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Report: Little links detainees to Sept. 11

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 (UPI) -- A French national indicted on conspiracy charges Tuesday may be the only suspect in U.S. custody with a direct connection to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the Washington Post reported Friday.

After three months of investigation, Zacarias Moussaoui is the strongest link to the attacks that killed some 3,000 people and his arrest showed authorities a well planned and executed operation. Other suspects in custody, some of them previously regarded as promising suspects, may have no terror links, the Post quoted law enforcement officials as saying.

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Justice Department and FBI investigators said, however, the status of these and other detainees could change any time if new information links them to the attacks. Others, not currently in custody, could emerge as suspects later, they said.

"If someone talks, like Moussaoui, who knows what that might reveal?" one law enforcement official told the Post. "But we've pretty much run things to ground stateside, and everything just keeps pulling the plot further away from here. As time goes on, it only seems to solidify the early theory of this case."

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On Tuesday, An Alexandria grand jury indicted Moussaoui on six counts of criminal conspiracy in the terror attacks; four of those carry the death penalty.

The United States says he tried to learn flying and may have been learning to be a hijacker before being detained on immigration charges in August. He is said to have received $14,000 from Ramzi Binalshibh, an al Qaida operative, who was refused entry to the United States four times.

The FBI and the Justice Department said Binalshibh and two others wanted by German officials were three of the most promising suspects remaining.

There is not much of a case against two Indian men arrested on an Amtrak train in Fort Worth, Texas, with box cutters like those used in the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings. The Post said the FBI largely concluded the duo has no links to terrorism.

"After three months, there's just no link between them and everything else in any respect," a senior law enforcement official told the Post.

They will remain in custody, however, because of new charges they ran up $470,000 in bills on fraudulent credit cards.

In Detroit, officials were unable to link three detained suspects -- Karim Koubriti, Ahmed Hannan and Youssef Hmimssa -- to the Sept. 11 attacks, the Post quoted federal sources as saying. They were charged with possessing fraudulent documents. Hmimssa was also accused of credit card fraud.

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Federal agents were investigating if a day planner that included details of the Jordan airport and a possible plot against former Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen belonged to Hmimssa. The day planner was found during a Sept. 17 raid on a Detroit home.

The raid was for a former resident of the house, Nabil Almarabh, an ex-Boston cabdriver connected to a jailed man linked to a millennium bombing plot. Almarabh was also being investigated for possibly giving money to two Sept. 11 hijacking suspects, the Post said.

There has been no Justice Department decision on Agus Budiman, an Alexandria, Va., man who said he knew hijacking leader Mohamed Atta when they both lived in Germany. Budiman was charged with allegedly helping an Atta acquaintance illegally get a Virginia driver's license.

Both Ziad Samir Jarrah, a hijacker, and Binalshibh used Budiman's address on their applications for U.S. visas, the FBI said.

Another Washington-area man, Mohamed Abdi, pleaded guilty to unrelated forgery charges Thursday. Prosecutors said he was a possible material witness in the Sept. 11 investigation and asked a federal judge to hold him without bond until he was sentenced.

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