West Boca · A 50-year-old doctor was arrested Saturday morning on a federal terrorism charge. Dr. Rafiq Abdus Sabir was charged with conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. He was being held in the Palm Beach County Jail waiting to appear in U.S. District Court.
U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Charles Miller in Washington, D.C., declined to comment on the charge against Sabir. FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela also declined to comment. Spokesmen from the Department of Homeland Security could not be reached for comment, despite an attempt by phone.
| "None of us will say any more!" |
The charge Sabir faces is from a 1996 law making it a crime for anyone in the United States to knowingly aid terrorist organizations. The maximum sentence for conviction is 15 years in prison.
The charge against Sabir was posted on the Palm Beach County Jail's Web site after he was booked at 1:26 p.m., but later was removed from the Web site on orders of the FBI. "My boss, Maj. Christopher Kneisley, made it very clear to me the FBI and the other federal agencies didn't want this information to be released," said Sgt. Konstandinos Patzanakidis, a jail official. "We're going to do whatever they want us to do."
FBI agents swarmed Sabir's home at about 7 a.m., neighbor Dan Kozan said. A woman who answered the door at his home in the gated Villa San Remo community west of Boca Raton on Saturday afternoon said only, "There's nothing to talk about."
Dr. Daniel McBride, spokesman for the Islamic Center of Boca Raton and a friend of Sabir, said Sabir works in the emergency rooms of two hospitals in Palm Beach County. "That's absurd," McBride said of the charge against Sabir. "He is a quality guy and a quality physician. He's all about helping others. That's why he became a doctor.
"It would shock me beyond belief if [the allegation] was true."
Sabir graduated from City College of New York with a bachelor's degree in biology and in 1981 graduated from Columbia University's medical school with a specialty in emergency medicine, according to Florida state records and Columbia's alumni Web site. He practiced in the New York City area in the 1980s and '90s before moving to Florida. Sabir received his Florida driver's license in 2002 and his medical license in 2003.
| Article doesn't say if he's American born but he sure is American trained. Columbia's a very respectable med school. |
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