Speaking of feeling emotional...Saudis Aided Subpoenaed Woman's Trip Out of U.S.
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 5, 2003; Page A01
washingtonpost.com
The Saudi Embassy quietly provided the wife of a terror suspect a passport and transit out of the United States in November, after she was subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in New York investigating her husband's possible links to the al Qaeda terrorist network, diplomatic and law enforcement sources said.
Federal law enforcement officials were outraged by the Saudi action, saying the move impeded their investigation. State Department officials, who had objected to the woman's departure without clearance from the FBI, expressed surprise at the move as well.
An attorney for the Saudi Embassy who notified the State Department the day after the woman left said yesterday that the embassy "did not believe there was any legal impediment to her departure" because the grand jury had recessed.
Maha Hafeez Marri and her five young children flew to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 10, three days after law enforcement sources said federal prosecutors had their last contact with a lawyer representing her. The FBI had confiscated passports for Marri and her children soon after her husband was arrested in Peoria, Ill., in late 2001.
Ali S. Marri, a native of Saudi Arabia and a citizen of Qatar, is charged with lying to the FBI about phone calls he allegedly made in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to a number in United Arab Emirates that belonged to a suspected al Qaeda operative. The operative, Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, allegedly received calls from several of the Sept. 11 terrorists and managed a bank account they used.
A law enforcement official said prosecutors and FBI agents were stunned to learn that Maha Marri had left the country. The official and others said Marri had received a subpoena from a grand jury seeking her testimony, though he declined to say when it was issued.
"She was still under subpoena, but no date had been set" for her testimony, he said, adding that lawyers for the woman hired by the Saudi Embassy were negotiating to set up an FBI interview in lieu of a grand jury appearance.
"It was a big shock to our guys. All of a sudden, she's gone. That's what upset the troops," he said.
A spokesman for the Saudis said Maha Marri was issued a passport and sent back to Saudi Arabia after she appealed to the embassy. The Saudis brought the woman and her children from Illinois to the Washington area after her husband's arrest, and she waited for 11 months for the FBI to get around to interviewing her, he said.
"You get a grand jury subpoena, you can't sit here for a year doing nothing," said Nail A. Jubeir, the Saudi spokesman.
The embassy, he said, sent a diplomatic note to the State Department on Aug. 30 requesting assistance, but heard nothing. On Nov. 11, the day after the woman and her children left, he said, "a diplomatic note was sent to the State Department saying she has departed and if anyone has any questions she will be available."
A State Department official confirmed the receipt of a diplomatic note Aug. 30, but said that it did not accurately characterize the situation and that officials refused to give the Saudis the clearance they were seeking to issue Marri a new passport.
The note, said a State Department official, "said there were no outstanding legal issues affecting her." Officials made some inquiries with the Justice Department and the U.S. attorney's office in New York, he said. It "became clear the issue was far more complicated than what was portrayed in the diplomatic note, that this was still a sensitive law enforcement issue, that there were complicated legal issues involved, not only with the suspect Al Marri but also with the wife," he said.
The Saudi Embassy was told, he said, "that we here at the State Department are unable to provide the finding of 'no objection' they were seeking for passports . . . and if they wanted to pursue this further, they would need to take it up directly with law enforcement authorities, including the FBI."
Malea Kiblan, an attorney for the Saudi Embassy who represented Maha Marri, also said she believes the grand jury subpoena was no longer valid -- a view not shared by law enforcement authorities. "There was no outstanding valid subpoena -- the grand jury was recessed," she said. "We kept her available for one year as a courtesy to the U.S. attorney's office."
Kiblan also contended that "the FBI took [Maha Marri's] passport illegally. It was not part of the warrant in the search of her apartment."
Maha Marri was under considerable hardship when she left the United States. Her children had been out of school for many months, and she was ill, Kiblan said.
"All of the relevant parties were informed before the fact and after the fact that the interview had to take place because her situation was deteriorating legally and otherwise," Kiblan said.
Ali Marri and his family arrived in Peoria from Qatar on Sept. 10, 2001, and sought to enroll in a graduate computer program at Bradley University, where he had received an undergraduate degree a decade earlier.
Tips to the FBI led to a search of Marri's apartment. There, agents found audio files of Osama bin Ladin, photographs of the Sept. 11 attacks and a computer folder labeled "chem" that contained bookmarked Web sites with fact sheets on hazardous chemicals "immediately dangerous to life or health," according to court documents. Marri also had information on the purchase of such chemicals, bookmarked Web sites on weapons and satellite equipment, and an almanac in which U.S. dams, waterways and railroads were bookmarked, according to the documents.
Ali Marri was taken into custody as a material witness in December 2001 and was subsequently charged with credit card fraud. Last month, he was indicted on charges of making false statements to the FBI concerning a previous stay in the United States and calls to Hawsawi, who allegedly managed the hijackers' UAE bank account. Hawsawi is also an unindicted co-conspirator in the case against Zacarias Moussaoui, who is accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Marri is being held without bail in New York and has entered not guilty pleas to both charges.
The Saudi government has insisted it is cooperating fully with the United States in its war on terrorism, but law enforcement officials have described that assistance as erratic at best. The U.S. government contends, for example, that Saudis must do more to crack down on charities that funnel money to terrorist groups, including al Qaeda.
In December, the Saudis were embarrassed by disclosures that Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi ambassador to the United States, and his wife had provided charitable funds to Saudis in this country who aided and befriended two of the Sept. 11 terrorists.
Jubeir, the Saudi spokesman, bristled at suggestions yesterday that the Saudis had failed to assist law enforcement in the Marri case. "The idea that someone would say we are not cooperating is simply not true. There is full cooperation," he said. |
