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Minneapolis terror suspect indicted for alleged false statements
July 8, 2004

Minneapolis, Minn. — (AP) - A man who said he attended an al-Qaida training camp was indicted on two counts of making false statements to federal agents investigating the shipment of radios and other equipment to Pakistan, prosecutors announced Thursday.

The indictment against Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi, 41 -- a Minneapolis resident of Lebanese origin -- was sealed pending his arrival in Minnesota earlier Thursday. A federal grand jury handed up the indictment Wednesday.

Elzahabi was scheduled to make an initial appearance Friday before Magistrate Judge J. Earl Cudd. He had been held in New York since his arrest in May.

The indictment - which says Elzahabi made the false statements April 20 to agents conducting an international terrorism investigation - formalizes the charges contained in a criminal complaint filed last month.

The complaint, signed by FBI Agent Kiann VanDenover of Minneapolis, said Elzahabi operated a business called Drive Axle Rebuilder in New York City from 1995 through 1997 and received large quantities of portable field radios suitable for use in rural areas without telephone service.

Field radios of the same make and model were recovered by U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, the complaint said.

The first count of the grand jury indictment alleges that Elzahabi lied when he claimed he only took delivery of the shipments for someone else and denied knowing what was in them, when he actually opened, repacked and reshipped the packages overseas.

The second count alleges he also lied when he denied helping somebody fraudulently obtain a Massachusetts driver's license by using Elzahabi's address as his own, when he in fact took that person to the examination facility.

The complaint said Elzahabi became acquainted during the 1980s and 1990s with several people who became top al-Qaida leaders. It said he voluntarily told U.S. authorities he first traveled to Afghanistan about 1988, where he attended a training camp for terrorists, and there met Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian believed to be directing attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq.

(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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