Days after Hudson County became a refuge for people fleeing the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, it began serving as a focal point in unraveling the nature of those attacks.
The FBI has been combing neighborhoods in Jersey City – which harbored terrorists involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center – and other Hudson County towns in order to interview suspects.
Jersey City became the spotlight of FBI activity a week ago Saturday morning, when the FBI raided a four-story apartment building at 6 Tonnelle Ave. Authorities interrogated all the tenants and took away a half dozen people for further questioning, witnesses said.
According to FBI spokesperson Sandra Carroll, one man was detained on immigration issues that stemmed from a visa that had expired at the beginning of this month.
According to reports, FBI agents investigated the building after learning that two men on an Amtrak train detained in Fort Worth, Texas, for allegedly carrying box cutters and thousands of dollars in cash, shared an apartment at the Jersey City address.
According to officials, before boarding the train, the two men, Ayub Ali Kahn and Mohammed Jaweed Azmath, had been on a plane destined for San-Antonio from Newark. However, it was diverted to St. Louis, Missouri when the FAA closed down all air space in light of the attacks.
The terrorists on the hijacked planes had reportedly used box cutters as a weapon in their plot.
As for the man who was detained from the building on immigration issues, Abdul-Salam Achou, 37, is a delivery driver for a bakery. He’s still being held in a Kearny jail by Immigration Naturalization Services because his visa expired, Carroll said.
Achou’s wife, Sousan, told the Reporter last week that she has not seen in her husband since he was taken away.
The couple, who lives next door to Kahn and Azmath, moved to the country nine months ago. Mrs. Achou, who has two children and is eight months pregnant, said that Kahn and Azmath were living in the building before she arrived. She also said that her communication with them was limited to greeting each other in the hallway.
Although the FBI has claimed that only one resident of the building was being detained, Achou said that her neighbor’s husband was being detained on immigration violations as well. Achou has spoken to her husband on the phone once and said he told her, while crying, "I am innocent."
The owner of the building told a local newspaper that Kahn and Azmath had lived there for approximately seven years. The Reporter made several attempts to speak to the owner, but could not reach him for comment.
Residents in the area said they feel that they are under close scrutiny by the police now. Jamal Johnson, 23, lives on Tonnelle Avenue not too far from the apartment building that was raided. "Nobody trusts each other," Johnson said. "Everybody is afraid."
For the FBI, the streets of Jersey City are familiar territory after unraveling the plot of a former terrorist attack in 1993. The building in Tonnelle Avenue is in the same neighborhood as the mosque on 2824 Kennedy Boulevard, where the spiritual ringleader Omar Abdel-Rahman, convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, formerly preached.
The FBI has also reportedly investigated warehouses, hotels, and other locations in Hudson County from Weehawken to Bayonne. The FBI said they could not comment on the nature of these investigations.
According to Stan Eason, a spokesman for Mayor Glenn Cunningham, the FBI is working closely with the Jersey City Police Department’s Special Investigations Unit.