Arrests have no ties to terror groups

Monday, Dec. 27, 1999 | 11:40 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

SEATTLE -- Four people were arrested on Sunday by the U.S. Border Patrol and a busy U.S.-Canada border crossing was shut for 2 1/2 hours. U.S. officials denied a report that one of those arrested was connected to a terrorist group.

Meanwhile, federal officials today downplayed reports that another suspected terrorist, Abdelmajed Dahoumane, had booked a flight to Las Vegas. FBI Special Agent Joe Dickey said in Las Vegas that there is "no credible evidence he's here."

In the latest incident, three men and a woman were arrested by U.S. officials Sunday afternoon at the Blaine, Wash., checkpoint. The woman had parked her car at a duty-free shop on the Canadian side of the border and walked across to join the three, Canadian officials said.

The crossing -- one of the busiest in the United States -- was shut down for 2 1/2 hours.

Their identities and citizenships were not known, but the men were in the United States illegally and had driven to the crossing from Pennsylvania in a rental car, said Constable Archie Alafriz of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

He said the three men had been under surveillance by U.S. authorities, "and at least one of them had an affiliation with a known terrorist group." A search by RCMP officers and a bomb-sniffing dog found no explosives or suspicious materials in the woman's car, he said.

But Immigration and Naturalization Service spokeswoman Eileen Schmidt said today the arrests appeared to be routine and unrelated to terrorist threats.

"There is no indication that this is anything other than routine alien smuggling that we see each day at the border," Schmidt said. "At this point, there is no indication that (terrorism) could be the case."

Alafriz was not on duty this morning, but RCMP Sgt Peter Fischer said the log for Sunday made no reference to a terrorist connection.

"We didn't link anybody to anything," he said.

The arrests come in the wake of heightened security precautions at all U.S. border crossings as officials gird against possible terrorist attacks in the coming days.

On Dec. 14, Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian national, was arrested by U.S. authorities as he arrived from Canada by ferry at Port Angeles, Wash.

Authorities reported finding nitroglycerin and other explosives, as well as timing devices, in the trunk of Ressam's rental car.

Ressam, 32, has pleaded innocent to charges of illegal explosives smuggling and providing false immigration information to U.S. Customs agents. He is being held near Seattle by federal authorities.

Federal authorities said Dahoumane, a suspected accomplice to Ressam, was reported spotted by an airline ticket agent on Dec. 17 in Bellingham, Wash., about 20 miles south of the Blaine crossing.

News reports has Dahoumane stayed with Ressam in a Vancouver, British Columbia, motel in the weeks before Ressam's arrest. He has since been sought in Canada and the United States.

Despite news reports that Dahoumane had purchased an airline ticket to Las Vegas, Dickey would only say, "We have no credible evidence that any person suspected of terrorist activity has traveled to Las Vegas in recent weeks."

Dickey said the FBI and other law enforcement agencies will continue to operate under a "heightened state of awareness," through the holidays and beyond, if necessary.

A Canadian woman and a male Algerian companion were arrested at a border crossing in Vermont on Dec. 19. The woman, Lucia Garofalo, has been linked by federal prosecutors to what they described as a terrorist group operating in Europe and Algeria.

U.S. and Canadian authorities traced Garofalo's cellular phone and car to an organization called the Algerian Islamic League, prosecutors said. They said the group's founder is an arms trafficker for terrorists.

Garofalo, 35, and Bouabide Chamchi, 20, were charged with conspiring to misuse a false passport and offenses related to the transportation of aliens into and inside the United States.