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NEW YORK, Oct 28: Among almost 1,000 people being held in the United States in connection with the hijacked-airliner attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are people who made congratulatory telephone calls minutes later, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.
Although transcripts of the phone calls have not been made available, the Times reports that officials have said some of the calls were “congratulatory, even gloating.”
These suspected associates of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization are among 977 people held on various charges related to the Sept. 11 attacks, which killed almost 5,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
FBI agents intercepted telephone calls, moved in and made arrests, holding the bulk of those arrested on immigration or criminal violations and a smaller group on material witness warrants, the newspaper reported.
Their identities and those of most of the people being held have not been released by the Justice Department.
The paper said it had been unable to determine whether those who made the jubilant calls were participants in the hijack plot or merely rejoicing over the attacks.
It said officials would not say how many people were detained through the telephone intercepts, nor would they discuss evidence that any of them proved to be members of the group organized by bin Laden, Washington’s prime suspect in the attacks.
977 DETAINED: The total of secretive arrests and detentions in the US terrorism investigations has reached 977, but there are few details about the people or why they are being held, the New York Times reported.
Last week, the Washington Post reported that 700 witnesses and suspects, many with Middle Eastern names, had been detained.
None of those in question has been charged with crimes related to September 11, the NYT said, raising worries among some civil liberty advocates that the arrests may be improper.
The daily quoted David Cole, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, as saying: “It begins to feel like those countries where they lock people up and don’t tell anyone about it. That’s not now this country was run until September 11.”
Some of those detained in the largest-ever US manhunt have been held for immigration law violations and can be held almost indefinitely once deportation proceedings are started.
Most others are held under the so-called material witness statute, which allows for the detention for a “reasonable period of time” of people who may have important information on a case and who are considered likely to flee unless they are detained, past reports have said.
Quoting unnamed officials, The Times also said that suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden since August no longer used electronic communications devices out of fear that it would lead investigators to him.
The call Osama was reported to have made to his wife in Syria shortly before Sept 11 and monitored by intelligence agents was apparently executed by an associate, from a location away from his hideaway, The Times said.
MEMORIAL AT WTC: Thousands of mourners flocked on Sunday to the site where the World Trade Center’s towers once stood to remember loved ones still missing under the rubble of New York’s tallest buildings, which collapsed in last month’s devastating attacks.
The memorial service for family members of the some 4,500 victims of the Sept. 11 attacks was planned the “ground zero” recovery site and set to begin mid-afternoon.—dpa/Reuters
