Qatari student charged with lying in U.S.

Federal prosecutors last week charged a Qatari man studying in the United States with lying to the FBI and disclosed an investigation of his potential links to an alleged top financier of Osama bin Laden.

The six-count criminal complaint was filed in Manhattan federal court against Ali Saleh Kahlah Al Marri, who had already been in custody on fraud charges for more than a year in connection with the investigation into the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Al Marri, also known as Abdullakareem A. Almuslam, appeared in court on Monday for a preliminary hearing and was ordered held in custody. He is expected to be indicted soon on the charges by a federal grand jury, at which point he will enter a plea of not guilty, according to his lawyer, Richard Jasper.

Al Marri also is set to stand trial in Illinois on January 13 on charges of unauthorised possession of credit card numbers with the intention to defraud. He was indicted on those charges late last year, shortly after coming to the United States on a student visa so he could study for a master's degree in computer information systems at Bradley University in Illinois.

Al Marri was initially interviewed by the FBI in October 2001 at his home in Peoria, Illinois,and was arrested two months later as a material witness in the investigation into the terror attacks.During that investigation, authorities said, they found evidence of suspicious activity in Al Marri's laptop computer, including indications he had book-marked websites about dangerous chemicals that showed the amounts "immediately dangerous to life or health'' as well as information about how to purchase them.

FBI agents who searched Al Marri's laptop computer found dozens of stolen credit card numbers, the complaint said. And during the search of the computer, the FBI found an Arabic oath or prayer asking God to "protect'' and "guard'' bin Laden, audio files containing lectures by bin Laden and his associates, photographs of the September 11 attacks, and lists of web sites with titles such as "Jihad arena,'' "Taliban'' and "martyrs,'' according to the complaint. The search of Al Marri's apartment also turned up an almanac with bookmarks on pages about U.S. dams, reservoirs, waterways and railroads, the complaint said.

In the current case, Al Marri was charged with making false statements to FBI agents by denying during the earlier investigation that he had called a telephone number in a Gulf state associated with Mustafa Ahmed Al Hawsawi, an alleged associate of the 19 suicide hijackers and others linked to the September 11 attacks.

U.S. officials have described Al Hawsawi as being perhaps the top paymaster for theAl Qaida terrorist network, in addition to wiring thousands of dollars to the hijackers sothey could carry out the attacks.

Al Hawsawi is an indicted co-conspirator in the conspiracy case against terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui. The FBI also has linked him, via joint credit card accounts, to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the Al Qaida military commander who is believed to have overseen the September 11 plot and many other Al Qaida attacks. Al Marri, a married father of five, also was charged on Monday with making false statements to banking institutions.

Prosecutors said Al Marri lied to them about phone calls that were made with a calling card that were traced back to Al Hawsawi. They also said he lied to FBI agents about aspects of his background, telling agents he was last in the United States in 1991 while attending Bradley as an undergraduate when he had actually re-entered the country in May 2000.

At the time, authorities said, Al Marri used a stolen Social Security number to open fraudulent credit card accounts before leaving several months later.

Al Marri's lawyer said the government had no evidence his client was connected to terrorism."My client isn't charged in any direct or even indirect participation in September 11,'' Jasper said.

If convicted, Al Marri faces up to 30 years in prison on each of the three charges relating to making false statements to banking institutions, and 10 years if convicted of lying tothe FBI.

@Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service