A Student’s Essay Led Him to Jail

It was just an end-of-summer essay, a traditional assignment teacher Mimi Pollack uses to break the ice with a new group of students learning English at Grossmont Community College.

But what Pollack read in one of her students’ blue books last fall helped put him behind bars for three months. And it turned the liberal instructor into an uneasy accomplice in the nation’s terrorist dragnet.

Only recently has the teacher felt that her world has returned to equilibrium. The young man she reported to the FBI eight months earlier is back in class. And her efforts had helped set him free.

Osama Awadallah, 22, said he has forgiven the teacher he calls “Mimi” and the two have resumed their friendship. Just one thing, Awadallah cajoles her with a smile: Please, don’t turn any more school work over to the FBI.

It began Sept. 13, when Pollack assigned her English grammar class to write about what they had done and whom they had met since moving to San Diego. The assignment came just two days after the terrorist attacks on the East Coast.

“I ask the same question--same assignment--in that class every semester,” said Pollack, an English as a second language instructor.

The essays, written in blue exam books, were turned in after class. Pollack took the papers to her La Mesa home, dropped them on a chair in the living room and got around to grading them more than a week later.

Pollack, 48, remembers wading through the stack of compositions before she grabbed Awadallah’s. The Jordanian immigrant has been in three of Pollack’s classes, and they had become friends, she a Jew and he a devout Muslim.

Just a few paragraphs into the neatly written essay, a single line stopped Pollack. Awadallah had written: “One [sic] of the quietest people I have ever met is Nawaf and Khalid.”

Nawaf and Khalid. Pollack knew those names.

The identities of 19 people suspected in the Sept. 11 attacks had been widely reported; Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almidhar were two of the names on the list. They had lived for a time in San Diego and nearby Lemon Grove. Now they were blamed for helping crash American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.

“I read it again: ‘One of the quietest people I have ever met is Nawaf and Khalid.’ I was stunned,” Pollack recalled, in her first interview about her relationship with Awadallah. “Then I almost had a heart attack. I’m sitting here reading this thinking, ‘Why’s he doing this? Why’s he writing about Nawaf and Khalid?’”

Holding Awadallah’s essay in her hands, Pollack’s thoughts swirled. Certainly, this student had never tried to temper, or hide, his fundamentalist religious views.

“He was very Muslim and in your face about it,” Pollack said. “At this point, nobody knew what was really going on. I began to wonder, and worry.”

Pollack took the composition to the college vice president and asked his advice. He told her to keep it. Agents were already swarming the campus after they had found “Osama” scribbled on paper--along with a phone number for Awadallah--in Alhazmi’s 1988 Toyota Corolla. If they wanted the essay, they would ask for it, the vice president said.

Within hours, Pollack was contacted by the FBI’s San Diego office. She told an agent about the composition, then drove to San Diego to drop it off.

“It was a matter of national security,” she explained. “That’s why I gave it to them.”

Teacher Herself Had Diverse Background

Pollack was certainly not one to flinch at those different from herself. Born in Chicago, she spent 23 years of her youth in Mexico City. She speaks fluent Spanish and also lived for a time in Asia.

She wondered: Had she done the right thing? Had she betrayed her profession? A student of Tibetan Buddhism, she looked to the teachings of the Dalai Lama for answers. She decided that the path she had chosen was the right one.

Still, the “million questions” the FBI agents asked her were not easy. She told them that Awadallah was a “very fundamentalist Muslim,” but also “a good kid and not capable of violence.... [I said] he had a good heart.”

Authorities had learned that Awadallah had worked briefly with Alhazmi, the suspected hijacker, at a Texaco station in La Mesa. Alhazmi’s roommate was a fellow Saudi and suspected hijacker, Almidhar.

Pollack remained ambivalent about her student’s predicament. On the one hand, she recalled the brash student with clear misgivings about the United States; the young man who played videotapes between classes of atrocities allegedly committed against Muslims.

But Awadallah was also the one who showed up in class Sept. 11, badly shaken. “He came up to me after class and said what happened was not the way of Islam,” Pollack said.

Awadallah was arrested on Sept. 20, one of three San Diego men detained as material witnesses to the terrorist attacks. He was taken to New York for questioning by federal authorities.

Awadallah may have been languishing in prison, but, via his lawyer, he asked Pollack to send him his assignments. Prison officials refused to allow the schoolwork inside; they cited national security, said Randy Hamud, Awadallah’s lawyer.

Brought before a federal grand jury in New York, Awadallah acknowledged knowing Nawaf Alhazmi, but not Khalid Almidhar. Then a prosecutor confronted him with the essay he wrote for Pollack. With Khalid’s name written in the blue book, in his own hand, Awadallah acknowledged he knew the man.

Awadallah was indicted for perjury and released from federal custody in New York in December after posting $500,000 bond. His family and friends raised the bail money in cash and property, including the title of an ice cream truck, to secure the bond. He returned to San Diego.

Pollack was preparing for a three-week, year-end trip to India to study under the Dalai Lama, but before leaving, she wrote an affidavit on Awadallah’s behalf.

“I felt that nobody was showing support for Sam,” Pollack said. “I told the judge he was a good kid who was really serious about Islam. Maybe too serious, but he was always helpful to the other students, regardless of who they were.”

In February, Pollack wrote the court another letter on his behalf.

“That gave me hope and a very good feeling,” said Awadallah in a telephone interview last week, monitored by his attorney, Hamud. During an April 30 hearing for Awadallah, U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin declared unconstitutional the Bush administration practice of imprisoning material witnesses like Awadallah before their grand jury appearances.

Criticizing Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, Scheindlin added: “No Congress has granted the government the authority to imprison an innocent person in order to guarantee that he will testify before a grand jury conducting a criminal investigation.”

The judge dismissed the perjury charge against Awadallah and faulted the FBI for misrepresentations, saying it failed to note his considerable cooperation and significant ties to the San Diego community. She noted that the student had corrected his misstatement and acknowledged he knew Almidhar.

At least twice in court, the judge mentioned Pollack’s statements on behalf of her student.

“Her support was very instrumental in his achieving credibility with the judge,” said Hamud, who immediately called Pollack with the news that the case had been dropped. A short time later, Awadallah walked into her class.

“He didn’t know the case was dismissed,” Pollack said. She explained to him that the court proceedings meant that his legal ordeal was over, at least for the time being. The government is expected to appeal the judge’s ruling.

Osama Awadallah dropped to his knees near the classroom doorway and gave thanks to Allah.

Months earlier, the two had doubts whether their friendship could be repaired.

Repairing a Friendship After Legal Ordeal

When Pollack returned from India in January, a Bosnian classmate arranged a meeting between teacher and student, who were both apprehensive about seeing each other after Awadallah’s incarceration.

Awadallah arrived at Pollack’s campus office nervous. “I was more concerned about what she thought about me,” he recalled. “Did she think I was a bad person? Did she think I did something horrible?”

He asked, “How could you do that?” Pollack remembers. She countered: Why did you have to write the words that put me in such a bind?

According to Pollack, Awadallah’s answer was simple: “Well, I was only answering the question you asked.”

Awadallah says now, “I have learned a lot about America and its people.” And the lesson is not nearly so bitter as one might suspect. The young man plans to continue his studies, and to become a computer engineer. He talked of plans to marry, to raise a family in his new homeland and even to apply to become an American citizen.