WASHINGTON, 25 February 2005 — Federal prosecutors denied Wednesday that Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 23, the Falls Church man accused of plotting with Al-Qaeda to assassinate President Bush, was tortured in Saudi Arabia, but called him a “grave danger” to the United States and said he should be held without bail.
In papers filed in the US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, US Attorney Paul McNulty said that Abu Ali saw a doctor Monday and that the physician found no evidence of torture or harm.
Abu Ali never made any claims of abuse to Americans officials when he was being returned to the United States from more than a year’s detention in Saudi Arabia on Monday, he said. The prosecutor added Abu Ali was allowed to play soccer and work out while in Saudi custody and called his allegations of mistreatment “an utter fabrication.”
A federal judge recently ordered the government to provide information on whether the US had a role in Abu Ali’s detention.
Abu Ali’s attorney said in court this week that his client was whipped and handcuffed while detained in a Saudi prison from June 2003 until he was flown back to the US earlier this week.
Abu Ali is the first person charged in this country with supporting Osama Bin Laden’s organization in seven months.
A former Justice Department official in the Clinton administration, Michael Greenberger, said the case might not even have been prosecuted if not for a lawsuit, filed by Abu Ali’s family against the government, seeking his return to the United States.
Abu Ali, a US citizen, grew up in Falls Church and was active in Northern Virginia’s Muslim community. His family denies the charges against him and describes him as a student of Islam who went to Saudi Arabia to pursue his studies. He was taking his final exams on Islam at the University of Madinah when Saudi authorities arrested him in class in June 2003, as part of a crackdown after the May 12, 2003 bombing of three Western residential compounds in Riyadh that killed 23 people.
Abu Ali’s arrest has been complicated by the news that the only person who accused Abu Ali of terrorist ties is dead. The suspected member of Al-Qaeda, who was not named, was killed in a shootout with Saudi authorities 17 months ago, the Justice Department said Wednesday.
“It now turns out the only witness to these supposed conversations about killing the president is dead, and that raises questions about how the government is going to prove its case,” said Edward MacMahon, a lawyer for Abu Ali. “I think they’ve got a problem.”
Abu Ali’s arrest and his alleged ties to terrorism have focused new attention on the Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria, Virginia, where he graduated valedictorian in 1999.
In a letter sent to the Saudi ambassador in Washington on Wednesday, Sen. Charles Schumer (Democrat-New York) called for renewed checks into the school’s finances and its possible ties to extremism.
“I ask for your assistance in fully disclosing the nature of this academy — what does it teach, from where does it receive funding, and to what extend it may be serving as a breeding ground for anti-American sentiment — and, possibly, even terrorist activities,” Schumer wrote.
School officials have declined to comment on Abu Ali or the case, and a note on its website yesterday said the school was closed for an emergency.
Last year, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, called on the Saudi Islamic Academy to stop using a textbook for first graders because it debased Christianity and Judaism.
“A school should not be judged in one sentence in one book out of an entire curriculum, but if there’s any kind of rhetoric that targets other faiths, that should be removed because it isn’t something that child should be reading,” Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director at CAIR, told Arab News yesterday.
