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Padilla's co-defendants

2006-04-09

Details contained in court documents about the four others charged along with Jose Padilla with being part of a North American terror support cell. KIFAH WAEL JAYYOUSI: 44 years old. Naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Jordan. Doctorate degree in civil engineering and U.S. Navy veteran. Began publishing in 1994 the Islam Report that federal investigators say was used to raise money for Islamic extremists and report on Muslim radicals worldwide. Founded American Islamic Group, "the voice of the mujahideen." Has wife and five children living in Detroit. Arrested March 2005 after returning from Qatar. ADHAM AMIN HASSOUN: 43 years old. Palestinian born in Lebanon who came to United States in 1989. Worked as computer programmer in Broward County but was allegedly the main East Coast representative of Jayyousi's AIG. Prosecutors say he helped distribute Islam Report in South Florida and provided extremist recruits. One of them was Jose Padilla, investigators say. Originally arrested in June 2002 on an immigration violation charge. KASSEM DAHER: Lebanese national with Canadian residency status. Lived in Le Duc, Canada, and helped distribute the Islam Report. Was allegedly involved in planning to provide money and fighters for jihad in Bosnia, Chechnya and elsewhere. Was close associate of Mohamed Zaky, a former associate of Jayyousi who was killed in 1995 while fighting Russians in Chechnya. MOHAMED HESHAM YOUSSEF: Another alleged recruit of Hassoun's for violent Islamic extremism. Investigators say Youssef, living in Egypt, frequently discussed with Hassoun the travel logistics of mujahideen fighters. Hassoun frequently wired money to Youssef for these "brothers," among them Jose Padilla. One FBI intercept has Youssef telling Hassoun that Padilla had "entered into the area of Usama" - a reference to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

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FBI probe that nabbed Padilla began in 1993

2006-04-09

12:15 pm CDT: title corrected. AoS. The FBI investigation that yielded criminal charges against former "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla began more than a dozen years ago, after the arrest of a charismatic blind sheik in New York revealed the existence of a North American network supporting Islamic extremists worldwide. Although Padilla is by far the most famous, his co-defendants in a trial set for Miami this fall were allegedly more active for a much longer period in recruiting would-be terrorists and advocating radical Muslim causes, according to court documents. In fact, the original FBI terrorism probe began a few months after Padilla, a former Chicago gang member, was released from a Florida prison in 1992 after serving a year on a firearms violation. Over the next decade, the investigation would lead from New York to San Diego to Detroit to Sunrise, Fla., where Padilla's alleged terror recruiter was operating. A potential obstacle to trial in the Miami case was removed Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court, which rejected an attempt by Padilla's lawyers to use his case to challenge President Bush's wartime powers to detain people indefinitely without charge. After the al-Qaida terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the investigation would lead to terror support indictments against two alleged leaders of the network - Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi - and later against Padilla, who was held by the U.S. military without charge for 3 1/2 years as an "enemy combatant." Padilla was arrested May 8, 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and later accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a major U.S. city. The Miami indictment, however, does not mention that alleged plot. The FBI probe began in 1993, the same year that al-Qaida first attempted to topple the World Trade Center towers with bombs in an underground garage. It was also the year radical Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel Rahman was arrested on charges of plotting to bomb New York landmarks and assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. He was later convicted. Thousands of telephone calls between those charged in the Miami case were monitored by the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies over more than a decade, but no one was arrested in the case until June 2002 and no terror-related charges were brought until October 2004. One reason for that was a legal "wall" that existed for years at the FBI to separate intelligence and criminal investigations. Passage of the Patriot Act by Congress a few weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks removed that wall, allowing criminal investigators access to a vast trove of intelligence intercepts, wiretaps and informants. The early focus of the alleged terror support operatives charged in the Miami case were the violent Muslim movements in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Eritrea and Somalia. Jayyousi, a Jordanian national and naturalized U.S. citizen, was a "supporter and follower" of Rahman, frequently talking with the jailed sheik by telephone in 1994 and 1995, according to the FBI. Shortly after Rahman's arrest, Jayyousi had founded the American Islamic Group, which published the Islam Report. This newsletter carried news about the sheik and details glorifying the exploits of jihadists around the world. "Jayyousi would update the sheik with jihad news, many times reading accounts and statements issued directly by terrorist organizations" in Jordan and Egypt, FBI agent John T. Kavanaugh said in an affidavit. Jayyousi, who lived in San Diego, Detroit, Baltimore and Egypt during the probe, also allegedly used the Islam Report to raise money for Muslim extremists through nonprofit organizations used as cover: Save Bosnia Now, later changed to American Worldwide Relief. This purported charity had offices around the world, including San Diego, Bosnia, Germany and Croatia. According to his lawyer, Jayyousi was interviewed by FBI agents eight times between 1995 and 2003 about his activities but wasn't charged until April 2005. He has a wife and five children in Detroit and was recently released on bail - the only defendant in the Miami case to win pretrial release. Jayyousi, who has a doctorate degree in civil engineering and served in the U.S. Navy, said in court papers that he never advocated terrorism and that his words in the Islam Report are protected by the Constitution's free speech guarantees. "Dr. Jayyousi has not been accused of personally participating in any violent activity," said his lawyer, William Swor. Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Palestinian, worked during much of the 1990s as a computer programmer in the Broward County suburb of Sunrise. He was also an associate of Jayyousi, helping distribute the Islam Report in South Florida and looking for young recruits willing to become mujahideen to fight overseas for extremist Muslim causes, according to the FBI. Hassoun was originally arrested on an immigration violation in 2002 and later indicted in the terrorism case. But he had been under FBI investigation since a January 1993 telephone call between Hassoun and Rahman, the blind sheik, according to court papers. One of his recruits allegedly was Padilla, otherwise known as "Ibrahim" and "Abu Abdullah the Puerto Rican," court documents say. Padilla had begun the conversion to Islam after his 1992 prison release. Maulana Shafayat Mohamed, leader of the Dar Uloom Islamic Institute in Pembroke Pines, said in an interview that he taught Padilla both Arabic and the Koran. He said Hassoun in the late 1990s attempted to speak at his mosque - Hassoun was affiliated with a Sunrise mosque - but that he was refused permission, partly because Hassoun was known to harbor extremist views. As for Padilla, Mohamed said he was "a quiet guy" who never demonstrated any radical tendencies. "I never heard him say or do anything that would give me the slightest idea he would think like that," Mohamed said. "Somebody must have seen his good nature and brainwashed him and turned him into that." After they hooked up, Hassoun in 1996 told Padilla to get ready to move to Egypt, which he finally did on Sept. 5, 1998, according to intercepted conversations. Padilla would eventually find his way to Afghanistan, where he allegedly attending an al-Qaida training camp and was eventually given the "dirty bomb" assignment by top al-Qaida leaders. Hassoun has also denied being an advocate of terrorism or that he recruited jihad fighters. A fellow Hassoun recruit named in the Padilla indictment is Mohamed Hesham Youssef, who had left the United States in 1996, the court documents say. Youssef, who is believed in custody n Egypt, provided assistance to Padilla in Egypt and frequently provided reports about their welfare to Hassoun, according to transcripts of intercepted conversations. The final Padilla co-defendant is Kassem Daher, another follower of Sheik Rahman who lived in Le Duc, Canada, and helped distribute Jayyousi's Islam Report in Canada. Daher left Canada for Lebanon in May 1998 and is still there, according to the FBI.

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Padilla Support Network Included Washington DC Public Schools Building Manager

2005-04-02

A widening federal probe into a radical Islamic support network that allegedly assisted "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla has netted its most surprising catch: the former top building manager for the Washington D.C. public schools. Kifah Wael Jayyousi, who served as "chief of facilities" for the Washington D.C. school system between 1999 and April 2001, was arrested by U.S. Customs agents at Detroit airport last Sunday while returning to the country from Qatar where he has been working for the past two years. In a criminal complaint unsealed this week and in a court hearing today, Jayyousi, 43, was described as a key player in a U.S.-based network of extremist Muslims who raised funds and recruited soldiers to wage "violent jihad" in Chechnya, Bosnia and Afghanistan. He is charged with providing material support to terrorists. Jayyousi and two associates were "primary participants in a triangulated North American support cell," said federal prosecutor Russell Killinger in a detention hearing in Detroit today. "They were supporters of every single violent terrorist organization that was active [during the 1990s]. I can't tell you how many thousands of people were killed" by these terror groups. But the hearing today also revealed potential holes in the government's case. While saying that the government had tapes of thousands of hours of intercepted Jayyousi telephone conversations that were obtained with secret national-security wiretaps in the 1990s, Killinger acknowledged that the Justice Department—for reasons that remain unclear—dropped surveillance of him around 2000. Moreover, a federal magistrate said that much of the government's evidence appeared to be "protected speech" under the Constitution and did not involve allegations that he personally engaged in any violent activity. While ultimately deciding to hold Jayyousi without bond, U.S. magistrate Stephen Whelan said of the evidence presented against Jayyousi: "This is somewhat of a close case for me." Still, regardless of how it is ultimately resolved, one significant question likely to emerge from the unfolding case is how Jayyousi, who had been under investigation by the U.S. government for years for his suspected links to terrorists, could have managed to land a sensitive $114,534 a year job that placed him in charge of maintenance—including the air conditioning, water and heating systems—of Washington D.C.'s public schools. The Jordanian-born Jayyoussi, a naturalized American citizen with a doctorate in engineering, worked as the assistant superintendent of the Detroit public schools before being hired by the District of Columbia. He was later fired from his D.C. position five months before the September 11 terror attacks for matters that had nothing to do with terrorism. He was accused by the schools superintendent of "shoddy management" and financial irregularities—allegations that he vigorously denied. Roxanne Evans, a spokeswoman for the Washington school system, said today that the terrorist charges against Jayyousi—and the fact that he had even been under federal investigation while overseeing the city's school buildings—came as a complete surprise to school officials there. "I haven't found anybody who knew anything about this," she said. One possible explanation for the fact that Washington school officials would have known nothing about the probe was indirectly cited by Killinger, the lead prosecutor in his case. He noted today that the surveillance of Jayoussi was a secret "intelligence" investigation—authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—and not a criminal case. Prior to 9/11, he noted, there was a "wall" that prevented FISA wiretaps from being shared with criminal investigators. (As a result, FBI agents, who might have been expected to review Jayyousi's status under a standard background check required by the Washington public schools for its top officials, would not have known Jayyousi was under investigation.) The tearing down of the "wall"—and the sharing of intelligence evidence with criminal investigators—was one of the major effects of the Patriot Act passed after 9/11 and has allowed the Justice Department to bring cases like the one against Jayyousi. According to the criminal complaint, Jayyousi and two associates—Kassem Daher (a Canadian resident who has since fled to Lebanon) and Adham Amin Hassoun (a south Florida man now in custody awaiting trial on terror-related charges in Miami)—had been the prime targets of a FISA investigation into terrorist-support activity since 1993. The three men set up a web of nonprofit charities—with names like the American Islamic Group and American Worldwide Relief—that operated under the guise of humanitarian relief while actually raising money and recruiting fighters for jihadi groups closely linked to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization, according to the government's charges. "I am a Muslim citizen of the great upcoming Islamic State," Jayyousi wrote in a February 1994 e-mail obtained by federal prosecutors. The e-mail goes on to refer to those opposing the radical vision of a resurgent Muslim state as "bloodsuckers ... who are enslaving Muslims in Asia and Africa and around the World." Another reason Jayyousi came under government scrutiny was his apparent relationship with the Egyptian Omar Abdel Rahman, the "blind sheikh," who was arrested in 1993 and later convicted of plotting to blow up major New York City landmarks. An FBI agent's affidavit unsealed this week describes Jayyousi as a "supporter and follower" of the radical sheikh, helping to relay a message from an overseas supporter and updating him on "jihad news" in telephone conversations placed to his prison cell. Jayyousi's newsletter raised funds for the blind sheikh's defense and called his trial "The Greatest Conspiracy Against Islam." The criminal charges against Jayyousi make no mention of Padilla, the former Chicago gang member and presidentially decreed "enemy combatant" who sources say is another central figure in the sprawling, if little-noticed, FBI investigation that roped in Jayyousi. But the criminal complaint against Jayyousi describes in some detail his close relationship with his alleged confederate Hassoun, a Palestinian-American computer engineer who is described as the "East Coast representative" of Jayyousi's American Islamic Group and who allegedly recruited Padilla. The complaint and other evidence in the case suggests that the activities of Padilla may have been one reason that the Justice Department renewed its interest in Jayyousi after essentially dropping its probe of him in 2000. According to the FBI agent's affidavit laying out the case against Jayyousi, the former schools official worked closely with Hassoun in the United States to recruit jihad fighters in the States to go abroad. One such fighter allegedly enlisted by Hassoun seems to fit the description of Padilla. Although Padilla's name is not mentioned in the affidavit, it describes how the FBI found the mujahedin application form "for one of Hassoun's jihad recruits" dated July 24, 2000—the same day federal officials have said Padilla filled out his application form. In a monitored September 2000 international telephone call to another associate, Hassoun is quoted in the case as asking about the whereabouts of "Ibrahim"—described by a source close to the case as Padilla. "Ibrahim is a little further south 
 he is supposed to be there by Usama [bin Laden] and then he could be able to go to Kh ... little further south," the affidavit states Hassoun's associate told him. This refers to "Ibrahim's" plans to leave the training camp in Afghanistan and fight in Chechnya under the command of the Saudi-born jihadi fighter known as Ibn Omar al-Khattab. Ever since he was declared an enemy combatant and thrown into a military brig without any criminal charges against him, the Justice Department has been fighting a stiff battle in the courts over claims by Padilla's lawyers that the government's actions were unconstitutional. A federal judge in South Carolina last month ordered that Padilla be either charged or released—a decision that Justice is appealing. One way out of their box, law-enforcement officials tell NEWSWEEK, is to somehow get Hassoun, or now possibly even Jayyousi, to plead guilty and then use their testimony as grounds to finally bring criminal charges against Padilla. But judging from today's courtroom developments, the feds have a long way to go. William Swor, Jayyousi's lawyer, described the government's case as a "unwarranted confabulation of the facts." He argued, for example, that at the time that Jayyousi was raising funds to support Muslim fighters in Bosnia, he was taking the same position as the U.S. government, which had denounced Serbian aggression against that country. Jayyousi, who was returning to the United States to see his elderly father—who recently suffered a heart attack—has every intention of staying to "clear his name," said Swor.

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Ex-school official tied to terror

2005-03-29

Why Johnny can't read... A former Detroit schools official has been charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. A criminal complaint unsealed Monday in Miami said Kifah Wael Jayyousi, 43, formerly of Detroit, conspired with Kassem Daher of Broward County, Fla., in the mid- and late 1990s to raise money and recruit Muslim extremists to fight in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya and Somalia. The complaint was issued in December. Authorities said Jayyousi, a former assistant superintendent, was arrested around 12:30 p.m. Sunday at Detroit Metro Airport after stepping off a flight from Amsterdam. U.S. Customs agents detained him after conducting a routine computer check that showed Jayyousi was wanted on a federal terrorism warrant out of Miami. It's unclear whether he was traveling alone. Authorities said he had flown to Amsterdam from Qatar. Jayyousi made a brief appearance Monday in U.S. District Court in Detroit, where the U.S. Attorney's Office requested that he be sent to Miami to answer to the charges. U.S. Magistrate Steven Whelan ordered him held until a detention hearing Wednesday, when his lawyer, Jon Posner, could be present. Posner is in the hospital, according to his law firm. Jayyousi and Daher are charged with conspiring to provide material support and resources for terrorism and conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure people or damage property in a foreign country. The first charge carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The second carries a maximum penalty of 35 years to life in prison. Daher, a former resident of Leduc, Canada, is a fugitive living in Lebanon. A court affidavit signed by FBI agent John Kavanaugh Jr. said an investigation that began in late 1993 found that Jayyousi, Daher and two other men -- Mohamed Zaky and Adham Amin Hassoun -- were involved in a North American network to raise money and recruit fighters to wage violent jihad around the globe. Money initially was raised through charitable organizations known as Save Bosnia Now and American Worldwide Relief, the affidavit said. They were founded by Zaky of San Diego, who was killed in Afghanistan while fighting Russians in May 1995. Hassoun, a Palestinian national who was born in Lebanon, came to the United States in 1989 and has been in U.S. custody since June 2002, is awaiting trial in Miami on similar terrorism charges. He lived in Broward County, Fla. The affidavit said Jayyousi is a Jordanian national and naturalized U.S. citizen who has lived in San Diego, Los Angeles, Detroit and Baltimore. It said he moved to Egypt in 2003. After Zaky's death, Jayyousi allegedly took over American Worldwide Relief. He also founded the American Islamic Group. Although that group touted itself as a nonprofit, religious service to protect the rights of Muslims and provide economic aid to needy people, it actually promoted terrorism, the affidavit said. The affidavit said Jayyousi used the group's monthly newsletter, Islam Report, to raise money and recruit fighters for jihad and to disseminate the accomplishments of terrorists worldwide. The affidavit said the newsletter described murders, executions and massacres committed by terrorists. The affidavit said all four men were followers of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian cleric who was sentenced to prison in 1995 for plotting to blow up New York landmarks. From 1994 through late 1995, Jayyousi allegedly called Rahman in prison to update him about terrorist developments. Much of the information contained in the complaint came from court-authorized electronic surveillance. Jayyousi worked as a senior engineer at the University of California-Irvine before he was hired in 1997 as assistant superintendent for physical facilities and capital improvement at Detroit Public Schools. In Detroit, he was responsible for overseeing the early stages of spending of the $1.5-billion school bond. During his tenure, the bond program was mired in two controversies: skepticism about the costs associated with a construction program led by then-Wayne County prosecutor candidate Mike Duggan and the firing of a minority company that managed the bond program, which led to a lawsuit against the district.

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