Brooke A. Masters of the Washington Post reports in an article titled, “Man Named in Note in Hijacker’s Car Is Indicted.” Excerpt:
An Alexandria security guard whose name and phone number were found in the car left behind by the hijackers who attacked the Pentagon was indicted yesterday by a federal grand jury on 12 counts of forgery unrelated to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
But law enforcement sources said federal authorities remain suspicious of Mohammed Abdi’s ties to the hijackers. Authorities believe that Abdi was being evasive or not truthful during a polygraph examination, sources said, and he has not cooperated with agents since his Sept. 23 arrest.
Abdi’s phone number and the name “Mohumed” were found scrawled in yellow highlighter on a map of Washington in Nawaf Alhazmi’s blue Toyota at Dulles International Airport, according to court documents. When Abdi was arrested, the documents say, agents found a newspaper clipping in one of his pockets about Algerian terrorist Ahmed Ressam, who was convicted in April of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport during millennium celebrations.
Sources said authorities have found other items among Abdi’s possessions that they find curious, but nothing that would definitively tie him to the attacks. The sources would not specify what was found.
Abdi, 44, was indicted on charges that he forged his landlord’s signature on checks from an Arlington County rent subsidy program. Abdi cashed 12 checks worth more than $2,500 even as he ran thousands of dollars behind on his rent, the 12-page indictment said. He has been jailed without bond since his arrest.
“This is just for the forgery. Frankly, his exposure to jail time on this is not great,” said Abdi’s attorney, Joseph Bowman. “I honestly don’t think they intend to indict him on anything else.”
Bowman said that his client passed the part of the FBI polygraph in which he was asked whether he had knowledge of the events of Sept. 11 but that the examiner was not satisfied with Abdi’s answer to the question “Did you have contact with the hijackers?”
Although authorities claim that Abdi “has not cooperated with agents since his Sept. 23 arrest,” he did agree to submit to a polygraph interrogation. It is important that investigators rely on real evidence, not pseudoscientific lie polygraph “tests.”