Al-Qaida Suspect Held
Washington Post reported on Saturday.
''It has really alarmed a lot of people that al Qaeda may be trying to get that much money into the United States for operational purposes,'' one official told the Post.
''We don't know what he was up to, but he was coming from Indonesia, he had $12 million in bogus checks ... he was born in Jordan and his family is from Chechnya. There is a lot of smoke there to investigate,'' the official added.
Dawn Clenney, special agent for the FBI's Detroit office, on Saturday confirmed the arrest, but would not say whether the suspect may have trained in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan.
''We are attempting to learn if there are any terrorist links regarding those cashier's checks,'' she told Reuters in a telephone interview.
The United States has linked Muslim rebels in Indonesia to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network of Islamic extremists, which Washington blames for the Sept. 11 attacks.
Clenney said Omar Shishani was detained on Wednesday when he arrived at Detroit's Metropolitan Airport from Indonesia. She said Shishani's Dearborn, Michigan, home was searched on Thursday. Shishani, 47, lives with his wife, the paper said.
Shishani told officials he was a naturalized U.S. citizen, and was carrying a passport, the Post said. His court-appointed federal defender declined to comment to the newspaper.
Officials said Shishani's name appeared on a U.S. watch list of people trained in Afghanistan by al-Qaida and also in documents found in Afghanistan, the paper said.
Officials said they did not know how the checks would have been used, but that they were ''extremely well made,'' according to the paper.
Shishani will remain in custody until his detention hearing, scheduled for Wednesday, Clenney said.
Reut11:34 07-20-02
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