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Terrorist task force raids Fla. home
Four residents vanished day after Sept. 11 attacks
MSNBC AND NBC NEWS
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Jan. 21 — More than a dozen agents of the FBI’s terrorism task force raided a house Tuesday that was abandoned days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Authorities would say only that the operation was part of an international terrorism investigation.
DETAILS WERE FEW because officials would say
little and the search warrant that authorized the raid remained under seal, NBC’s Kerry Sanders reported.
But neighbors told NBC affiliate WPTV of West Palm Beach that law enforcement officials had previously searched the house, in a residential neighborhood on Doral Drive in West Palm Beach, at least twice since the Sept. 11 attacks.
At least 15 of the 19 men believed to have been involved in the operation that flew hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon outside Washington and a field in Pennsylvania had connections to Florida.
Neighbors said the four people living in the house, whom they described as being of Middle Eastern origin, moved out abruptly on the day after the attacks and had not been heard from since. They paid all of their bills, including homeowner association fees, in cash, neighbors said. At least 15 FBI agents, accompanied by West Palm Beach police and Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputies, descended on the home Tuesday morning. WPTV aired helicopter shots of agents and officers as they worked in the front and back yards and carried undisclosed equipment and boxes of documents into a trailer they brought with them.
OWNER’S NAME ON TERRORIST LIST
Records identified the owner of the home as Mohammed al-Masri, Sanders reported. That name appears on the government’s list of the most-wanted leaders of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida organization, which claimed responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks.
There was no immediate indication that the al-Masri who owned the home on Doral Drive was the same al-Masri, an Egyptian in his late 30s, also known as Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, who ran bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan. No further details about al-Masri were immediately available.
MSNBC.com’s Alex Johnson and NBC’s Kerry Sanders contributed to this report.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/862534.asp?0bl=-0
Four residents vanished day after Sept. 11 attacks
MSNBC AND NBC NEWS
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Jan. 21 — More than a dozen agents of the FBI’s terrorism task force raided a house Tuesday that was abandoned days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Authorities would say only that the operation was part of an international terrorism investigation.
DETAILS WERE FEW because officials would say
little and the search warrant that authorized the raid remained under seal, NBC’s Kerry Sanders reported.
But neighbors told NBC affiliate WPTV of West Palm Beach that law enforcement officials had previously searched the house, in a residential neighborhood on Doral Drive in West Palm Beach, at least twice since the Sept. 11 attacks.
At least 15 of the 19 men believed to have been involved in the operation that flew hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon outside Washington and a field in Pennsylvania had connections to Florida.
Neighbors said the four people living in the house, whom they described as being of Middle Eastern origin, moved out abruptly on the day after the attacks and had not been heard from since. They paid all of their bills, including homeowner association fees, in cash, neighbors said. At least 15 FBI agents, accompanied by West Palm Beach police and Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputies, descended on the home Tuesday morning. WPTV aired helicopter shots of agents and officers as they worked in the front and back yards and carried undisclosed equipment and boxes of documents into a trailer they brought with them.
OWNER’S NAME ON TERRORIST LIST
Records identified the owner of the home as Mohammed al-Masri, Sanders reported. That name appears on the government’s list of the most-wanted leaders of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida organization, which claimed responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks.
There was no immediate indication that the al-Masri who owned the home on Doral Drive was the same al-Masri, an Egyptian in his late 30s, also known as Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, who ran bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan. No further details about al-Masri were immediately available.
MSNBC.com’s Alex Johnson and NBC’s Kerry Sanders contributed to this report.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/862534.asp?0bl=-0