PETE YOST
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- FBI agents investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks assisted in the arrests of 10 Middle Eastern men in three states for fraudulently obtaining licenses to transport hazardous materials.
Wednesday's sweep in Missouri, Michigan and Washington followed FBI warnings that terrorists may try to strike next using chemical or biological weapons.
The 10 who were arrested were among 18 people from seven states charged with falsely obtaining hazardous material licenses from a Pennsylvania state examiner. The examiner told the FBI he took payoffs in exchange for the permits between July 1999 and February 2000, according to court papers. The drivers didn't take required tests and some had suspended licenses at the time they got the permits.
It was too early to tell whether any of those arrested Wednesday were connected to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden said.
The FBI said a Middle Eastern man named Abdul Mohamman, known as ``Ben,'' acted as a middleman in the scheme, bringing in as many as 30 drivers who fraudulently obtained commercial licenses to carry hazardous materials.
According to the FBI, the examiner, identified in court papers only as CW-1, said that in exchange for the permits, ``Ben paid between $50 and $100 per individual by placing the money in `brand-new' bills under CW-1's desk calendar.''
Five of the arrests were in Michigan, four in Washington and one in Missouri.
The concern about licenses to haul chemicals first surfaced last week when the FBI arrested Nabil Al-Marabh, 34, a former Boston cab driver. Al-Marabh holds a commercial driver's license and is certified to transport hazardous materials.
The FBI appeared to be zeroing in on people who _ wittingly or unwittingly _ helped the 19 men authorities say hijacked four airliners and crashed them in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Nearly 7,000 people were dead or missing.
Salvadoran national police director Mauricio Sandoval said the FBI had detained a man who allegedly helped the terrorists obtain false identification cards. Luis Martinez-Flores ``may have moved'' around ``with the terrorists in New York, Boston or Florida,'' Sandoval told a news conference.
The name Luis Martinez-Flores turned up last week on a list of 21 people whose financial records the FBI had asked all U.S. banks to check. The 19 suspected hijackers were on the list, along with Martinez-Flores and one other person.
Martinez-Flores apparently was being held by the U.S. immigration officials in Virginia as an illegal immigrant, Sandoval said.
In Florida, Michael Hlavsa, chairman of SunCruz Casinos gambling cruise company, said two or three men linked to the hijackings may have been customers on a ship that sailed from Madeira Beach. One name on the passenger list from a Sept. 5 cruise was the same as one of the suspected terrorists, Hlavsa said. SunCruz Casinos turned over photographs and other documents to FBI investigators after employees said they recognized some of the men suspected in the terrorist attacks as customers.
Authorities also were taking a new look at a 1998 meeting between Osama bin Laden, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks, and a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Afghanistan. Farouk Hijazi, an Iraqi intelligence officer who is Iraq's ambassador to Turkey, met with bin Laden in Kandahar, a region in southeastern Afghanistan where bin Laden is known to have training camps, a U.S. official said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity. It is not known what was discussed at the December 1998 meeting.
In Virginia, the government Wednesday increased the pressure on a former food service worker at Reagan National Airport whose name and phone number were found in a car registered to one of the terrorist hijackers, persuading a federal court to detain him without bail.
Prosecutors described Mohamed Abdi as an essential witness and said ``he may be more.'' Abdi's lawyer insisted he knew nothing about the Sept. 11 attacks.
Authorities overseas cracked down on terror suspects. In Spain, police detained six Algerians allegedly linked to Osama bin Laden, the chief suspect in the suicide jetliner attacks, and to a group suspected of planning attacks on U.S. targets in Europe.
In Britain, authorities captured a French national alleged to have been involved in a plot to attack U.S. interests in Europe. France has already placed seven other suspects in the case under formal investigation, a step before being charged.
Authorities say the eight all are believed to have ties to bin Laden. Evidence found during arrests in France last week suggest the suspects were part of a group scouting out European locations for attacks, with the U.S. Embassy in Paris a prime target.
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