Post-9/11 Probe Revived Stolen-Cereal Incident

Michael Drewniak, spokesman for Newark-based U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie, said the government is "not apologetic for pursuing these individuals. They're criminals. I don't know how anyone could say these guys were treated overzealously at all."

"We never called them terrorists or charged them as such," Drewniak added.

The trio's lawyers believe the men were targeted because of their ethnicity. "They rounded up all the Arabs after Sept. 11, and this case popped back up," said one defense lawyer, Frederic Brooks.

His client, Nasser Abuali, is unsure what to believe. Told his name is still on a government list of terrorism cases, Abuali did a double take.

"Really?" he asked in an interview conducted in the back corner of his grocery store, because he does not want customers to know he served five months in prison. "Why?"

A native of Ramallah on the West Bank, Abuali, 45, is an effusive man with close-cropped gray hair and a thin mustache. He is a U.S. citizen, married with six children. The small grocery store he manages is in the basement of a gray apartment building, which takes up an entire city block in a working-class section of Newark.

On May 16, 2000, according to an FBI criminal complaint, agents learned that stolen cereal was being loaded onto a tractor-trailer behind Abuali's store. The cereal had been heisted from a truck warehouse in Parsippany, N.J.

When agents arrived, court documents show, they took two men into custody: Nasser's cousin, Hussein Abuali, also a Newark grocer, and Ahmed. Nasser Abuali later turned himself in.

They were questioned at the FBI office in Newark. Ahmed and Nasser Abuali say they were asked only about cereal. All three men were released, even though court records say Hussein Abuali admitted that the cereal was stolen.

Sources said the men were not initially charged because prosecutors were unsure if the case rose to the level of a federal crime.

Early on the morning of Sept. 27, 2001, Ahmed recalled, more than 10 agents pounded on his door and handcuffed him in front of his wife and children. They arrested the Abuali cousins as well and took them to jail. This time, the subject of the questioning was terrorism.

"They said if you have any information about what happened [on Sept. 11], what the Arab community is saying about the attacks, we will help you," said Ahmed, 32, a native of Jordan and a U.S. citizen. "Otherwise, they said they would put the case before a judge that day."

That same day, the three grocers were charged with conspiracy to possess stolen property, a felony.

Court documents make no mention of terrorism. All three men pleaded guilty and received four or five months in jail. Hussein Abuali also pleaded guilty to defrauding the federal food stamp program.

At Ahmed's sentencing, U.S. District Judge William H. Walls said he found it "just bothersome that somehow a law enforcement officer sits and does nothing for 18 months" after observing a crime.

"It doesn't sit well with me," he said.

Researcher Julie Tate and research database editor Derek Willis contributed to this report.