Secrecy a Tool in Post-9/11 Case

To understand how far the federal government will go to justify targeting individuals in its war on terror, look no further than the case of Hasan Saddiq Faseh Alddin.

A 34-year-old Saudi national, Alddin was questioned by the FBI shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The FBI would not discuss the interview, but Alddin’s attorney said his client and Alddin’s Wisconsin-born wife answered questions, separately, for about two hours at their home in Vista, a hilly suburb of Oceanside.

The agents, Alddin’s attorney said, wanted to know about some of Alddin’s acquaintances, particularly a former roommate who later shared a San Diego apartment with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers. Alddin, according to his attorney, gave the FBI photos of his former roommate and told the agents he had last seen the man in 1999 when, Alddin believed, the man had left the country.

Alddin never heard back from the FBI and, according to several counterterrorism sources, there was not much interest in him after that interview. But that all changed the morning of May 27 this year, when Alddin was mysteriously plucked from obscurity.

Arrested outside the home of an elderly woman he takes care of, he was publicly linked in a press release from the Department of Homeland Security to the two San Diego hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar -- albeit one step removed. In its release, the department said Alddin was believed to have roomed with a close friend of the hijackers. Department officials did not call Alddin a terrorist, but their largest investigative arm, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said it had been investigating Alddin ever since Sept. 11 and wanted him out of the U.S., citing two misdemeanor convictions for spousal battery in 1998 and 2000 as grounds for deportation.

Now targeted for deportation, the married father of two is an example of how the government is unapologetically using whatever tools it can to deport foreigners it contends are a threat. And it is doing so without revealing what it says is secret evidence, citing minor crimes that would have gone unnoticed by federal officials before Sept. 11.

At a bond hearing last week, what began as a simple deportation case took on the trappings of a much more significant prosecution. Appearing before Immigration Judge Anthony Attenaid in San Diego, federal prosecutor Kerri Harlin submitted sealed evidence to the judge and invoked national security to urge that the judge not release Alddin on bond.

While Alddin’s wife, Pamela, is supporting her husband’s efforts to fight deportation, Harlin said Alddin’s spousal battery convictions also made him a threat to the community. A continuation of the bond hearing is scheduled for today.

“They’re not saying he’s a terrorist,” said Lauren Mack, ICE spokeswoman in San Diego. “They’re just saying they can’t say publicly why [the case] is a national security concern. It could be a concern because the sealed evidence could involve investigative reports, secret sources ... [and] we want the judge to read this and take this information into consideration before he rules on whether Alddin can be released.”

Randy Hamud, Alddin’s attorney, accused the government of double-speak for suggesting that his client is not a terrorist but is a danger to the U.S.

“It’s outrageous, but the government’s actions don’t surprise me,” said Hamud. “It’s their often-used method of demonizing a person.”

David Leopold, a Cincinnati immigration attorney and national board member of the American Immigration Lawyers’ Assn., said the federal government’s current focus is to deport people with less-than-perfect records to build statistics that “look good on paper.”

“But what drives me absolutely crazy as an immigration lawyer is that, day after day, they are locking up and throwing away the keys on people who are absolutely harmless,” Leopold said.

Officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement dispute the criticism that they are unfairly raising the specter of terrorism to increase arrests or deportations. “ICE is simply enforcing the law, as it is obligated to do,” said spokesman Dean Boyd in Washington. He added that “finding and apprehending aliens in the U.S. who have been convicted of crimes is a priority for ICE.” Since the attacks of 2001, about 120 people who were subjects of terrorism-related investigations, including five from the San Diego area, have been deported, Boyd said. Mack, the ICE spokeswoman in San Diego, said Alddin’s case is one of eight terrorism-related investigations still winding their way through immigration court. In six of the cases, including Alddin’s, the foreign nationals remain in custody.

As records and interviews make clear, federal authorities had obvious reasons for wanting to question Alddin after the attacks of September 2001.

Alddin entered the U.S. on a student visa in August 1994. The next year, while attending classes in San Diego to learn English, he met someone named Hashim Mohsen Alattas, and the two lived together for about a month in a downtown apartment.

Alattas had arrived in San Diego months earlier on a student visa to learn English. But after his visa expired, he remained in the U.S. illegally.

The 49th Street apartment figures prominently in Alddin’s case because it is where Alattas -- years after the two were roommates -- befriended Alhazmi and Almihdhar, who would be among the hijackers to crash into the Pentagon.

Alhazmi and Almihdhar arrived in San Diego in January 2000, and Alattas’ friends said he met the hijackers at the Islamic Center of San Diego. A month after their arrival, Alhazmi and Almihdhar moved in with Alattas for about two weeks, maybe longer, the friends said. They said Alattas gave up his apartment that same month, when he returned to live in Saudi Arabia.

The friends said it is unlikely that he had prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks. They said he left the country in February 2000, more than 1 1/2 years before the attacks. They describe him as a Muslim who liked the Western lifestyle and was hardly a religious zealot. Ill-disciplined, they said, Alattas used his apartment as a gathering place for recently arrived young Muslim men who would join him in watching pornography and smoking marijuana -- vices that made him an unlikely recruit for Al Qaeda.

Still, for authorities, there were plenty of questions about Alattas. A federal watch list in October 2001 states that Alattas arrived in New York City on Sept. 10 on a one-way ticket and “insisted” on a nonstop flight.

The document does not state where Alattas came from that day or what his eventual destination was. The watch list is at odds with statements made by Alattas’ friends, who have insisted that he returned to Saudi Arabia voluntarily in February 2000 to avoid being deported.

Despite this discrepancy about when he left the country, sources said federal authorities now know his whereabouts in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Hamud, Alddin’s attorney, said ICE agents last month pressed Alddin for information about Alattas. And in case there was any doubt about their plans, Hamud said, authorities literally drew Alddin a picture.

One agent, Hamud said, drew a “Y” on paper, put Alddin’s name at the bottom, “U.S.” at the top left and “Saudi Arabia” at the top right. “Tell us the names of everybody you know who hates America,” the agent told Alddin, according to his attorney. “If you do, you can stay here,” the agent said, pointing to the U.S. “If not, we’ll send you here,” the agent added, pointing to Saudi Arabia.

Although authorities picked up Alddin as a result of the probe into Sept. 11, Boyd of ICE said he is convinced that the nation’s increased enforcement of immigration laws would have eventually caught up with the Saudi national, given the agency’s emphasis on apprehending aliens convicted of crimes.

Hamud and other attorneys counter that in its zeal to convince Americans they are safer, the government routinely portrays immigration violators as international terrorists.

“My client is no more a threat to national security than I am,” Hamud said. “If he is a threat, the irony is that the government is perfectly willing to allow him to return to Saudi Arabia.”