ChicSunTimes

New Chicago tie to terror

October 21, 2001

BY FRANK MAIN CRIME REPORTER

Another Chicago link to the global terrorism investigation is emerging with the arrest of three men in an apartment in Canada where police allegedly found a cache of fraudulent credit cards, passports and other documents.

Federal prosecutors in Chicago are seeking the extradition of Emad Jamal Hassan for allegedly violating probation on a 1999 conviction here for more than $1 million in food-stamp fraud.

Hassan was arrested Oct. 12 with his brother Yousef Hassan, a fugitive who fled Chicago in 1996 after pleading guilty to bank fraud in connection with a South Side store that he owned. A third man in the apartment in Canada was Mohamad S. Mostafa, wanted in California on charges of conspiring to sell counterfeit baby formula, court records here show.

On Friday, authorities in Edmonton, Alberta, released videotapes of detention hearings for two of the men. A government lawyer, Sylvia Rapaj, told the court that Emad Hassan and the two others "are of interest to an ongoing investigation regarding the attack on the World Trade Center and other related attacks in the United States," according to a court transcript.

The Hassan brothers are among at least four men with Chicago ties to the terrorism investigation.

On Sept. 19, the FBI arrested Nabil al Marabh, a suspected associate of Osama bin Laden, in southwest suburban Burbank. The Chicago Sun-Times has reported that al Marabh, who held a commercial driver's license and permit to haul hazardous materials, including explosives, applied to become a trucker in suburban Summit on Aug. 20. He is being held in New York as a material witness.

Youssef Hmimssa, a former Chicago taxi driver, is being held in Detroit in connection with false documents found in an apartment where the FBI was looking for al Marabh. Hmimssa pleaded not guilty last week to fraud and misuse of visas and other documents. He is charged in Chicago with using up to 400 illegally obtained credit card numbers, records show.

At a detention hearing Wednesday, Emad Hassan testified that he had attended flight school in the Chicago area in 1994 and an aviation academy in Texas for airline maintenance in 1997.

Yousef Hassan is wanted on a federal arrest warrant issued in Chicago after he allegedly used his food store, Halsted Market Inc., 7548 S. Halsted, in a scheme to write phony checks and defraud two banks. He and his brother, Emad, ran the store together.

-- Anonymous, October 21, 2001