Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 11, 1993 TAG: 9303110290
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEWARK, N.J. LENGTH: Medium
SECOND MAN HELD IN BOMBING
A Palestinian-American chemical engineer was ordered held without bail Wednesday on a charge of helping to bomb the World Trade Center. He was the second suspect linked directly to the fatal blast.Nidal A. Ayyad, 25, was arrested at his suburban Maplewood home by an FBI SWAT team. Authorities said the Kuwaiti-born naturalized American citizen had ties to Mohammed Salameh, accused last week of renting the van used to carry the bomb that devastated the skyscraper complex Feb. 26, killing five people.
A federal investigator said Ayyad, like Salameh, also had ties to El Sayyid Nosair, who was acquitted of the 1990 assassination of militant Israeli Rabbi Meir Kahane but convicted of related charges.
James Esposito, the FBI chief for New Jersey, said Ayyad's chemical background was significant, but he wouldn't say whether Ayyad was believed to have made the bomb.
Reziq Ayyad, Ayyad's 17-year-old brother, said during his brother's court appearance that Nidal and Salameh worshiped at the same mosque, the location of which he didn't specify. Officials have said Salameh worshiped at a Jersey City, N.J., mosque where Nosair also had worshiped.
The FBI said Ayyad and Salameh share a bank account, and that Ayyad's business card was found among Salameh's personal effects when Salameh was arrested last Thursday. Ayyad is a research engineer for Allied-Signal Inc., which makes engineered materials and aerospace and automotive products.
Investigators believe at least $8,000 was transferred by wire in recent months from Europe to the suspects' joint bank account, according to anonymous sources quoted in today's editions of The New York Times. Authorities believe the money helped pay for the bombing. FBI agents are trying to trace the source of the money in hopes of explaining the motive behind the blast.
On the day before the bombing, an FBI complaint said, Salameh and an undetermined number of other people were seen making many trips to a Jersey City storage warehouse where explosives and bomb-making materials were later found. The complaint said they drove a yellow Ryder rental van, which was believed used in the bombing.
Salameh also was seen making telephone calls from a pay phone nearby, and records show four calls were made from that phone to Ayyad's line at Allied-Signal, according to the FBI complaint.