Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi (aka Mohamad Kamal El-Zahabi) is a Lebanese national who worked as a small arms instructor at an Afghan training camp in the 1990s. During the War on Terror, he was arrested based on his past associations,and was convicted of immigration fraud.[1][2]
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Elzahabi entered the United States in 1984 on a student visa.[1] He was married that year, but divorced in 1988. The marriage later led to his criminal conviction of immigration fraud.[1][3] In 1986, he was granted permanent resident status.[3]
In 1988, Elzahabi attended a religious conference in the Mid-Western United States, where he was persuaded to travel and help repel the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.[4]
He was a sniper and trained others on the use of the Dragunov sniper rifle at the Khalden training camp.[1][2]
He became acquainted with Abu Zubaydah, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and others during his time in the country.[1][2] He also met Nabil al-Marabh, Bassam Kanj and Raed Hijazi at Khalden, relationships he would continue in the United States a decade later.[5][6]
With the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989, Elzahabi returned to the United States. When later asked by the Globe and Mail to explain what had happened amongst the Afghan Arabs following the war, he replied "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas".[2]
In 1991, Elzahabi returned to Afghanistan for four years before suffering an abdominal gunshot wound in Kabul in 1995, and a stay in a Peshawar hospital where he was visited by Ahmed Khadr.[1][2]
He returned to the United States in 1995 to recuperate from his wound. He worked with his brother Abdelrahman at a New York City garage titled Drive Axle Rebuilders, located at 47-33, 5th Street, from 1995-97.[1][4]
He moved from New York to Boston in 1997, and the following year was employed at the same cab company as al-Marabh and Kanj, from the training camp in Afghanistan.[6] Although the four men each went their separate ways following the war, in 1998 they were all working as cab drivers in Boston, Massachusetts, the first three of them all working for the same company. When Hijazi, the fourth friend from Afghanistan, applied for a Massachusetts drivers license to begin driving a cab himself, he used Elzahabi's residential address - 15 Appleton Street, Everett - as his own.[1][4]
He left the United States in 1998, and later received a phone call from Abu Zubaydah who wanted to know if he could support the Khalden camp.[4] Although he declined the offer to return, he received an entry visa for Pakistan hoping to re-enter Afghanistan nonetheless. However, he eventually decided against the idea.[4]
In 1999, he traveled to Lebanon.[3] He left briefly to perform the Hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia,[4] but returned to Lebanon where he trained a number of fighters for Kanj, his friend from the Afghan camps who later worked as a cab driver. He specifically trained a group known as the Al-Dinnayyah Rebels.[3]
He then went to fight as a sniper in the Second Chechen War, although later claimed he only recalled firing his rifle once at a Russian soldier on a bulldozer, and noted he was interested in finding himself a bride.[2][7] American officials claim he was later given $300,000 by an unknown party who asked him to carry it into the embattled Russian region.[2]
He moved to Montreal, Canada and lived with family members, but upon being refused citizenship, returned to the United States in August 2001.[2]
Elzahabi became a truck driver in the United States. He applied for a Commercial driver's license on August 23, 2001 in Minnesota.[8] He traveled to Boston on September 7, and three days later wrote a cashier's cheque for $30,000, later explaining he felt it unsafe to travel with that much cash while he was "bouncing from city to city, in search of paid driving work".[2] He later used the cash to purchase a 1998 Freightliner 18-wheel truck with leather seats.[2] His license was granted in January 2002, and he applied for a further license allowing him to carry general freight in September 2003.[9]
In late 2003, the FBI noted his appearance in the United States and hired an informant to live in the same rooming house as Elzahabi, and acquired wiretaps and began following him - but there was no evidence he had any criminal aspirations.[2] They approached him and asked him to stay in a hotel room with FBI agents for 17 days to be interrogated, and he agreed, citing his fear they were going to treat him like Maher Arar if he refused.[2] He gave interviews, took lie detector tests, and gave the agents the passwords to his internet accounts.[2] He was confronted by the FBI about Abdullah Almalki, himself and his brother selling walkie-talkies to Pakistani customers, but denied knowledge of what was in the packages mailed from the New York garage.[1][8] Classified American documents leaked to the Globe and Mail showed that he also told the FBI he vaguely knew Arar in Afghanistan, having "spotted him there in the early 1990s".[10]
He received his insurance clearance to begin work in April 2004.[9][11]
| “ | While the [guidelines] might contemplate a sentencing range of 0-6 months for an ordinary alien who had used a fraudulently obtained green card to apply for jobs, such a sentence would be wholly inappropriate for this defendant, who is anything but ordinary. | ” |
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—Prosecutor Frank Magill[3] |
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He was "branded an al-Qaeda terrorist"[2] and arrested by FBI agent Harry Samit on April 16, 2004. On June 25, he was charged with lying to authorities for claiming to have had no knowledge of shipping any radio devices overseas with his brother and Almalki.[8]
After the charges were dropped, the FBI pressed three charges of immigration fraud, after they found a "drug-addicted ex-stripper" at the Pink Pussycat Club in Houston who testified a Lebanese student "named something like 'Lazahabi'" had paid her to marry him for a green card.[12][1][13][14]
The RCMP provided faxes seized from Abdullah Almalki's house during Project O Canada, detailing the sale of the walkie-talkies to his brother.[8][15][15] The FBI later affirmed that it bugged and videotaped his cell.[8]
In 2007, he was convicted of possessing false immigration documents following 8 hours of jury deliberation,[12] and sentenced to time served and released to the Department of Justice for deportation proceedings.[1] He was taken from prison in Elk River, Minnesota, to the Immigration Holding Centre in El Paso, Texas[2] and was eventually removed from the United States the same year.