Toronto Shop Clerk Tied to World Terror

Toronto Shop Clerk Tied to World Terror

Canada freed alleged top bin Laden operative

by Gary Dimmock and Aaron Sands
The Ottawa Citizen
October 29, 2001

Described as Osama bin Laden's key operative in North America, a 34-year-old Toronto grocery clerk who had evaded Canada's spy agency for years, now finds himself linked to almost every branch of the investigation into the deadliest terror attack in U.S. history.

He has as many links to Islamic terrorists as they have forged passports.

Hours after the Sept. 11 hijack attacks, jubilant terrorists across the United States, some linked to Nabil al-Marabh, called one another, praising the successful operation. The operation included key help from suicide pilots Satam al-Suqami and Ahmed al-Ghamdi, both close associates of Mr. al-Marabh.

Mr. al-Marabh is linked to suspected al-Qaeda terrorists in Toronto, Montreal, Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles and Florida. And his links spread overseas, notably to Jordan, where his close associate, Raed Hijazi, is currently on trial for a series of failed plots to kill American tourists celebrating the millennium at hotels. The U.S. Customs Service has linked money transfers from Mr. al-Marabh to the accused terrorist.

The FBI is also investigating $30,000 U.S. in money transfers from Mr. al-Marabh that may have helped finance the Sept. 11 attacks. And he's linked to an international forgery ring, with suspects collecting and trading passports and driver's licences like hockey cards.

At the request of the FBI, the RCMP raided his uncle's print shop in Toronto, and is now investigating any links to forged documents used by terrorists.

Despite all of these terrorist links, his uncle, a respected Islamic cleric, says "he's just a kid. ... Nobody would let him know any secrets."

Had Canadian security agents investigated Mr. al-Marabh when they had the chance back in June, when he was jailed by immigration authorities, they may have discovered any number of his worldwide links to convicted and suspected terrorists, including two of the suicide pilots.

Instead, Mr. al-Marabh was released on bail in July and skipped a deportation hearing.

A former chief strategist for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada's spy agency, says a more thorough investigation of Mr. al-Marabh during his June incarceration may have exposed key evidence.

Whether such an investigation would have prevented the deaths of more than 5,000 people on Sept. 11 is an "intriguing question," said David Harris, former director of strategic planning for CSIS.

"It becomes ever more intriguing as evidence seeps in," he said.

"It is not clear how much they had on him at that point and what would have been admissible in any kind of serious review. There is clearly a great deal about this man that bears review in counterterrorism terms, and may ultimately point in an embarrassing direction for Canada."

Eight days after the U.S. attacks, on Sept. 19, Mr. al-Marabh was arrested in Illinois for questioning. He was the subject of a U.S. manhunt after his name was placed on the FBI's watch list.

Days earlier, he had evaded capture at a bin Laden safe house in Detroit, where police found fake passports, visas, other forms of identification documents and a daybook containing handwritten notes about security at a U.S. base in Turkey and an airport in Jordan.

Inside Mr. al-Marabh's former home, one of seven addresses he had listed, agents also found Farouk ali-Hamoud, 21, Ahmed Hannan, 33, and Karim Koubriti, 23.

The trio charged in Detroit -- two are from Morocco and one is from Algeria -- have no family roots in North America, no fixed address and no permanent jobs.

Two of the men, Mr. Hannan and Mr. Koubriti, worked as dishwashers for an airline caterer at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Investigators believe the three men may be tied to a failed terrorist plot involving the American military base in Turkey.

Officials described the papers found in the home as "chilling."

The hunt for Mr. al-Marabh led investigators from Boston, where he and several terrorists worked as taxi drivers, to Detroit, where investigators say he used three different addresses and obtained a commercial driver's permit to transport hazardous material, to Burbank, Illinois, where he was finally arrested as he worked the counter of a food and liquor store.

Mr. al-Marabh is now being held in a New York jail while top FBI investigators work around the clock to learn everything they can about his terrorist links.

Born on Nov. 6, 1966 in Kuwait, Mr. al-Marabh followed friends and family to Canada in the early 1990s.

On Oct. 26, 1994, his refugee claim was rejected. He was ordered deported, and on June 20, 1995, he left for the United States across the Peace Bridge at Buffalo.

Somehow, Mr. al-Marabh managed to criss-cross the Canada-U.S. border undetected until this past June.

With a forged Canadian passport in his pocket, Mr. al-Marabh hid in the back of a tractor-trailer, hoping to sneak back into the United States across the Lewiston Bridge at Niagara Falls.

A U.S. border guard, on routine inspection, found him. "I am stateless," he said. "... I won't leave."

Then, according to the border guard's report, the fugitive said: "Put me back in a cell so I can die."

In a Niagara Falls jail, he waited for a detention review, which he would win.

His lawyer dismissed suggestions that he was a flight risk, and said his family, notably his uncle, Ahmad Shehab, "had taken it upon themselves to insure that this man is turned around, is straightened up, obeys the law because it is the right thing to do. And they will insure that it is done."

At the immigration detention review, Mr. al-Marabh testified he was not a danger to the public, despite a May 30, 2000 assault conviction in Boston.

Back then, Mr. al-Marabh had been found guilty of stabbing an acquaintance in the leg.

He was handed a suspended sentence, placed on probation and ordered to pay restitution of $1,350 U.S.

"It was self-defence. So, it was no chance for me and -- you know, to like defend myself but to come out to something because it was like facing me with a deadly weapon. It was like a big knife," he told the detention hearing.

He also said he was trying to cross into the United States to visit family. "I've been like away 15 years and I'm dying to see my family."

Though authorities found him hiding in the tractor-trailer with a forged Canadian passport and bogus social insurance card, an adjudicator released him from custody.

On July 11, Mr. Shehab, a respected Toronto Islamic cleric, posted bail and signed a conditional release that forced his nephew to live with him at his apartment, report to an immigration office monthly, obey the law and attend an upcoming deportation hearing.

But he never showed, and somehow crossed back into the United States, remaining undetected until after the Sept. 11 attacks.

His uncle has renounced terrorism. In fact, it was Mr. Shehab who phoned several contacts in the United States, ordering them to tell his nephew to turn himself in to police.

"I told them to tell him to get to the nearest authorities to clear his name," Mr. Shehab told the Citizen.

His nephew's connections are said to likely reach into the maze of mountain caves where Mr. bin Laden himself is believed to be hiding.

In fact, CSIS documents show that two of Mr. al-Marabh's associates are linked to high-ranking members of al-Qaeda now in hiding with Mr. bin Laden.

According to U.S. reports, Mr. al-Marabh spent time in Afghanistan throughout the 1990s.

Mr. Hijazi, a former Boston cab driver, went on trial in Jordan two days before Mr. al-Marabh's arrest in Illinois. Accused of plotting to bomb a hotel and tourist spots in Jordan during millennium celebrations, Mr. Hijazi, a California native, has named Mr. al-Marabh as a key operative in the al-Qaeda network and leading agent in North America.

A Kuwaiti man in his mid-30s, whom Canadian and U.S. investigators refuse to identify, has been arrested in connection with the terror attacks.

At the time of his arrest, police have revealed he was carrying "sensitive security documents" detailing nuclear facilities and Health Canada disease laboratories in the Ottawa area.

A New York Times report said Mr. al-Marabh's associates engaged in celebratory phone calls praising the success of the operation in the hours following the suicide attacks in New York City, Washington, D.C., and rural Pennsylvania.

The interception of those calls led to the arrests of several suspects in the attacks.

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