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Posted
on 09-Jul-02 08:16 AM
FBI Agents Raid Immigrants' Stores
By DAVID B. CARUSO
Associated Press Writer
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Customers usually enter Tariq Hussain's jewelry store browsing for diamonds or gold rings. Recently, he was visited by people looking for something much more sinister.
Hussain's Intrigue Jewelers kiosk in suburban Pittsburgh was one of several across the nation searched by FBI agents hunting for ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network.
About 75 stores have been searched by investigators hoping to discover financial backing for terrorist groups, said a law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The raids have taken place in several cities over the past two weeks, including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Atlanta and New York. Dozens of foreigners, mostly from Pakistan, have been detained or questioned.
Immigration attorney Neil Rambana, who is representing three Pakistani men and a woman from Nepal arrested in a raid at the Governor's Square mall in Tallahassee, Fla., said the FBI and INS were on a ``fishing expedition.''
The Immigration and Naturalization Service declined to comment on the raids, other than to acknowledge they had taken place. A U.S. official said more than a dozen people are still in detention following the raids.
The largest raids took place between June 28 and July 2. Agents swept jewelry stores in Pennsylvania, Florida, California, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and North Carolina. Since then, smaller raids have taken place in Texas, California and Massachusetts, officials said.
Ashar Iqubal Butt, a Pakistani citizen, pleaded guilty in June to entering the country with an altered British passport and agreed to be deported. A judge delayed his sentencing until September to give agents more time to investigate Butt's 25 World Trade Center photographs, which he had developed the week of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Butt's lawyer has said the photographs were taken innocently and that Butt had come to the United States to work.
``These people are being confronted and in some cases terrorized based on no evidence,'' said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. ``And even when the FBI says there is evidence, it is never anything anyone else is allowed to see.''
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