As the United States commemorated the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, in Baltimore, police and Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) agents were investigating six men, five of whom were foreign nationals being held on charges of immigration violations. According to The Washington Times, the men are suspected of belonging to a terrorist cell, a law-enforcement official said.
They were among eight men who were detained on Tuesday morning at a Baltimore apartment. Later on, two of them were released.
According to the Thursday report, an FBI spokesman said agents are continuing to examine terrorist links emerging from the arrests.
Three of the men were from Somalia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Two others were Canadian citizens who were originally from Afghanistan and Pakistan, a spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service said.
The five foreigners were being held in INS custody at the Wicomico County Detention Center awaiting deportation proceedings, a spokesman said. Bond was set at an amount of $5,000 for each man, according to The Associated Press.
A sixth man, a Moroccan native residing legally in the United States, was arrested on a warrant for threatening to commit arson. Baltimore police discovered the men in an apartment in the 3600 block of Labyrinth Road. Police had an arrest warrant for Abderrahim Houti, according to police.
36-year-old Houti was taken into custody, however police entering his apartment became suspicious when they discovered "numerous other men" inside, they said, according to the daily.
Regina Averella, a spokeswoman for Baltimore City police, said officers seized identification, photographs, notebooks and literature, some written in Arabic.
"They also seized two computers, and we are obviously continuing the investigation," she conveyed. "We're looking at the computers to see which Web sites were being explored by these individuals, and the literature that we have that was written in Arabic is being translated."
In addition, some photographs were found in the apartment, but Averella would not specify what the photos showed.
Amongst the items seized during the Baltimore raid were dozens of passports, fake identification cards, photographs of Times Square in New York City and Union Station in Washington, and notebooks containing Arabic writing and pamphlets on Islamic holy war, according to ABC News. The network reported that the computers contained links to a Web site called beapilot.com, which was linked to 1,700 flight schools. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
