'I Don't Know the Man'

Ellis Henican

September 20, 2001

The evidence is said to be growing. The case seems to be tightening. Federal authorities have pretty much decided: Osama bin Laden's bloody fingerprints are all over last week's terror attacks.

But who else might be involved, beyond 19 wide-eyed hijackers who can't be questioned due to suicide?

For several days this week and last, the FBI has turned a big part of its attention on a 41-year-old Muslim cleric whose name came up in Manhattan federal court last year.

Moataz Al-Hallak testified three times before the grand jury in the embassy-bombing cases, although he was never charged with any wrongdoing. At one court hearing, a prosecutor called Al-Hallak a crucial conduit between the bin Laden organization and the suicide car bombers who struck U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224.

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Yesterday, federal prosecutors in Washington renewed their acquaintance with him.

And moments after the three-hour interrogation was done, Al-Hallak was on a cell phone to New York City, telling me how cooperative he'd been.

Welcome to the looking glass of the World Trade Center terror case. You may need a program to keep the players straight.

"I had absolutely nothing to do with these actions," Al-Hallak said of the four hijacked airplanes and the nearly 6,000 people who were dead or missing in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

"I do not have any knowledge - no knowledge - about this situation," he said. "It is very tragic. There is no word really to describe the gravity and severity of this. It is inhumane, barbaric, heinous. Nothing justified such an action. Nothing."

Al-Hallak collected his thoughts for a second, as he and his lawyer made their way along a crowded Washington sidewalk. Then he added: "At the same time, nothing justifies the harassment of other innocent people like me."

As for bin Laden, the alleged mastermind's reputed associate said: "I don't know the man. I don't know what he has done or not done. If he had a hand in this, it is horrible. But the U.S. government has accused me of things I've never done. So I don't know if it's true or not. If it's proven, then he should be delivered to the courts of justice."

Al-Hallak's lawyer, Stanley Cohen of Avenue D, said his client was happy to meet with federal prosecutors - but not with the FBI. He said the cleric answered every question, without any immunity agreement. "It was three hours of deep-sea diving," Cohen said. "Ninety-five percent had nothing to do with the specifics of this case."

Cohen said the prosecutors showed Al-Hallak photos of the 19 alleged hijackers, none of whom he recognized. "His response was, they are children," Cohen said. "He said he wanted to cry."

The meeting didn't happen easily.

For several days, FBI agents said they were looking for the Islamic holy man. But Al-Hallak said he wasn't hiding. He said the FBI hadn't even phoned his apartment in Laurel, Md.

Suspicions were raised, apparently, because two days before the latest terror attacks, Al-Hallak was leading prayers at the Central Street mosque in Arlington, Texas, where he had served as imam before being removed last year.

Cohen said prosecutors had received "an absurd report" that his client implied to the congregation some advanced knowledge of the suicide attacks.

During the embassy-bombing cases, Al-Hallak conceded that he had some connections to bin Laden, but called them tenuous and indirect.

One member of Al-Hallak's Texas mosque was convicted in the embassy case, and the cleric did send money to him in Sudan. The imam also put another congregant in touch with a pilot who flew a plane to Sudan - a plane that was then sold to a bin-Laden company.

Al-Hallak is living now at the Crestleigh Gardens apartment complex in the Washington suburb of Laurel, where he teaches at an Islamic school. In the past few days, federal agents were swarming the complex, showing Al-Hallak's neighbors surveillance photos of young Arab men.

"The impression is that I am running away or holding some information," Al-Hallak complained. "Or they call me a fugitive. It's nothing but character assassination.

"I condemn all types of violence," he said. "I don't believe violence brings us anything that is positive. I condemn any terrorism that any person does, including the United States. Whoever did this action is insane. There is nothing else to say."

The investigation goes on.