Pubdate: Thu, 25 Oct 2001
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Authors: Mark Schoofs, Laurie P Cohen, Jerry Markon, Staff Reporters Of The 
Wall Street Journal

FBI Is Investigating If $100,000 In Checks From New Jersey Man Funded Terrorism

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it is looking into whether a New 
Jersey man taken into custody after Sept. 11 may have helped fund terrorist 
activities with a series of unusual financial transactions.

The suspect, Mohammad Aslam Pervez, was formally charged last week with 
lying to FBI agents about checks totaling more than $100,000. Mr. Pervez 
has been the focus of intense scrutiny since authorities connected him to 
two men with whom he roomed in Jersey City. All three men were employed by 
the same newsstand owner, Usman Bandukra, with whom Mr. Pervez exchanged 
many of his suspect checks.

The two other men, Ayub Ali Khan and Mohamad Azmath, were pulled off an 
Amtrak train and arrested in Fort Worth, Texas, on Sept. 12 with boxcutter 
knives, more than $5,000 in cash and multiple passports. The two had 
boarded the train in St. Louis after their TWA flight from Newark to San 
Antonio was grounded on Sept. 11 following the terrorist attacks.

Wednesday, new details emerged about the arrests of Mr. Khan and Mr. 
Azmath. They were pulled off the train because Amtrak authorities and the 
Drug Enforcement Administration suspected that they might be drug 
traffickers, according to DEA officials in Fort Worth. Karina Van Veen, an 
Amtrak spokeswoman, confirmed that the rail line had tipped off authorities 
in Fort Worth that the men were aboard. A DEA official in Fort Worth said a 
routine database check revealed that the name "Ayub Khan" was similar to a 
known heroin smuggler from Pakistan. The DEA said the two men bore earmarks 
of traffickers: For example, they had one-way tickets from St. Louis to San 
Antonio that they bought with cash at the last minute.

Mr. Khan turned out not to be the smuggler, and a check of the men's 
belongings turned up no drugs. But it did turn up the boxcutters, passports 
and hair dye. A DEA agent in Fort Worth said routine questioning of the two 
yielded conflicting statements: Mr. Azmath said he was going to San Antonio 
for a month, while Mr. Khan said he was going there for only a week.

When the passports were found, DEA officials called in the Immigration and 
Naturalization Service, which took the two into custody on visa violations. 
An official of the Indian Embassy said Wednesday that the two had reported 
their passports missing earlier this year and got new ones in Hydrabad, 
India, where they are from. They have been charged by Indian authorities 
with passport fraud.

Mr. Khan and Mr. Azmath are being held as material witnesses in New York. 
The FBI and Justice Department have declined to comment on why they are 
being held. Lawyers for the two couldn't be located for comment.

A spokeswoman for the FBI confirmed the investigation into whether 
financial dealings of their former roommate, Mr. Pervez, were being used to 
fund terrorism. "That's what we're investigating," said FBI spokeswoman 
Sandra Carroll, though she added that no link has yet been found.

The FBI has tested items removed from the three men's Jersey City apartment 
for anthrax; the results aren't yet known. Magazines -- addressed to Mr. 
Khan, saved for six years, and bearing cover stories about biological and 
chemical warfare -- were left in the Jersey City apartment.

Many of the checks that Mr. Pervez is accused of lying about were exchanged 
with Mr. Bandukra, with whom he appears to have had a closer relationship 
than previously revealed. The lease for Mr. Pervez's apartment was 
co-signed by Mr. Bandukra. Mr. Pervez worked at a newsstand owned by Mr. 
Bandukra at the Trenton train station between 1996 and 1998 and later 
worked with Mr. Khan and Mr. Azmath at Mr. Bandukra's Newark train-station 
newsstand. A second apartment, in Trenton, was also secured by Mr. 
Bandukra, and the phone for that address is listed in Mr. Pervez's name.

Richard Gruber, an attorney for Mr. Bandukra, said he wasn't surprised that 
the FBI was examining whether his client's transactions with Mr. Pervez 
funded terrorist activities. But he said the money flowing back and forth 
between the two was a business transaction involving Mr. Pervez's 
investment in a Trenton newsstand that Mr. Bandukra was buying. Both Mr. 
Bandukra and the attorney for Mr. Pervez, Charles Lavine, declined to comment.

In India, family members of Mr. Khan and Mr. Azmath said they hadn't heard 
from them, don't know where they are being held and don't know if they have 
lawyers. Both families denied that the men are connected to the Sept. 11 
attacks or their aftermath. "There's no news about him at all. We don't 
know who to contact or where to contact," Mehrun Nissa, Mr. Khan's 
mother-in-law, said in an interview in Hyderabad. She said Mr. Khan 
telephoned his wife on Sept. 10 and said he and Mr. Azmath were moving to 
Texas to work at a fruit company.

When FBI agents interviewed the family several weeks ago in India, they 
asked about that phone call and whether Mr. Khan "loved or hated the United 
States," Mrs. Nissa said.

Separately, a 55-year-old Pakistani man detained in connection with the 
terrorism investigation died in custody of an apparent heart attack 
Tuesday. The inmate, identified by the Pakistani Embassy as Muhammad Rafiq 
Butt, had been held at the Hudson County Correctional Facility in Kearny, 
N.J. The Immigration and Nationalization Service said in a statement that 
Mr. Butt was taken into custody Sept. 19 and interviewed by the FBI. The 
FBI later determined it had no further interest in him, but he was being 
held on an alleged immigration violation.

- -- Rasul Bailay in New Delhi and Ann Davis in New York contributed to this 
article.
- ---
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