

Soubra said he arrived in Arizona for flight safety studies in 1998, and is being sponsored by a relative.

The FBI’s interest in Soubra is partly tied to his membership in Al-Muhajiroun, a controversial London-based group, records show.

The organization, which British authorities reportedly have under 24-hour surveillance, maintains the U.S. government is engaging in terrorism against Muslims and contends Islamic law prohibits cooperating with the FBI or other government agencies of non-Islamic states.

It also says Muslims should work for the creation of a single Islamic state worldwide. However, Soubra stresses, the group also has said that killing innocent U.S. civilians is wrong.

Only “pure intellectual and political” means may be used to remove non-Islamic regimes in the West, says Soubra.

Soubra acknowledges belonging to an Arizona chapter of the group but declines to discuss how many members there are or where they meet. He sidesteps questions about his views of suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, instead offering lengthy descriptions of what he says is the Islamic basis for various kinds of jihad.

Soubra’s activities have rubbed many the wrong way. At his flight school, advisors unsuccessfully urged him to cancel a lecture criticizing U.S. military presence in Yemen, just days after the bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole.

At the Tempe mosque, Soubra says he was once asked to leave after chastising members for supporting non-Islamic governments in the U.S. and elsewhere.

For all the disruption he has caused and the investigative attention apparently paid him, friends say Soubra appears to be peaceful, if a bit preachy.

He insists he knew nothing of the Sept. 11 plotters and has not been given any indication he is a target of a federal investigation. He continues to go about his flight safety training and dorm life.

Unlike people such as Soubra, Hanjour kept to a routine of study, attracting little attention even within the Muslim community.

At Tempe’s King Tut coffeehouse, a popular Middle Eastern gathering spot where tobacco water pipes and political argument go hand in hand, Hanjour occasionally dropped by. But he is remembered mostly for his silence, according to owner Majda Kassel.

“He didn’t talk much,” she said.

Abdulah Suliman, who lived with Hanjour in Tempe for three months in 1998, said his former roommate rarely ventured out, other than to attend pilot lessons or go to the bank to get the money he said relatives sent.

“I’d tell him let’s go see a movie. He’d say, ‘No.’ I’d tell him let’s go play basketball. He’d say, ‘No,’ ” Suliman said. “He just stayed home and studied his books for flight school.”

Hanjour sometimes went to the Tempe mosque. But Suliman, who has been interviewed in recent weeks by the FBI, said he never got a measure of Hanjour’s religious or political beliefs. It just didn’t come up.

Raissi joined Hanjour for a time at flight school here. Though more outgoing than Hanjour, Raissi stayed a shorter time and also appeared to have avoided the attention of officials, according to interviews.

To help investigators ferret out terrorist cells, President Bush signed legislation Friday giving law enforcement sweeping new tools to tap phones, monitor e-mails, share sensitive information and hold suspects.

But many wonder whether even those powers will be enough to uncover those silently scheming to commit mass violence.

“There isn’t anything you can do to a guy who gives you zero signals,” Penn State’s Cimbala said.

Kassel said Raissi and Hanjour sat at her tables and she sensed nothing.

“The one who never advertised his thoughts,” she said, “is the one who did the deed.”

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Times staff writer Sebastian Rotella and researcher Nona Yates contributed to this report.