Britain Says Jailed Pilot Aided in Plot

An Algerian pilot arrested in Britain oversaw flight training for four of the hijackers involved in the suicide attacks in the U.S., including the man believed to have flown an airliner into the Pentagon, prosecutors alleged Friday.

At an extradition hearing, a British prosecutor portrayed Lotfi Raissi, 27, as a kind of overseer or enforcer for the operation who made arrangements for the hijackers. But authorities gave few specifics.

“We say he was there to ensure that pilots were capable and trained for this purpose,” prosecutor Arvinda Sambir said.

The prosecutor said Raissi was the “lead instructor” for four of the 19 hijackers and was closely involved with those on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

In a worldwide investigation in which hundreds of people have been detained, Raissi is one of just three formally accused of helping the hijackers prepare the Sept. 11 attacks. Last week, German authorities issued arrest warrants for two men charged with providing unspecified criminal assistance to the hijackers. Those men, alleged members of a terrorist cell in Hamburg, remain at large.

Raissi, who was detained last week under a British anti-terrorism law, was formally arrested on an international warrant issued in the U.S. Officials have 60 days to make a case for extradition.

Sambir said Raissi was wanted in the United States for perjury for giving false information in an application for a pilot’s medical certificate. The prosecutor acknowledged that this was a “holding charge” while investigators gather evidence for more serious charges, including conspiracy to commit murder.

Raissi qualified as a U.S. pilot in 1997 after attending several flight schools, including at least one in Arizona. According to Federal Aviation Administration records, he was also licensed as a ground instructor, someone who can teach in a classroom setting but not in the air.

U.S. officials have identified a 29-year-old man who used the name Hani Hanjour as the hijacker who steered American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. He attended CRM Airline Training Center in Scottsdale, Ariz., and, according to the British prosecutor, was videotaped traveling with Raissi.

The other four hijackers on that flight have been identified as Majed Moqed, 24; Khalid Almihdhar, 26; Salem Alhazmi, 20; and Nawaf Alhazmi.

Raissi appeared in a London magistrate’s court dressed in a white track suit top and blue trousers. He spoke only to confirm his name during the 10-minute hearing.

Afterward, attorney Richard Egan said Raissi “adamantly denies any involvement in the recent appalling tragedies and is confident that he will be absolved of all involvement.”

Sambir, the prosecutor, said Raissi, who lives in London with his wife, visited the U.S. several times in June and July. On June 23, he traveled to Las Vegas with his wife before flying on to Arizona with Hanjour, Sambir said.

Las Vegas was a meeting point for some of the hijackers over the summer. Mohamed Atta, the apparent leader of the hijack teams, stayed in a low-cost motel in the city in June and again in August, hotel records show. Federal investigators say Hanjour and a third suspect were also with Atta in Las Vegas at some point.

Raissi and his wife, Sonia, 25, were detained Sept. 21 at their apartment in Colnbrook, about two miles from Heathrow Airport. She was later released, as was Raissi’s brother, Mohammed, who was taken into custody in West London the same day.

A fourth person detained that day in Birmingham, England, Omar al-Bayoumi, also known as Abu Imard, was released Friday without being charged.

A man with an almost identical name lived at a San Diego apartment complex at the same time that two of the alleged Flight 77 hijackers lived there, records show.

Omar A. Al Bayoumi lived at the Parkwood Apartments from September 1999 to November 2000. Before that, he lived across the street at the Balboa Apartments.

Alleged Flight 77 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Almihdhar also lived at the Parkwood Apartments.

Earlier this week, members of San Diego’s Islamic community said Al Bayoumi brought Alhazmi and Almihdhar to San Diego from Los Angeles in 1999.

“He introduced them as students at the Islamic Center and helped them get established in the community,” said one person, who asked not to be named.

Al Bayoumi left for Birmingham three to six months ago, he added.

After Raissi’s arrest in Britain, police searched his two-bedroom home and confiscated a log book with pages torn out of it--pages that may relate to flights in the United States, officials said.

British newspapers said telephone records had linked Raissi to the hijackers.

Before he was taken into custody, Raissi was contacted by British journalists.

“It’s gone crazy,” the Sunday Times of London quoted him as saying. “I’m an airline pilot in Algeria, but over here I’m just a student. I’ve been living here for nine months training for my European conversion” license.

“I’ve a relative in America who is training as a pilot, and he has been interviewed by the FBI. He knows no more about it than you or I,” Raissi said.

Although he denied having traveled to the United States in recent months, an Arizona newspaper, the East Valley Tribune, reported that Raissi was ticketed for speeding near Wickenburg, Ariz., in June.

Sylvia Stinson, former chief flight instructor at Sawyer Aviation in Phoenix, said Raissi and Hanjour both used the flight school’s simulator.

“They would usually come in during the night hours,” Stinson said. She said the former manager of the simulator has told her and the FBI that at least one of the other 19 suspected hijackers had visited the flight school, along with other people identified by the FBI as their associates.

“They always had cash,” Stinson said. “They always paid their bills on time. They were never the ones we had trouble with. They didn’t want to cause trouble.”

After Sept. 11, Stinson said, she and the former manager of the simulator, Wes Fults, contacted the FBI when they began to recognize some of the names linked to the attacks.

“You cannot imagine the sadness that we feel that these people trained here, that we had any part in helping them with what they have done,” she said.

In Britain, Raissi was enrolled in the Four Forces Aviation school in Poyle, Berkshire, where he was taking an 8-to-12-month theory course to obtain a European license.

An executive at the school told the Times of London that Raissi left the course for two months in the spring of this year, saying he was returning home for a while.

Raissi originally was detained under Britain’s Terrorism Act 2000, which allows a suspect to be held for seven days before being charged. That period expired Friday, and officials had to charge or release him.

The holding charge stems from an application Raissi filed with the FAA on June 19 to renew his pilot’s medical certificate.

In Washington, officials said Raissi did not tell the FAA about a 1993 theft conviction in England, a crime that carries a maximum 10-year sentence, or disclose that he had undergone knee surgery.

The arrest warrant makes no allegations linking Raissi to the attacks or the hijackers. However, if he is extradited to the United States and evidence is developed linking him to the hijackings, U.S. prosecutors could try to bring more serious charges against him.

Raissi has not applied for bail in London. He must appear at another hearing Friday.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft refused to comment on Raissi’s alleged connection to the attacks, but he made it clear that authorities are casting a wide net in their search for those responsible.

He said the number of people arrested or detained has grown to more than 480, compared with about 350 people just four days earlier.

Even if investigators gather evidence to charge Raissi with conspiracy to commit murder, it could be years before he faces trial in the United States, because of Britain’s lengthy extradition process and appeals that could go to the country’s highest court.

The U.S. has been waiting more than three years for the extradition of Saudi dissident Khalid al-Fawwaz, 37, who is wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Al-Fawwaz is accused of running a front organization for Osama bin Laden in Britain and providing him with a satellite telephone for use at his hide-out in Afghanistan.

Two Egyptians, Adel Abdul Bari, 39, and Ibrahim Hussein Eidarous, 42, also wanted in connection with the embassy bombings, were arrested two years ago and have appealed to Parliament’s House of Lords.

Meanwhile, Scotland Yard confirmed Friday that 11 of the hijackers passed through Britain, at least to change planes, before the attacks. From April to June, 10 of the hijackers arrived at Gatwick and Heathrow airports on flights from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and caught connecting flights out of Britain within three hours, investigators said. An 11th hijacker passed through in January, they said.

Police were granted a warrant to continue questioning seven men arrested outside the Royal Air Force’s Lakenheath base in Suffolk, where the U.S. Air Force’s 48th Fighter Wing is based.

Police arrested the six Iraqis and a German bus driver Wednesday after hearing noises from inside a truck. The men were detained in connection with illegal immigration offenses but were also held under the anti-terrorism law because of the area where they were found.

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Miller reported from London, Lichtblau from Washington. Times staff writers Henry Weinstein, Greg Krikorian, H.G. Reza and Richard O’Reilly in Los Angeles and Monte Morin in Arizona contributed to this report.