^^^12:47 AM ET^^^ BIN LADEN - Connection in 1996 VA lawyer's death

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Current News - Homefront Preparations : One Thread

1996 Death Probed for Bin Laden Link FBI, Police Review Man's Report of a Meeting With Suspicious Group

By Tom Jackman Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, October 12, 2001; Page B01

The strange and horrible death of Fairfax County lawyer Paul G. Gabelia -- who was found in the trunk of his burned-out car near Dulles International Airport five years ago -- is being reexamined by the FBI and local police for possible links to the terror network of Osama bin Laden.

Authorities are trying to determine whether Gabelia was unwittingly meeting with bin Laden operatives in the hours before his death. At the center of the mystery is an entity called ARC and whether it was a front for bin Laden's al Qaeda organization or something Gabelia simply made up.

Police records say that Gabelia, 45, told his wife that he was going to meet with two Middle Eastern men from ARC Limited on Sept. 1, 1996, and confront them about the source of their funding. Later that night, his car was seen ablaze in Dulles Technology Park, and his body was found with jumper cables wrapped around his neck and wire around his legs.

Fairfax County police and the FBI never found an ARC Limited, dismissed Gabelia's claims and said his death was most likely a suicide. But since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, attorneys for Gabelia's family learned of an organization called ARC with Middle Eastern ties and a questionable source of money: the Advice and Reformation Committee, bin Laden's original Saudi Arabian political wing, described by the FBI as a financial and propaganda front for al Qaeda.

The family asked the FBI and Fairfax police to reopen the investigation, and this week, both agreed.

"As in all cases, when we receive new information, we reevaluate it and determine if we can do anything with it," police spokesman Warren Carmichael said.

The FBI, which assisted Fairfax in its original investigation, also said it would reexamine its probe to look for any links between Gabelia's death and bin Laden's organization, a spokesman said.

Court documents and government officials say the Advice and Reformation Committee, which also is referred to as ARC, is a financial, political and communications arm of al Qaeda. Its London office drafted and issued bin Laden's fatwa on Aug. 22, 1996, to kill Americans -- particularly U.S. military personnel. Nine days later, Gabelia, a former Army officer who regularly traveled the Middle East, was dead.

On the day of his death, according to police reports from 1996, Gabelia told his wife that he was setting up a "million-dollar deal" and the "deal of a lifetime" with two men from the ARC entity -- one from Syria and one with a Middle Eastern accent. He told her that he was concerned about where the money was coming from and that he planned to ask them about it.

A week before, while vacationing with family on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Gabelia also mentioned the deal and "expressed his concern that the people he was dealing with could be dangerous," according to the police reports.

On his computer, police found discussion points for the meeting and a proposed retainer agreement with ARC Limited: an $80,000 fee and a $325 hourly rate.

The agreement, filed in court records, states that ARC wanted to establish "a series of corporate entities . . . with ultimate control to be held by an off-shore corporation," to be set up with "maximum confidentiality."

Walter Diercks, an attorney for Gabelia's wife, said there are too many coincidences that need looking into.

"There was probably a better chance Paul Gabelia would be struck by lightning," Diercks said, "than to pick an acronym for a bin Laden organization. The police kept saying, 'Why would anyone want to kill him?' Well, if you stumble on a bin Laden organization and indicate you don't want to go along, this is a crowd that wouldn't hesitate to kill you. They killed 5,000 people in one day."

But for a variety of reasons, including their inability to find ARC Limited, Fairfax police treated Gabelia's death as a suicide. Gabelia's family remains convinced that he did not take his own life. Gabelia, a graduate of West Point and Georgetown University's law school, he left behind two teenage children and a wife.

Gabelia repeatedly traveled to the Middle East, and Saudi Arabia in particular, in his previous job as general counsel for a Korean conglomerate, his wife said. He spent three days before the meeting researching ARC and preparing notes, and in the hour before the meeting, he and his wife had a quiet lunch at home in Franconia.

"That's why I have never, never believed he killed himself," said his wife, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "If he was going to do it, how could he look me in the eye and have lunch together?"

When firefighters responded to the report of a car fire near the Dulles Hyatt that night, they found Gabelia's body inside the trunk of his destroyed Mercury Sable and called homicide detectives. The detectives thought it unusual that jumper cables were wrapped around his neck and wire around his legs but that nothing bound his hands. Fire marshals determined that the blaze started inside the trunk.

Diercks argued that because traces of gasoline also were found in the back seat of the car, the fire could have started in the passenger area. Fire investigators said the burn marks clearly pointed to the trunk as the point of ignition, that matches from Gabelia's son's Boy Scout troop were found there, and that the trunk could not have been closed once the fire started. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms also examined the evidence and agreed.

Police found additional evidence pointing to suicide. According to a report written by homicide Detective Robert Murphy in January 1997, Gabelia had taken out three life insurance policies, worth nearly $1.1 million, in June and July 1996 to add to a previous $360,000 policy. He had virtually no income from 1993 to 1995 and had amassed 16 credit cards with debts exceeding $101,000.

But because there was no suicide note and because the medical examiner ruled the manner of death "undetermined," Fairfax police officially classified the case as a "suspicious death."

The case seemingly ended there. But Diercks saw a picture of the Advice and Reformation Committee's letterhead, containing bin Laden's signature in Arabic, in a newspaper and demanded a second look.

Marion Spina, a lawyer and longtime friend of Gabelia's, said Gabelia "had some contact in Saudi Arabia for a long time" from his days working for the Korean conglomerate. "I've never been able to reconcile myself with the suicide thing. He was a doer -- he wasn't a quitter," Spina said.

-- Anonymous, October 12, 2001


Moderation questions? read the FAQ