Ali S. Al-Marri’s acquaintances here find it hard to believe that the man they knew briefly this fall–a graduate student, husband and devoted father of five small children–might have a connection to terrorists who committed the Sept. 11 attacks.
In the last week, federal documents have come to light that link Al-Marri to telephone calling-card numbers that also have been linked to the terrorists.
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In Peoria, the tenuous nature of that link is being weighed against the image he projected as a family man. But those who knew him are also learning that federal documents allege he possessed pirated credit card numbers and computer hacking software.
He is not charged with involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks.
As in virtually all the hundreds of arrests after the attacks, the government is releasing scant information, leaving more questions than answers.
In September, Al-Marri returned to Bradley University from Qatar to enroll in the computer information systems graduate program. A decade earlier, he had graduated from the Peoria school with a business degree.
The 36-year-old graduate student, who wore his hair long and looked several years younger than his age, came with a Saudi wife and five children under the age of 13, none of whom spoke a word of English, people who knew him here said.
Al-Marri arrived in Chicago on Sept. 10, spent a night at a Marriott hotel and then checked out and went to Peoria on Sept. 11, according to a recently unsealed FBI affidavit.
To the people who got to know him in the fall, his priorities appeared to be studying, finding a decent pediatrician for his kids and taking his family to regular social gatherings at a mosque near campus. He usually played soccer on Saturday with other Arab students.
His children included a boy of about 12, three younger daughters, including twins, and an infant son.
“He had five kids, it was very tough for him,” said Souhail Elhouar, a civil engineering professor who met and helped Al-Marri get settled when he arrived in September. “He was a very normal guy who really didn’t give the impression of being someone who was a political or religious fanatic.”
Al-Marri told Elhouar that he was in business with his brothers in Qatar and that he intended to return to the Arabian peninsula country after finishing his master’s degree.
Even in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, “I don’t think I ever had a conversation with him about any of that,” Elhouar said.
But a few months later, Al-Marri was in federal custody and an FBI agent was knocking on the door of Elhouar’s Peoria home, asking about his contact with the graduate student from Qatar. As the agent was leaving, Elhouar said, he stopped in the doorway and said, “Mr. Al-Marri is in a lot of trouble.”
The links to phone cards used by terrorists are described in an FBI affidavit filed to support an application for a warrant to search Al-Marri’s apartment near the Bradley campus.
On Nov. 4, a Qwest Communications calling card number was used to pay for multiple calls made from Al-Marri’s home phone in West Peoria to Qatar, where his family lives. On the same day, at a transient hotel on North Lincoln Avenue in Chicago, someone used the same calling card number to call a phone in the United Arab Emirates that belonged to Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi, who is suspected of coordinating the flow of cash to the Sept. 11 hijackers while they were in the United States.
Another phone card, issued by Network IP, was used to make long distance calls from Al-Marri’s home and cell phones. That same card number was used on different days to call the United Arab Emirates phone from a pay phone in Peoria and a gas station in Springfield.
None of the court documents unsealed so far have alleged that Al-Marri himself called the United Arab Emirates phone.
In the week before Sept. 11, four of the suspected hijackers, Mohamad Atta, Waleed M. Alshehri, Marwan al-Shehhi and Fayez Ahmed, wired money to an account controlled by al-Hisawi, according to the affidavit.
When Atta sent a Federal Express package to al-Hisawi on Sept. 4, the contact number he gave for the recipient was the same United Arab Emirates number called using the phone cards, according to the affidavit.
Although the FBI has not announced a direct link between Al-Marri and al-Hisawi or the hijackers, Al-Marri is now charged with several counts of credit card fraud. FBI agents in Peoria first interviewed him on Oct. 2. When they returned on Dec. 11, Al-Marri consented to a search of his apartment and allowed agents to take his laptop.
In the computer’s carrying case, agents found a list of 36 pirated credit card numbers, according to a criminal complaint filed by the U.S. attorney in New York. On the computer’s hard drive, they found several files containing hundreds of pirated card numbers, the complaint said. Also on the computer, investigators found references to computer hacking, including a hacking Web site, and messages offering to buy credit card information obtained through hacking, the complaint said. Al-Marri’s computer also was installed with “proxy” software, which can be used to disguise a computer user’s identity when connected to the Internet, the complaint said.
In December, Clayton Hoffman had just moved into a second-floor apartment across a parking lot from Al-Marri’s back door. From the front window in the complex, Hoffman said he watched unmarked cars stake out the area for days on end. “There were four of them, on all sides of the building,” Hoffman said. “They were there for four days before they went in and got him.”
Al-Marri was arrested Dec. 12 and moved to New York, where he is being held without bond. He has pleaded not guilty to the credit card fraud charges, said his attorney, Richard Jasper.
When Al-Marri had returned to his alma mater in September, he called Amir Al-Khafaji, the civil engineering and construction department chair and faculty adviser to the campus Organization of Arab Students.
“I talked to him [Al-Marri] on the phone. He was looking for help finding a place to stay,” said Al-Khafaji, who put Al-Marri in touch with Elhouar and another Arab professor.
Elhouar said he drove Al-Marri to get an Illinois driver’s license. Al-Marri’s oldest son came along, and Elhouar spoke to the boy in Arabic about adjusting to life in the United States.
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The family was a regular at Friday night gatherings held by the mosque, Elhouar said. “He had been to my house a couple of times, but I usually saw him at the mosque,” he said.
Because none of the other family members speaks English, Al-Marri’s children did not attend school in Peoria, said Abu Usamah At-Thahabi, imam of the Islamic Center of Peoria, where the family worshiped, socialized and attended Sunday educational programs.
At-Thahabi said he had very little contact with the family before Al-Marri’s arrest. Afterward, mosque members mobilized to help the family.
After his arrest, Al-Marri’s family was left alone in the apartment with no transportation and no English skills, acquaintances said.
The basement apartment where Al-Marri lived with his family is now vacant. A bare picture window reveals brown shag carpet and the unadorned living-room walls of the two-bedroom, $450-a-month apartment.
Officials from the Saudi Arabian Embassy arranged to move Al-Marri’s family to the East Coast more than a month ago, Elhouar said.
Nazih Fady, the building’s landlord, said he finally cleaned out their possessions last week. Rent for January and February was never paid, he said, despite calls he received from someone in Indiana promising to take care of Al-Marri’s financial commitments.