A Hunt for `The Pilot'
The FBI says he's an `imminent threat.' But where is he?
After September 11, the FBI intensified its pursuit of Mandhai and Jokhan. They were indicted in the spring of 2002. Mandhai was convicted of conspiracy to destroy U.S. property; Jokhan testified against him. Both are now serving multiyear sentences. The FBI agents had not forgotten about El Shukrijumah, however. Agents visited his family's home in a Fort Lauderdale suburb six times, but he was never there. Family members say he had left home in May 2001 for Trinidad, where his father once worked for the Saudi Arabian government. According to a federal law enforcement source, Mandhai told the feds he saw El Shukrijumah as late as July 2001.
Either way, he was nowhere to be found. Then, last May, U.S. intelligence and military officials began posing an urgent question to al Qaeda detainees who were being interrogated at foreign prisons and secret CIA and military facilities abroad. Whom, the officials asked, would al Qaeda pick to lead the next big attack against U.S. targets? Intelligence sources tell U.S. News that several of the detainees provided the same answer: "Jaffar Al-Tayyar." That's an al Qaeda nom de guerre. It translates roughly to "Jaffar the Pilot." The detainees said they had met "the Pilot" during al Qaeda training exercises in Afghanistan. Intelligence officers scrambled, showing the detainees photos of hundreds of suspected al Qaeda operatives. Several detainees identified a man who looked like El Shukrijumah. It wasn't--but it would take months before the FBI and CIA teams realized it. "We were pursuing a lead," says one official, "that in the end turned out to be a dead end. We found out we were after the wrong person."
Family affair. The hunt for El Shukrijumah didn't end, however. Given the detainees' information about Jaffar the Pilot, it only intensified. And slowly, strands of information began to filter into the FBI, the CIA, and other foreign intelligence agencies. They pointed in a new direction, allowing investigators to narrow the search. Two weeks ago, the search turned up a new name--and a new photograph. But investigators still were not sure. The crucial moment didn't come until Khalid Shaikh Mohammad corroborated the investigators' hunch. El Shukrijumah, he said after being shown a photograph, was Jaffar the Pilot. The FBI issued its "be on the lookout" warning for El Shukrijumah.
The bureau's counterterrorism specialists say they now see him in a dangerous new light but still have many questions. They want to know more about ties he may have to other convicted or alleged terrorists, including Padilla, the accused enemy combatant who used to live near Fort Lauderdale, not far from El Shukrijumah's family home. Padilla was arrested last May, about the same time investigators started asking detainees about other alleged al Qaeda operatives. Authorities are also curious about El Shukrijumah's possible ties to Adham Amin Hassoun, a fellow mosquegoer who has been held under extreme secrecy in legal limbo on immigration violations at a federal detention facility near Miami since last June. An immigration judge found that Hassoun had plotted to commit an assassination, provided material support to terrorist groups, and was a member of an Islamic fundamentalist group whose leader, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, was convicted of plotting to bomb key New York landmarks. The judge said Hassoun also tried to recruit Egyptian "jihad fighter" Mohammed Yousseff, a friend of Padilla's, and that Hassoun had ties to charitable groups with alleged links to terrorist groups like Hamas. Hassoun says he is innocent.
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