California student probed for 9-11 role

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Posted 9:41AM on Wednesday, May 15, 2002

SAN DIEGO - A former college student authorities say helped some of the Sept. 11 hijackers is believed to have had a much larger role than previously disclosed, including helping arrange flight lessons, according to court documents and a law enforcement source. Investigators now believe Mohdar Abdoulah helped three of the hijackers who passed through San Diego in 2000 achieve their goals, according to the court documents. Abdoulah, 24, is charged with filing an asylum application in May 2000 in which he falsely claimed he was from Somalia and was a member of a minority group that faced persecution there. The former student at San Diego State University is jailed on $500,000 bail. Abdoulah told the three hijackers how to get Social Security cards and California driver's licenses, prosecutors say. He also called a flight school in Florida to arrange for flight lessons and ``regularly dined, worked and prayed with the hijackers,'' prosecutors asserted in court documents. Authorities believe Abdoulah remained illegally in the United States ``in order to help the ... hijackers and/or any future hijackers in the furtherance of terrorist activities against people in the United States,'' FBI agent Daniel Gonzalez said in a seven-page statement filed last week. Randall Hamud, an attorney who has represented Abdoulah, called Gonzalez's statement a ``notorious lie.'' ``If that's true why wasn't he charged,'' Hamud said. ``They're simply trying to disparage my client in the public arena in order to contaminate the jury pool.'' The law enforcement source said investigators do not believe Abdoulah's assistance rises to the level of Zaccarias Moussaoui, the only person charged as a conspirator in the attacks. Investigators say Abdoulah was a close friend of Khalid Almihdhar, Nawaf Alhazmi and Hani Hanjour, three of the men who crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. FBI agents who questioned Abdoulah less than two weeks after the attacks did not believe his ``denial of knowledge of the attacks or the plans of his friends Alhazmi, Almihdhar and Hanjour,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Wheat wrote in an 18-page court filing. Abdoulah's attorney in the asylum proceeding, Kerry Steigerwalt, said his client had only ``incidental'' contact with the hijackers and had no prior knowledge of the attacks. Gonzalez said in his court filing that Abdoulah told FBI agents they needed more knowledge of Islam and the Muslim culture, including the concept of jihad, to understand the events of Sept. 11. He said Abdoulah also agreed to take a polygraph exam on Sept. 21, but didn't show up for it. Agents told him he would be asked if had any involvement in or knowledge of terrorist attacks. At his arrest, Abdoulah spoke without prompting of ``the hatred in his heart for the United States government, and that the United States brought 'this' (Sept. 11) on themselves,'' prosecutors wrote.