RIYADH, 9 March 2004 — Essam Al-Mohandis, the Saudi who spent 21 days in a US jail for alleged possession of explosives, has told his story in this exclusive interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News.
The King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center in Riyadh, where Al-Mohandis is in charge of medical equipment, had asked him to attend a training course in Boston at short notice, and he was booked on a Lufthansa flight via Frankfurt.
Mohandis says he met a colleague at Riyadh Airport on Jan. 3. “While we were at the Riyadh airport we went through four security checks,” he said. After arriving in Frankfurt, Al-Mohandis and the colleague toured the duty-free shops inside the airport for two hours. “At Frankfurt I was checked thoroughly again by German security officers and they allowed me to board the plane,” he said.
After arriving in Logan airport in Boston he queued for nearly one-and-a-half hours to complete immigration procedures. “When they called me for the interview, an officer asked me politely to leave the bag outside. Another officer later interviewed me and asked me several questions. He asked me about the purpose of my visit, the nature of the course, the tentative period of my stay, my work and the type of equipment I would be trained to use and about the hospital where I work.”
After the interview Al-Mohandis moved to the Customs department where they checked the visa and asked him to put his baggage on the X-ray machine. “They asked me two specific questions: whether I carried more than $10,000 and did anybody give me anything to take into the country. I told them no.”
The officer then inspected his bag and found some personal items, some brochures related to the course, and a book on linguistics which he was reading on the plane. “In the meantime, the officer took out some small tubes from the pocket of the suitcase. They were yellow and marked K0201. They asked me what this was, and I told them they could be wax crayons.”
Al-Mohandis thought that his wife, who is an artist, might have kept them in the bag. “I asked the officer to allow me to check them to see what exactly they were, but he asked me not to touch them. One of the tubes, which was in the hands of the officer, was broken and a brown powder came out it. I thought they were drugs and it really frightened me. The officer again asked him: what is this? I did not answer because I really did not know what they were and where they came from.”
Al-Mohandis was taken to the head of the Customs department who asked him several questions, and authorities detained Al-Mohandis in a room alone while the Customs chief, the head of the FBI and national security officers held a meeting in the next room. Then they started questioning him for six hours after reading out the charges against him. He told them that he was ready to answer their questions without a lawyer. They asked him to contact his father and wife but he told them he did not want to do so because it would upset them. However, he agreed to inform the Saudi Embassy in Washington. But his refusal to inform his father and wife was taken as an attempt to hide vital information. “Then they told me I was under arrest.”
After spending a night at the police station, Al-Mohandis was taken to court. Before that he had met with his court-appointed attorney, Miriam Conrad. The judge told Al-Mohandis that US Attorney General Gregory Moffatt had two charges against him: Possession of explosives on board the plane and lying to the Customs authorities.
Al-Mohandis was put in the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, 40 km from Boston, in the C category, which is allocated for dangerous criminals. While a police officer was completing procedures at the jail, he saw a television report on the man’s arrest and this changed his attitude toward him, Al-Mohandis believes.
The guard first put him in an isolated cell and later took him to another cell which was extremely cold and took all Al-Mohandis’ clothes except his trousers. “They kept me there for 14 hours. I asked them why they were keeping me in such a cell. They said they were afraid I was hiding explosives in my stomach. They later gave me clothes and put me in another isolation cell with a security camera.”
During this time, Conrad and her team were trying to get him released without bail. The public prosecutor insisted on bail of $50,000 and a bond from Saudi authorities. But the lawyer was able to convince the judge to release Al-Mohandis on condition that he would wear an electronic tag, which allowed him movement only within five meters of a designated area. The authorities allowed him to go out shopping once in a week for three hours.
A trial date was set for one month later. The lawyer was able to convince the judge to issue an order for the US Embassy in Riyadh to expedite visas for the defense witnesses. The court also agreed to pay the expenses of the witnesses — his wife, her father, uncle and wife of the uncle and his superior and colleague.
Security authorities in San Francisco had sent the colleague back to Riyadh after putting him in jail for a week for traveling with Al-Mohandis on the same flight. The FBI also questioned an American who sat near Al-Mohandis’ on the plane. Al-Mohandis father meanwhile met with Prince Muhammad ibn Naif, assistant interior minister for security affairs, in Riyadh and told him the story. Prince Muhammad offered him all his support, and the Saudi Embassy in Washington notified Al-Mohandis after two weeks that they had received a confidential note from the Interior Ministry.
During the five-day trial, the public prosecution presented their witnesses including the customs officers and an explosive expert. “Their answers were contradictory. I looked at the Customs officer who accused me of lying. He was trying to avoid looking at me,” Al-Mohandis said, adding this might have created doubts about the officer’s truthfulness.
The explosives expert also failed to give correct information as he exaggerated the weight of explosives in one of the tubes found on Al-Mohandis. Defense witnesses also included an explosives expert, who was able to persuade the court that the two tubes were in fact sparklers and unlikely to be harmful. Al-Mohandis’ wife submitted a number of her drawings to the court to show that his guess that the tubes were crayons had not been fanciful.
The colleague who had been on the same flight confirmed that they had both gone through several security checks. “This proves that (the sparklers) were put in my bag during the eight minutes when I left the bag outside the Customs room,” he said.
Al-Mohandis left the courtroom on Feb. 19 at 11 a.m. The next day, the jurors acquitted him of both charges.
