Mysterious Tennessee Death May Be Linked to Terrorist
Cover-up
By J.J. Johnson - Sierra Times.com: 02.15.02
It's shocking that this story has barely gotten national attention,
but it should as soon as folks can forget Enron
and Campaign
Finance Reform.
In the current war against terrorism, it's
beginning to look more and more like Katherine
Smith ,
a former Tennessee DMV employee was killed to cover
up something
- possible Arab terrorists active on U.S. Soil.
It goes back to last Thursday, when 5 illegal immigrants were
nailed buying drivers licenses in Memphis from Katherine Smith..
They were from New York City, and all reportedly of Arab descent.
Authorities say these drivers licenses were purchased for $1000.00
each.
They were taken to jail and held there without bail. Smith on
the other hand, was released on her own recognizance.
No jail, no
bail, nothing for her except "come back Monday".
Problem is: She never got to court. She died one day prior.
Last Sunday Morning, at about 12:15 AM, Smith's car was found
against a utility pole on Hwy 72, totally engulfed in flames.
Looked like an accident at the beginning.
Then the Feds came in.
During a probable cause hearing Wednesday, Federal and state
investigators found gasoline on the clothes Katherine Smith was
wearing
when she died Sunday in a car crash on a stretch of U.S. 72
in Fayette County,
FBI agent J. Suzanne Nash told U.S. Magistrate
Judge J. Daniel Breen.
According to the FBI, some kind of flammable accelerant (probably
gasoline) started the fire,
which burned Smith beyond
recognition.
Of the 5 in custody, none have been released. But of the three who
had a hearing, Judge Breen found there was probable cause
to charge
Mohammed Fares, Mostafa Said Abou-Shahin and Abdelmuhsen Mahmid
Hammad.
He also denied them bond.
But mysteriously, the primary witness in the case - is toast.
In a rush to standardize drivers licenses among the states, critics
have pointed to Tennessee as an example of a national overhaul, or
national I.D. cards.
Having a flawed I.D. system helps when there
is a American allegedly willing to take 30 pieces of silver, or
$1000 each.
She apparently paid an even greater price. "Was this
death a result of an accident?" federal prosecutor Tim DiScenza
asked Nash,
who was the only witness to testify during Wednesday's
two-hour hearing. "No, it was not," Nash replied.
The conclusion is arson. Six unnamed witnesses - all related to
each other - saw Smith's 1992 Acura Legend veer off U.S. 72 around
12:45 a.m. Sunday.
They said the interior of the car was on fire as
the car drove across a ditch and hit a utility pole.
The trunk and
gas tank were barely touched, but the interior fire was so intense
that her arms and legs were burned off.
There is nothing to tie the Arab suspects to any terrorist activity
(yet), but the matter is raising eyebrows,
even though all the
suspects were in custody at the time of the incident.
However, DiScenza has said there are "connections" linking two of
the accused to the World Trade Center
in the days before it was
destroyed in the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Those connections
include a visitor's pass to the WTC dated September 5 that belonged
to Sakhera Hammad.
More details as they develop
http://www.sierratimes.com/02/02/15/arjj021502.htm
February 10, 2002: Driver’s License Examiner Dies in
Suspicious Circumstances
Katherine Smith is killed one day before her scheduled appearance
in court on charges she helped
five Islamic men get illegal drivers
licenses. According to witnesses, she veered into a utility pole
when a fire erupted in her car.
She was burned beyond recognition. The FBI later determines that
gasoline was poured on her clothing
before she died in the fire and
find that arson was the cause of death.
[Associated Press,
2/15/2002]
A suicide note was found, but prosecutors say they are
looking for murder suspects. One of the five men, Sakhera Hammad,
was found with a pass in his wallet giving access to the restricted
areas of the WTC, dated September 5, 2001.
Hammad claims he was a plumber and worked on the WTC’s
sprinkler system that day, but the company with exclusive rights
to
all WTC plumbing work has never heard of him. Smith was being
investigated by the FBI; the five later plead guilty to charges of
fraud.
[Go Memphis, 2/12/2002; Associated Press, 2/13/2002; Reuters,
2/15/2002; Commercial Appeal (Memphis), 2/21/2002]
One of the five, Khaled Odtllah, drove from New York City to
Memphis on 9/11.
Tennessee is one of only four US states that doesn’t require
a Social Security card to get a driver’s license.
A prosecutor accuses each of the five men of attempting to acquire
a “completely false and untraceable identity.”
[Associated Press, 2/12/2002; Associated Press, 2/15/2002]
One
month later, the coroner who examines her body is targeted by a
bomb, which is defused.
Then in June the coroner is attacked, bound
with barbed wire, and left with a bomb tied to his body, but he
survives.
[Commercial Appeal (Memphis), 3/14/2002]
F.B.I. Says Arson Killed Woman Accused in License Scheme
By REUTERS
MEMPHIS, Feb. 14 — A deliberately set fire caused the death
of a driver's license examiner who had been accused of illegally
selling licenses to five Middle Eastern men who were being
investigated for possible ties to terrorism, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation has said.
Gasoline was poured on the clothing of the examiner, Katherine
Smith, before she burned to death on Sunday in an automobile
accident, J. Suzanne Nash, an F.B.I. agent, said on Wednesday.
Ms. Smith died one day before she was to have appeared in court
with her five co-defendants after being arrested last week on
charges of conspiracy to obtain driver's licenses illegally.
In a federal court hearing here on Wednesday, Ms. Nash said an
accelerant had been found in Ms. Smith's car, adding that her death
was "not an accident."
Investigators have said the gasoline tank of the automobile did not
explode. Ms. Nash also said witnesses had reported that the
interior of Ms. Smith's car was on fire before the vehicle struck a
utility pole, causing just minor damage to the car.
Ms. Nash told the court on Monday that the Federal Bureau of
Investigation was looking into whether the five men who were
arrested had ties to terrorist groups, citing connections to the
September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
The five men, one of whom said he was a plumber at the trade center
and had a visitor's pass to the towers dated September 5, are being
held without bond.
A lawyer for one of the defendants has denied that they had any
connection to terrorism and said they were seeking documentation to
work in the United States
.http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/15/national/15LICE.html?ex=1185249600&en=18d1f3ff9d2d2a77&ei=5070
4 Admit Fraud amid Questions on Death of
License
Examiner
The Memphis Commercial Appeal
21 May 2002
by Lawrence Buser
URL: http://www.commercialappeal.com/
After four men with ties to the Middle East pleaded guilty Monday
in a Tennessee driver's license fraud case,
new questions arose
about a central figure in the case - a state driver's license
examiner who died in a mysterious,
fiery car wreck just days after
her arrest.
The case drew national attention earlier this year because of the
still-unsolved death of Katherine Smith and the revelation one of
the defendants,
a naturalized plumber from Jordan living in New
York, had been in the World Trade Center days before the twin
towers
were destroyed by hijacked airliners.In a hearing Monday morning before U.S. Dist. Judge Bernice Donald,
federal prosecutors said, however, had the cases gone to trial,
there would have been no evidence presented that the defendants
were involved in terrorist activities
or in Smith's Feb. 10 death
on U.S. 72 in Fayette County.
Federal and state authorities said Monday that the wreck remains
under investigation but the fire in the car was set
and the crash
did not cause Smith's death.
Tennessee Highway Patrol Capt. Jimmy Erwin said Monday that he is
waiting on autopsy test results
from the Medical Examiner's Office
before the cause of death is officially determined.
He said neither suicide nor homicide has been ruled out.
Smith, a state employee for 27 years, had been charged with
conspiring to provide driver's licenses fraudulently
as part of a
scheme involving the other defendants.
A handwritten letter by Smith dated Feb. 5 - the day of her arrest
- was included in pretrial discovery material the government
provided to defense attorneys.
After the hearing, defense attorney Jeffrey Jones showed the letter
to several reporters.
Asked if the letter appeared to be a suicide note, Jones said,
"That's certainly one interpretation."
Written on green flowered stationery headed "Gardening Angel," the
note read: "I Katherine Smith tried to help Kal. He didn't give me
any money.
He was I thought my friend. I was trying to help him.
Now I've lost everything and am called a liar when I was telling
the truth.
I can't live without any honor. I live a lonely life
true enough but I didn't lie to the FBI. Forgive me John. Forgive
me Vernola.
I can't live this way. I love you both and wish and
pray for the best. Love Mama."
The names in the letter, apparently discovered during the FBI's
investigation, refer to alleged conspiracy ringleader Khaled
Odtllah,
who is known as "Kal," and Smith's son and daughter, John
Barton IV and Vernola Buchanan.
Pleading guilty to the one-count conspiracy indictment Monday were
Odtllah, 31, a Cordova resident from Jerusalem;
Mostafa Said
Abou-Shahin, 26, a carpenter from Egypt; Sakher A. Hammad, 24, a
New York plumber from Jordan
and the lone defendant who is an
American citizen, and his cousin Abdelmuhsen Mahmid Hammad, 32,
also a plumber living in New York.
A fifth defendant, Mohammed A. Fares, pleaded guilty earlier this
month. Fares has a Venezuelan passport, but his family is from
Lebanon.
Each faces a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine
and a minimum of immediate probation
when sentenced in June and
August by Donald.
Those who are not citizens also face the
possibility of deportation and remain in federal custody.
A minor teenager arrested in the case was handled in Juvenile
Court.
Federal prosecutor Tim DiScenza said Odtllah, who had been living
here for two years,
provided Tennessee driver's licenses to illegal
immigrants for about $1,000 each.
The Hammads of New York found clients and drove them to Memphis
where Smith would issue them driver's licenses
without requiring
proper documentation, he said.
He said Tennessee was vulnerable to such a scheme because the state
does not require immigrants to provide a Social Security
number.
The Hammads in February drove Fares and Abou-Shahin and the
juvenile to Memphis from New York to get four licenses.
They met
with Odtllah here and were arrested as they attempted to obtain
licenses at the Summer Avenue testing station.
FBI agents and the highway patrol had set up surveillance after
receiving a tip from the New York FBI office.
During their separate guilty pleas Monday, at least two of the
defendants asked their attorneys to emphasize that they
are not
being accused of terrorist activity. DiScenza then made a statement
to that effect.
Jones, who represents Sakher Hammad, said the World Trade Center
visitor's pass found in his client's wallet was needed
because he
had worked on the center's sprinkler system plumbing.
He said Hammad also had a card that indicated he had donated money
to the victims of the September 11 attack.
"My guy's a fairly conservative guy," Jones said.
The guilty pleas were straightforward and routine for the most part
as Donald asked each man, some requiring Arabic interpreters,
if he
was pleading voluntarily and understood the implications.
She also asked each defendant why he was pleading guilty, drawing
tearful responses from Odtllah who said, "I made mistake.
I didn't
know I was breaking the law. I didn't mean to break the law."
Abdelmuhsen Mahmid Hammad also wept when asked about his residency
in New York, where he had been living with his wife
and three
U.S.-born children.
"I'm just concerned about my wife," he said through an
interpreter.
Because of its importance to the events of September 11, 2001, this
article has been archived by the 911 Reading Room
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