Two men arrested in Texas the day after the September 11 terror attacks have been tentatively linked to one of the airplane hijackers, the Dallas Morning News reported Saturday, quoting federal authorities.
The FBI has "credible" witness accounts that the two men -- identified as Ayub Ali Khan and Mohammed Jaweed Azmath, natives of India -- were seen with one of the hijackers at a mosque in New York and also at a nearby convenience store before the attack.
The suspects have been held on material witness warrants since federal drug police picked them up on September 12 on a train bound for San Antonio, in southern Texas.
The two had been aboard a TWA airline flight from Newark, New Jersey to San Antonio that was forced to land in St. Louis, Missouri when all air traffic across the United States stopped after hijacked passenger jets slammed into the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
Police found they were carrying box cutters, cash, hair dye, religious materials and photocopies of multiple passports.
"We're starting to get them linked to one of the hijackers," a law enforcement official told the newspaper. "There is enough there to make us completely suspicious."
The New York mosque the men frequented is believed to be in the mostly Arab neighborhood in Brooklyn where Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman -- sentenced in 1996 to life in prison for inspiring his followers to blow up New York landmarks -- led prayers in local mosques.
Authorities however were reluctant to release further details, the Dallas Morning News reported.
Some 977 people were arrested following the September 11 attacks in connection with the investigation -- Washington, (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
