Qatari Man Jailed on Fraud Counts Accused of Lying to FBI

Federal prosecutors on Monday charged a Qatari man studying in the United States with lying to the FBI and disclosed an investigation of his potential links to an alleged top financier of Osama bin Laden.

The six-count criminal complaint was filed in Manhattan, N.Y., federal court against Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, who had already been in custody on fraud charges for more than a year in connection with the investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Al-Marri, also known as Abdullakareem A. Almuslam, appeared in court Monday for a preliminary hearing and was ordered held in custody. He also is expected to be indicted soon on the charges by a federal grand jury and will plead not guilty, according to his lawyer, Richard Jasper.

Al-Marri also is set to stand trial in Illinois on Jan. 13 on charges of unauthorized possession of credit card numbers with the intention to defraud. He was indicted on those charges late last year, shortly after coming to the United States on a student visa to study for a master’s degree in computer information systems at Bradley University in Illinois.

Al-Marri was initially interviewed by the FBI in October 2001 at his home in Peoria, Ill., and was arrested two months later as a material witness in the investigation into the terrorist attacks.

During that investigation, authorities said, they found evidence of suspicious activity in Al-Marri’s laptop computer, including indications he had bookmarked Web sites about dangerous chemicals that showed the amounts “immediately dangerous to life or health” as well as information about how to purchase them.

FBI agents who searched his computer found dozens of stolen credit card numbers, the complaint said. Also during the search, the FBI found an Arabic oath or prayer asking God to “protect” and “guard” Bin Laden, audio files containing lectures by Bin Laden and his associates, photographs of the Sept. 11 attacks and lists of Web sites with titles such as “Jihad arena,” “Taliban” and “martyrs,” according to the complaint.

The search of Al-Marri’s apartment also turned up an almanac with bookmarks on pages about U.S. dams, reservoirs, waterways and railroads, the complaint said.

In the current case, Al-Marri was charged with making false statements to FBI agents by denying during the earlier investigation that he had called a telephone number in the United Arab Emirates associated with Mustafa Ahmed Al-Hawsawi, an alleged associate of the 19 suicide hijackers and others linked to the Sept. 11 attacks.

U.S. officials have described Al-Hawsawi as being perhaps the top paymaster for the Al Qaeda terrorist network and say that he wired thousands of dollars to the hijackers so they could carry out the attacks.

Al-Hawsawi is an indicted co-defendant in the conspiracy case against suspected 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui, whose trial is pending. The FBI also has linked him, via joint credit card accounts, to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the Al Qaeda military commander who is believed to have overseen the Sept. 11 plot and many other Al Qaeda attacks.

Al-Marri, a married father of five, also was charged Monday with making false statements to banks.

Prosecutors said Al-Marri lied to them about phone calls that were made with a calling card that were traced back to Al-Hawsawi. They also said he lied to FBI agents about aspects of his background, telling agents he was last in the United States in 1991 while attending Bradley as an undergraduate, when he had actually re-entered the country in May 2000. At the time, authorities said, Al-Marri used a stolen Social Security number to open fraudulent credit card accounts before leaving several months later.

Authorities had little to say about the new complaint.

“We’re not going to be making any comments,” said Marvin Smilon, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in New York. “The original charges are relatively modest. These are more serious.”

Al-Marri’s lawyer said the government had no evidence his client was connected in any way to terrorism.

“My client isn’t charged in any direct or even indirect participation in Sept. 11,” Jasper said. “They suggest, based on inference, that he made these calls but they don’t have any proof.... I just want to get my client out and on with his studies, either here or in Qatar, wherever he chooses.”

If convicted, Al-Marri faces up to 30 years in prison on each of the three charges relating to lying to banks and 10 years if convicted of lying to the FBI.