Saudi With Ties to 9/11 Figures Held

A 34-year-old Saudi national believed to have ties to two of the Sept. 11 hijackers was arrested Thursday morning near his home in Vista on immigration charges stemming from two misdemeanor convictions for domestic violence.

The Department of Homeland Security said Hasan Saddiq Faseh Alddin, a legal permanent resident of the United States and the husband of a U.S. citizen, is not suspected of involvement in any terrorist activities.

But Alddin is believed to have roomed with a close friend of Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almidhar, both of whom died Sept. 11, 2001, when the American Airlines jetliner they and three others commandeered crashed into the Pentagon, Homeland Security officials said.

Federal officials said the roommate, whom they did not identify, left the United States the day before the attacks.

Agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, Homeland Security’s largest investigative arm, said Alddin entered the United States on a student visa in August 1994. They said he attended San Diego State for one semester, taking courses in English, and subsequently married, becoming a legal permanent resident in 1999.

Alddin worked recently as an unlicensed in-home nurse for elderly clients, according to Mike Unzueta, deputy special agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in San Diego.

Officials said Alddin was convicted of battery against his wife, Pamela, in September 1998 and again in October 2002. Unzueta said that foreign nationals convicted of domestic violence are subject to deportation and that deportation proceedings against Alddin have begun.

Alddin and his wife have two children, ages 6 and 2.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Lauren Mack said the department decided to act against Alddin after learning about his ties to the Sept. 11 terrorists.

The department said the arrest is not tied to Wednesday’s announcement by U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller of an effort to root out a possible terrorist attack in the United States this summer.

Although married, Alddin roomed during the 1990s with the friend of Alhazmi and Almidhar, both of whom had lived in the San Diego area, Mack said.

According to a 900-page congressional report released in July, Alhazmi and Almidhar had more visible links to Al Qaeda than any of the other hijackers. The CIA had observed the men, both Saudi Arabian citizens, attending an Al Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in January 2000, and the CIA learned two months later that they had entered the United States.

They were given money and were helped in finding housing by several men -- Alddin apparently not among them -- who already had drawn the attention of FBI antiterrorism agents, records and interviews have shown. Alhazmi and Almidhar rented rooms from an FBI informant and met regularly with a local Muslim religious leader, Omar Al Bayoumi, who already was the subject of a federal terrorism probe.

But the CIA and other top federal officials in Washington failed to notify the local FBI office about their concerns about Alhazmi and Almidhar, and that lack of communication may have undercut the government’s best chance of detecting and foiling the plot, the congressional report said.

At 8:10 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 took off from Washington on a scheduled flight to Los Angeles. The FBI says Alhazmi, Almidhar and three others took over the plane, and at 9:39 a.m., it crashed into the Pentagon. Other hijackers crashed two airliners into the World Trade Center in New York, and a fourth hijacked plane went down in a field in Pennsylvania.

Shortly after the attacks, Al Bayoumi, then living in England, was detained and questioned at the request of the FBI. He was released and went to Saudi Arabia.

Malnic reported from Los Angeles and Reza from San Diego. Times staff writer Greg Krikorian in Los Angeles contributed to this report.