The Star [Malaysia], Tuesday, November 20, 2001
Indonesian identified as hijacking ringleader's contact charged
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (AP) - An Indonesian man whom the FBI named as a contact
for airline hijacker Mohammed Atta was arrested and charged with helping obtain a
fake driver's license for a man identified as a contact for Osama bin Laden.
A criminal complaint filed Monday charged Agus Budiman with helping Mohammad
Bin Nasser Belfas obtain a Virginia driver's license.
Budiman appeared before a U.S. magistrate in this Washington suburb Monday.
Budiman and Belfas are among 370 names included on a detailed FBI list of people
sought for questioning in the investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and
Washington. The list was released last month by Finnish banking authorities.
Budiman is identified on the list as a U.S. contact person for Atta, the presumed
ringleader of the 19 hijackers. Belfas is identified as a contact person for bin Laden,
the prime suspect in the attacks.
According to the criminal complaint, Budiman and Belfas came to the United States
from Hamburg, Germany, in October 2000. Attorney General John Ashcroft has said
that Atta and two other hijackers were part of a terrorist cell that operated in Hamburg
and the United States.
The complaint alleges Budiman helped Belfas obtain a Virginia ID card by certifying
on Nov. 4, 2000, that he and Belfas both lived at an Arlington, Virginia, address.
Neither of the men actually lived there, the complaint said, but Belfas later used the ID
card to obtain a Virginia driver's license.
Budiman appeared in the same federal courthouse Monday where prosecutors
obtained guilty pleas from two men arrested initially in connection with the Sept. 11
attacks.
Khalid al-Draibi, 32, who was arrested Sept. 11 while driving with a flat tire near a
Washington airport, pleaded guilty to a visa fraud charge after prosecutors said he
wasn't involved in the terrorist hijackings.
The other man, Victor Lopez-Flores, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, pleaded
guilty to helping one of the Sept. 11 hijackers fraudulently obtain a Virginia
identification card and to re-entering the United States illegally after being deported.
Al-Draibi was arrested about 13 hours after the attacks when he aroused suspicion by
driving away from Dulles International Airport in a car with a flat tire.
After he was stopped, police found driver's licenses from eight states and flight
manuals for small aircraft, prosecutors said.
But al-Draibi passed two lie detector tests that showed he wasn't involved in the
attacks, his attorney, Drewery Hutcheson Jr., said.
U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III asked prosecutors Monday if the government was
satisfied al-Draibi had nothing to do with Sept. 11.
"That's correct,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney John Morton answered.
Al-Draibi faces up to 10 years in prison and dlrs 250,000 fine when he is sentenced
Jan. 18 on the visa fraud charge.
In his guilty plea, Lopez-Flores admitted he falsely certified on Aug. 2 that Ahmed
Alghamdi lived at his Alexandria, Virginia, address.
Alghamdi, who was aboard one of the hijacked airliners that crashed into the World
Trade Center, used the residency certification to obtain an ID card from the Virginia
Department of Motor Vehicles a month before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Prosecutors said Alghamdi paid Lopez-Flores dlrs 100 for his help. Lopez-Flores, who
was deported in 1993 after a criminal conviction, acknowledged that he helped at least
20 people obtain false Virginia IDs since last May.
Lopez-Flores was the second person to plead guilty in northern Virginia to charges
arising from the investigation into false ID cards obtained by the hijackers.
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