Terror Watch: Who, And What, Does He Know?

Federal prosecutors have obtained intriguing evidence that a prominent Muslim activist who helped recruit chaplains for the U.S. military may have had far more extensive contacts with suspected terrorists than was previously known, including meetings with a well-known associate of the September 11 hijackers, NEWSWEEK has learned.

The evidence--some of which has been obtained from German police files--adds a potential new dimension to the widening espionage investigation centered on translators and chaplains at the U.S. naval prison for Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners at Guantanomo Bay, Cuba. An ex-U.S. soldier who served as an Arabic-language translator at the base was detained yesterday, the third arrest in a case that has prompted the Pentagon to launch a full scale probe into its program for certifying Islamic chaplains in the military.

The Muslim activist, Abdurahman Muhammed Alamoudi, president of the American Muslim Foundation, played a key role in the chaplain program, publicly boasting to reporters that he was first person authorized by the U.S. military to recruit Islamic clerics.

Alamoudi also became a leading public spokesman for Muslim-related causes in the United States, advocating greater political outreach and forging alliances with government officials--in part by donating thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, including $1,000 to both Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush during the 2000 elections. (Both donations were later returned.)

But the activities of Alamoudi have taken on a far different context for federal investigators in light of the activist's arrest last Sunday at Washington's Dulles airport on charges that he made illegal trips to Libya and accepted $340,000 in cash from an agent of a Libyan front group that was handed to him in a small Samsonite-style briefcase in a hotel room in London last August.

The exact nature of Alamoudi's relations with suspected terrorists is still far from clear--and there have been at least some suggestions by former associates that the activist's main interest in allegedly taking the cash may have been to set himself up as a business agent for the Libyan government rather than as one to fund terrorism. (Alamoudi's lawyer yesterday denied he had done anything "illegal, immoral or unacceptable.")

But that is clearly not the theory of Justice Department prosecutors who yesterday suggested during a federal detention hearing that Alamoudi accepted the cash with the intention of flying to Syria and delivering it to the leaders of Palestinian terrorist groups.

Prosecutors readily acknowledge they cannot prove at this point Alamoudi's real intentions in taking the Libyan cash, although for their immediate purposes it is irrelevant. Libya remains on the U.S. sanctions list as a terrorist state, and Alamoudi has been charged with violating International Economic Emergency Powers Act, which bars financial transactions with such countries.

Still, prosecutors yesterday disclosed a wealth of new evidence aimed at showing that, at a minimum, Alamoudi has privately sympathized with terrorists. In a secretly recorded conversation after the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa, Alamoudi called the attacks by Al Qaeda "wrong" but then added: "What is the result you achieve in destroying an embassy in an African country? I prefer to hit a Zionist target in America or Europe ... I prefer, honestly, like what happened in Argentina ... The Jewish Community Center. It is a worthy operation." (The reference was apparently to the July 18, 1994, car-bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 86 people.) U.S. Judge Theresa Buchanan ordered Alamoudi held without bail after the hearing.

Equally intriguing, NEWSWEEK has learned, is other evidence recently obtained by prosecutors from German police files showing that Alamoudi also had meetings in the fall of 2000 with Mohammed Belfas, an elder from the Islamic community in Hamburg who had multiple ties to key figures in the September 11 terror attacks. Belfas--who once shared an apartment with Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the orchestrators of the September 11 attacks--had come to the United States in the fall of 2000 along with a young Muslim acquaintance from Hamburg.

From the outset, federal investigators have suspected there was far more to the trip by Belfas and his associate, Agus Budiman, than sightseeing. After the September 11 attacks, German police raided Belfas's Hamburg apartment and found pictures of the two young Indonesian Muslims in front of the Pentagon and Capitol Hill, a discovery that led some to believe they were on a scouting mission for possible targets for the September 11 attacks. They also discovered multiple connections between the two men and several leaders of the September 11 plot, including bin al-Shibh and Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of the hijackers.

Adding further to suspicions: Budiman, who stayed in the United States and took a job as a pizza-delivery man, later pled guilty to assisting Belfas in obtaining a fraudulent ID card using a phony Arlington, Va., address near the Pentagon.

Investigators readily acknowledge they were never able to establish whether the two men were innocent dupes of the hijackers or co-conspirators. Budiman denied he had any knowledge of the terrorist attacks. Similarly, Belfas also denies any connection to terrorism and has never been charged, although he remains under scrutiny by the German police.

But his recently discovered dealings with Alamoudi are likely to get new attention. Among the evidence seized from Belfas's apartment is a picture showing Belfas and Budiman meeting with Alamoudi at his office in Arlington. Belfas later told police he got to know Alamoudi because he hoped Alamaoudi would help him find a new building for an Islamic social-service center in Hamburg. In addition, Alamoudi wrote a letter on personal letterhead recommending Belfas to an Islamic editor in Munich.

Rita Katz, president of the SITE Institute, a Washington-based anti-terrorism investigative organization, said the meetings between Alamoudi and Belfas need further scrutiny--especially in light of Alamoudi's apparent terrorist sympathies.

"For the last decade, Mr. Alamoudi has had two faces," said Katz. "At the same time, he pretends to be working with the U.S. government, he has expressed support for terrorist groups. He has misled the Muslim public."

Alamoudi's lawyer, May Kheder, did not return a phone call seeking comment. But yesterday, during his federal detention hearing, she called her client "an advocate of religious freedom in America" and "religious tolerance."