German receives light penalty

Thursday, Nov. 29, 2001 | 10:54 a.m.

A German citizen who was arrested in Pittsburgh on charges of deceiving authorities about his intentions of coming to Las Vegas to attend flight school, has been given a light penalty.

Hossain El Ouariachi pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Alan Bloch in Pittsburgh on Nov. 20 and was sentenced to the time he had served since his Oct. 12 arrest. He was assessed a $100 court cost fee, but no fine.

Ouariachi, apparently in an effort to cut through red tape, told Immigration and Naturalization Services officials he was going to Las Vegas to visit friends instead of his real purpose to attend flight school in North Las Vegas.

It was a significant omission in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, where foreigners attended U.S. flight schools before hijacking commercial jets and crashing them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Ouariachi was sent back to Germany, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Connie Bowden in Pittsburgh. He is not believed to be part of any terrorist plot. Neither were two other German students who last month were arrested locally after trying to take flying lessons in Southern Nevada.

Mehmet Wabamci, 26, and Alexandros Milanowski, 20, got off a lot easier. Arrested on Oct. 29, they spent only a few days in a North Las Vegas jail on visa violation charges before being deported to Germany.

They had arrived Sept. 23 in Las Vegas on tourist visas with intentions of taking flying lessons. However, to do that, they needed student visas.

Prior to the Sept. 11 incident, prospective students simply would tell U.S. consulates abroad their intentions to take vocational training in the United States, but declare themselves as tourists to avoid additional paperwork.

For many years, it has been common for people in foreign lands to come to the United States to learn to fly, because flight schools in other countries charge, in some cases, quadruple the rate of those here.

Wabamci, Milanowski and Ouariachi all intended to attend West Air Aviation in North Las Vegas. While Wabamci and Milanowski made it all the way to Southern Nevada, Ouariachi not only was halted nearly 3,000 miles away, he also became a statistic in the widespread roundup of potential terrorist suspects.

In the wake of growing criticism of the government's refusal to identify many of the people jailed, Attorney General John Ashcroft this week released the names of 93 people charged with crimes and gave an accounting of the 548 who remain in custody on immigration charges stemming from the terror probe.

The FBI has declined to comment on the Ouariachi case.