Cobalt blue?
Evidence? What evidence?
October 21, 2001
nytimes.com
'Who Is This Kafka That People Keep Mentioning?'
By DEBORAH SONTAG
More than 600 people have been detained in the wake of Sept. 11. At least one spent 13 days
behind bars, guilty of nothing more than coincidence.
Dr. Al Bader al-Hazmi was not asleep when the F.B.I. came knocking before dawn on the morning
after the World Trade Center attack. An early riser anyway, he had suffered a fitful night in his
San Antonio town house, dreaming of a man jumping from a twin tower engulfed in flames. In the
dream, the man expected Hazmi to catch him, and the doctor was running and running with his arms
outstretched. Shaking off the dream, Hazmi got up, prayed and then stretched out on his bed to study
gastroenterology for a coming medical exam. Becoming board certified as a radiologist is the sole
purpose of the 31-year-old Saudi citizen's stay in America.
The federal agents did not break down the door or pound on it or even ring the bell. Standing in the dark
on a suburban path in a condo community called the Villas at North Gate, they simply knocked. Hazmi
answered, wearing the thin blue caftan that serves as his nightshirt. ''F.B.I.,'' an agent said. Holding a
gun by his side, the agent ordered the doctor, a wisp of a man with soulful eyes and an almost unsettling
serenity about him, to sit on his green-and-red-plaid couch. ''I made a quick calculation to be pleasant
and calm,'' he said later. ''Anyone who attends a mosque had to be prepared for a few questions.''
Almost immediately, Hazmi formed the impression that the agents were fishing. They threw out a name
that had not yet been made public: Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian-born suspected ringleader of the
attacks. The doctor told them that the name meant nothing to him. Then the agents pointed to the
passenger list of the flight that crashed into the Pentagon, to Nawaf and Salem Alhazmi (an alternate
rendering of the name). ''We have reason to believe that these are your brothers,'' they said. Hazmi
wanted to laugh from nervous relief. ''These are not my brothers' names,'' he said. ''Al-Hazmi is
common like the Smith name in Saudi Arabia.''
Pushing his glasses up his nose, the doctor summoned the nerve to say that he would answer no further
questions without a lawyer. A short time later, schooled in his rights by American television, he also
asked to see a search warrant. Then, not knowing what else to do, he opened his gastroenterology text
and studied while the American government searched his belongings. Some five hours after they arrived,
the agents let him make a quick call to Saudi Aramco, the giant oil company that is sponsoring his
medical residency. Saudi Aramco's in-house counsel, knowing Hazmi's character and background, told
him not to worry. In turn, Hazmi told his terrified wife that the family would go out to breakfast after the
agents realized that they had stumbled into the life of a simple medical resident with three young children
who were, thankfully, he said later, sleeping unusually late.
At the end of six hours, however, the agents asked Hazmi to step outside, where the morning breeze
held the pungent aroma of his wife's mint plants. ''Give us your back, your hands,'' the agents told him.
''You are under arrest.'' When he asked, ''What is my guilt?'' they answered that he would find out in
due time. He was not allowed to change out of his nightshirt before they whisked him away, leaving
behind other agents with his stunned wife. Entsar al-Hazmi, who barely speaks English, did what she
usually does when there are guests in her home: she prepared food. The agents turned down her melted
cheese sandwiches and sweet tea.
''Bader, where are you going?'' The doctor's wife's words echoed in his head. He didn't know; over the
next 12 days, in fact, he would be transported many times, and no one would ever give him an itinerary.
In the back of a government car, his head lowered, he was puzzling over what he had just been told: that
his five-year visa, set to expire next June, had been summarily revoked and his Saudi passport
confiscated. Therefore, he was undocumented. ''Who is this Kafka that people keep mentioning?'' he
would ask me later, after his release.
Hazmi spent 13 days in custody, mostly in New York City, where he was flown in shackles on a
government plane and greeted by an armada of agents with guns pointing. In the chilly cell where he
was kept in solitary confinement, Hazmi was unaware that he had been publicly identified as a material
witness to the horrific attack and later misidentified by the media as a key suspect. Afterward, too, he
didn't realize that when the United States attorney's office in Manhattan finally cleared him of any link to
the attack, it issued a statement that came as close as the government ever does to making a public
apology.
The government is fortunate that Hazmi was the apparent innocent drawn into its web at such a charged
moment. Another person -- an American, say -- might have made a federal case out of such an
experience, which was not only harrowing but has tainted Hazmi's name in a way that will be difficult to
erase. Hazmi, a man of faith, has chosen to be high-minded about what he endured and to leave the
larger questions raised by the government's methods to Americans.
''I'm committed not to complain about what I went through,'' Hazmi said recently, stretched out on his
couch in a pinstriped caftan and bare feet. ''Given the seriousness of the larger situation, it would be
improper. I keep thinking about the man in my dream who jumped from the tower and about the families
who want to recover at least a hand of their loved ones so they can put them with dignity into the grave.
What I went through was not fun. But in another country, I might be in jail for four years and nobody
would know.''
ntil September, Al Bader Al-Hazmi's life story had been unremarkable. He came from a village,
Sabya al-Jedidah, in southwest Saudi Arabia. He was the child of illiterate parents. He aspired to
a career in medicine, making his way to and through medical school. He secured his first job as a
primary-care physician for Saudi Aramco. The oil company agreed to sponsor him for a five-year
radiology residency in Texas on the condition that he return afterward to work in a Saudi clinic.
At the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, he stood out only because, for more
than four years, he prayed several times a day and because, nearsighted, he always sat in the front row
during lectures. Otherwise, said Dr. Gerald D. Dodd III, the chairman of the radiology department, ''he
was simply a competent resident who did his job. I enjoyed working with him.''
When the doctor's low-profile existence changed overnight, it stunned his friends, colleagues and
adopted Texas town. Like the early-morning train that barrels though San Antonio with its horn blaring,
word of Hazmi's arrest traveled quickly through the city's small but growing Muslim community.
Marwan Yadak said that he was vacationing in Jordan, but a friend reached him there within hours.
Yadak said that his heart quickened: ''I said to my wife, 'If they take someone like Bader away, we're all
in trouble in America.'''
Abdulla Mohammad, who speaks English with a drawl and drives a pickup truck, said, ''We had to ask
ourselves, 'Could he have a concealed identity?''' But, Mohammad said: ''I was imagining Bader, who is
the original 97-pound weakling, flashing a box cutter and trying to get passengers on a plane to take him
seriously. If a stewardess would sit on him, she'd kill him.''
Dodd said that the university took the official position that it would not change its positive assessment of
Hazmi until the federal authorities made a further determination. But, he said, there were daily leaks in
the media citing supposedly mounting evidence against Hazmi, referring to him as ''Dr. Terror,'' ''the
Terrorists' Money Man,'' ''A Man Unknown: Healing Physician or Foreign Terrorist?''
''Every day, I'd come in, and the support staff would say, 'Did you hear what he did?''' Dodd said. ''With
multiple different accusations coming out, it wears down people's ability to keep an open mind. And it
makes it that much more difficult to make the leap of faith to ever consider him innocent.''
Hazmi was oblivious to the reverberations of his arrest. On his first night in custody, he shared a holding
cell with three Mexicans. ''What you doing here, man?'' one of them asked him. Hazmi explained.
''Wow!'' the Mexican man said. ''They think you're behind the attack on America!'' Then the man
offered some advice: ''You're innocent. Don't worry about those I.N.S. guys. They send us away all the
time. And we just come right back.''
Hazmi spent his second night in the county jail, alone and missing the Mexicans. A guard handed him a
short, thin robe, said Merry Christmas and locked him in a cell that felt refrigerated. He tossed and
turned on a bare mattress on the floor, trying to cover himself with a blanket the size of a hand towel.
He was scared, he said, ''but only of the unknown.''
The next morning, when a guard tightened metal shackles on his thin ankles, Hazmi's stomach clenched.
But it was after a somber group of officers loaded him onto an airplane that he finally began to realize
the gravity of his situation. There were two other suspects aboard, who had been found with box cutters
on a train bound for San Antonio. The three men acknowledged each other only with a courtesy
greeting, salaam aleikum.
The plane made a stop in Minnesota to pick up Zacarias Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent.
Moussaoui, who later emerged as a serious suspect, was not trembling like the rest of them. He was the
only one bold enough to ask where they were going. ''New York City,'' an agent answered. The suspect
to the doctor's left was sobbing, and Hazmi also began to cry softly. Moussaoui urged calm. ''We're all
innocent,'' he said, and joked about whether the agents would try to save them if the plane crashed. ''Oh,
don't worry,'' an agent said. ''We'll take care of you.''
A fully armed convoy sped Hazmi and the others to the Metropolitan Correction Center in Lower
Manhattan, near the World Trade Center rescue site. ''Zero tolerance!'' a prison official shouted as they
entered, the doctor said. For three days, he did nothing but sleep and pray, reciting Koran verses from
memory. ''I willed everything else from my mind,'' he said.
On his seventh day in custody, Hazmi was transferred to a Brooklyn prison where, he said, emotions
were charged. He could walk only clumsily with his legs shackled, but the guards, one at each elbow,
moved him so fast that he was tripping and dragging to keep up. ''It was not comfortable,'' Hazmi said.
''But I believed they could not help it if they really thought I was guilty in that terrible crime.''
Hazmi finally saw a court-appointed lawyer on that seventh day, immediately asking the man about his
overriding concern: ''Will I be out in time for the board exam?'' The lawyer told him that the exam was
the least of his worries. He then read him the affidavit, which is sealed by the court, detailing the
government's suspicions of Hazmi. The doctor exhaled. He heard nothing he couldn't explain. He asked
the court-appointed lawyer to contact the Saudi government, which had hired a private lawyer for him --
Sean O'Shea, a well-connected Manhattan attorney and former federal prosecutor.
On the tenth day, the two finally met and talked through a screen. O'Shea told him that the government's
case was pitifully thin, Hazmi said, and that he wouldn't sleep until he got him out of prison. ''Sean was
my man -- I loved Sean,'' Hazmi said, although he is perplexed at the idea that O'Shea secured his
release. As the doctor sees it, O'Shea was essentially a legal adviser to his real defender. ''God saved
me,'' he said.
When Hazmi returned to his tiny cell after that visit, a guard slid a tray through the window. ''He brought
me a Koran like it was breakfast,'' the doctor said. The book fell open to a verse about the righteousness
of patience and forgiveness. Hazmi willed himself to be righteous.
It wasn't until the 12th day that Hazmi finally got to answer the government's suspicions. At about 5
p.m., he said, he and O'Shea sat down with ''two F.B.I. agents named Mark and Martin'' and reacted
item by item to the government's points.
He said he told them: 1. Check the pages and pages in Saudi phone books and you will see that al-Hazmi
is a very common name. 2. Lots of Saudis obtain American visas in Jiddah, where he did, most of whom
are not hijackers. 3. He had indeed wired $10,000 from Saudi Arabia to another Saudi doctor in Texas in
1997 -- so that he could buy furniture and a car when he moved to America. 4. His recent trips to
Boston and Washington -- cities connected to the hijackings -- were to attend medical courses. 5. The
five plane tickets to California that he had purchased on Travelocity -- which the hijackers also allegedly
used -- for ''people with Saudi names'' were for him, his wife and his three children. He had planned to
go to San Diego in late September for a course in muscular and skeletal radiology. 6. The two calls that
he had received in the last couple of years from a bin Laden were from an Abdullah bin Laden who
directed the Northern Virginia office of a world assembly of Muslim youth.
''At the end I said to myself, These guys are clueless,'' Hazmi said later. ''How can they figure out who
is behind this thing? I would suggest that Americans don't rely on the F.B.I. I say, God must protect
America instead.''
Not long after the meeting ended, his lawyer told him that he would be released the next day. On that
day, waiting to be processed, he was shuffled from one locked room to another and left by himself for
hours, he said. At one point, an official in a suit and tie came in, stood behind him and asked him his
name. When he didn't respond quickly enough, he said, the man kicked him in his back. That is the only
abusive incident that Hazmi claims. It particularly irked him, he said, because ''they knew I was innocent
by then, no?''
O'Shea and his investigator both wrapped Hazmi in bear hugs when he was finally freed. The F.B.I.
secured him a room at the Southgate Tower Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, where he was checked in
under an agent's name. The doctor called his family and friends. He prostrated himself before God on
the hotel carpet. He took a long shower, his second in 13 days. He went shopping for clothes with
O'Shea's investigator because he had been released in prison garb. And the next morning, he took a
Delta flight back to San Antonio. This time he was escorted by F.B.I. agents as a courtesy.
Rene Salinas, spokesman for the F.B.I. in San Antonio, characterized Hazmi throughout as ''very
professional, very polite and at no time hostile.'' He also suggested that Hazmi might have spared himself
a good part of his ordeal. ''We backed off when he requested an attorney,'' he said. ''As soon as he
lawyered up, we couldn't ask him to clear up our questions, and then the system took over and he was
off to New York.''
At the Islamic center of San Antonio, two American flags nearly obscure the English-Arab sign for the
mosque. Following the World Trade Center attack and Hazmi's arrest, the center has been bustling. At
first, it was busy because local Muslims were seeking refuge there from some of the uglier voices in
Texas. Then, it was because of all the parties for Hazmi.
On a warm evening in late September, five days after the doctor's return to Texas, his buddies cooked
him lamb and rice on a gas stove behind the mosque, and they all enjoyed a feast at picnic tables under
the stars. ''Welcome Home Brother'' banners in English and Arabic draped the center's facade. Most of
the men were in jeans or slouchy khakis, but Hazmi wore a button-down shirt and pleated slacks, his thin
frame enveloped in fabric.
His 8-year-old daughter, Ebtehal, was tucked under his left arm, her wire-rim glasses askew.
''Did you pray for me while I was away?'' he asked her in English. She nodded. ''How many times?'' he
continued, with a light, teasing tone. ''Six,'' the girl said, then amending, ''no, actually, morning and night,
morning and night.'' Her father again: ''What did you say to Allah?'' Ebtehal: ''I forget.'' She paused,
adding, ''I wanted to break the cop's window.'' The doctor asked her why, saying it was not the fault of
the police. ''Right,'' Ebtehal said, ''it was George Bush's fault.''
The next morning, I visited the doctor's home. Ebtehal answered the door munching on a cheese tortilla
and led me upstairs to her Mickey Mouse bedspread. She and her 6-year-old sister, Afnan, showed off
new baby dolls, which they had picked out the day before at Toys ''R'' Us, ''when Baba'' -- that means
Papa in Arabic -- said we could have anything we wanted 'cause he missed us.''
I was coughing, and Hazmi insisted on bringing me Robitussin gel tablets. Over the next two hours, his
wife served: coffee laced with cardamom, sweet tea, two large pieces of white cake with chocolate and
pink frosting, cheese toast, figs, jelly candies, a banana and an orange. The food piled up on a gold
tray-table, and every once in a while Entsar Hazmi shook her head and motioned with fingers to her
mouth.
Hazmi eyed his schoolbooks while we talked, eager to get back to them. His easy manner, poise and
magnanimity were at first disconcerting, given the details of his story. But eventually, it felt soothing,
even uplifting, to hear him say: ''The American justice system is not perfect, but it is pretty good. I am
whole, I am intact and the whole matter is behind me.''
Others see the doctor's experience as ominous, or at the least, a cautionary tale. William Harrell,
executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Texas, said that ''what this man endured
should send a shiver down the spine of anybody who respects democracy.'' Abdulla Mohammad, the
doctor's Texan friend who grew up in Kuwait, said, ''What happened to Bader makes those of us Arabs
and Muslims who are American think, Are we living in a country as dirty as the ones we ran from?''
Following Sept. 11, the government has availed itself of its fullest power to detain and arrest individuals,
and it inevitably walks a fine line between using and abusing that power. Few Americans would suggest
that the government should not be aggressive in arresting and prosecuting those behind the Sept. 11
attacks and in preventing future ones. But since the government's huge investigation is operating within a
shroud of secrecy, it is impossible to know what kind of aggressiveness is at work and whether it
violates any of the legal principles, like individual rights and due process, that Americans hold dear.
In a nearly four-week period, more than 600 people were taken into custody, and it is presumed that the
overwhelming majority are immigrants and foreign nationals. Unlike Hazmi, most of them haven't had
the ill fortune to be trapped in the national spotlight at the time of their arrest. But most haven't enjoyed
the good fortune, either, to have the Saudi Embassy behind them. Hazmi's experience raises troubling
questions: How many other detainees have been swept into this investigation without cause? Where and
under what conditions are they being held? Who will intercede with the government on their behalf?
''The doctor's experience should give all Americans pause,'' Harrell had said. When I related this
comment to the doctor, he shrugged and then said, ''I agree.''
Meanwhile, eager to bring her husband's tale to a close, Entsar had fetched a boombox. She put on a
tape of Saudi Arabian music. Her daughters changed into pink taffeta party dresses and began tapping
their feet and whirling. And Entsar, who had seemed so burdened just minutes before, put her hand over
her mouth and ululated as if at a wedding. Two-year-old Abdulrahman started running in circles. Al
Bader al-Hazmi clapped and laughed.
In the background, a television news channel was on, muted. There was a close-up of a Koran, then an
image of the first tower crumbling, then a shot of Hazmi.
''Baba!'' Abdulrahman said.
Deborah Sontag is a staff writer for the magazine. |
