Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 2 November 2001 — Page 2

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Safety first Volunteers Keisha Nickalson and Melanie Procter helped General Motors exchange car seats for city residents on 17th tnd College Avenue Saturday. (Photo/Curtis Guynn)

THE INDIANAPOLIS RECORDER

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2001* •

Eight men detained for days after Sept. 11 hope their ordeal is finally over

By KIMBERLY HEELING EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AF) — One after another, Tarek Albasti’s friends followed him from bustling Cairo to this quiet Indiana city where he opened an Italian restaurant with his American wife. The Egyptian men played pool together, prayed together at the city’s only mosque, and dated and married American women. And one after another, in the frenzied days after the Sept. 11 attacks, the friends were rounded up and placed in custody. Dubbed “material witnesses” by the FBI, the eight men were shackled, appeared in secret before a U.S. magistrate, made a quick trip to a Kentucky jail and were flown to a Chicago detention center. They still aren’t sure why. “We told them we are very normal people. We came here to realize our dreams," said Hesham Salem, 28, an accountant in Egypt who works in the kitchen at the Texas Roadhouse. “We didn’t realize our dreams in Egypt. We realize it in America.” A week after their release, they still don’t know why they were held. The FBI won’t say. But the friends have their suspicions. Maybe it was their close friendships, built around their teamwork on an Egyptian rowing team. Maybe it was Albasti’s flying lessons, a gift from his father-in-law. Maybe it was the money they regularly sent to family in Egypt. Or maybe it was a telephone call in which one man’s wife told the FBI her husband was suicidal and wanted to die in a crash. The U.S. Attorney’s Office has refused to

answer any questions about the men’s detention. The government has said little about the hundreds of people who have been detained across the county as the FBI seeks those responsible for the terrorist attacks. “I told them, 1 just want to know one thing: Why I am here? Why are you keeping all of us here?” said Khaled Nassr, 25, a cook and waiter at Albasti’s restaurant. Once detained, the men were not allowed to contact their families for a week. The family of Albasti’s wife, Carolyn Baugh, helped coordinate volunteers to keep the restaurant operating without the heart of its staff. She went to Chicago to answer questions about her husband’s flying lessons. Meanwhile, her parents helped care for the couple’s 2-year-old daughter. Of that uncertain time, she says, “There are no words to describe it.” After being questioned by the FBI. the men were released Oct. 19, with orders to return to Chicago in a week to appear before a federal grand jury. Yet they were sent home without testifying. They don’t know whether the case against them is closed. And it wasn’t until Friday night that the last of the eight friends, Fathey Saleh Abdelkhalek, was released, Baugh said. It was Abdelkhalek’s wife, La-Tennia, who called authorities to warn that her husband was suicidal. She told the Evansville Courier & Press her husband said: “Everything I do is for my children. I will have to make a crash, and that every Muslim wants to die like that.”

Abdelkhalek’s friends don’t believe it.-Sd- 1 . 1 lem contends La-Tennia Abdelkhalek was ujv j ' set because her husband didn’t tell her until - : after they wed last year that he had four chil--' dren in Egypt. ''' “When he married her, she was very happy,” >! Salem said. “She got mad when she found out - I he got children in Egypt.” J In custody, the men chided Abdelkhalek for. ^ getting them into a mess. S “We blamed him, but we loved him,” Salemi H said. j 1 ■ Mrs. Abdelkhalek declined to comment last g| week, saying she had been told by the FBI not' >■ to talk to the media. Abdelkhalek has an urw’ j listed phone number and could not be reached'. Sunday for comment. : The men’s link to Evansville is Baugh, 29, *'! who met Albasti, also 29, while she was study- ■ ing at the American University in Cairo. She' was on the American rowing team, he was on the Egyptian team. They'married in Egypt in 1993, moved lo Evansville the following year and bought The '. Crazy Tomato restaurant in 1997. While it was reasonable for the FBI to investigate, it was not necessary to detain the men,' said Baugh. ■ “There was no need to be carted off,” Baugh' - said. “All cooperated fully with the FBI or. c would have gone willingly. No one has any-. ■. thing to hide.” \ v > v The other men detained but since released! are: Tarek Eid Omar, 26; Yasser Shahin, 24;' ■ Adel Ramadan Khalil, 46; and Ahmed Attia Hassan, 26.

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