Trail of an 'Enemy Combatant': From Desert to U.S. Heartland

Finally, Jaloud said, another man called the mosque and asked him to ship the computer to an address in Washington. Jaloud said he did so, paying for it himself.

Jaloud returned to Saudi Arabia at the end of 2001. U.S. officials were not permitted to interview him, but Saudi authorities questioned him in 2005 and shared the information with the FBI, according to U.S. authorities. Jaloud said he told the Saudis that he did not remember the address in Washington where he sent the computer. He now lives in Scotland, where he is pursuing a PhD in sports studies at the University of Stirling.

'Bundles of Hundreds'

Two days after the 2001 attacks, Peoria police officer Greg Metz watched a car go by with a 6-year-old boy standing in the back seat.

Metz immediately pulled the car over. The driver was Marri. A license check turned up a 10-year-old warrant for a charge of driving under the influence, a legacy of his undergraduate days.

Marri still had long hair, but he was groomed and polite. He told Metz that he was back in Peoria to study for a master's degree in computer science at Bradley. The officer explained that he would have to take Marri to jail, where he could post bond. They stopped to drop the boy off at the family's motel room.

What happened next prompted Metz to call the police department's liaison officer with the FBI. Marri "opens a briefcase and peels off $300 in bond money," Metz said. "The briefcase was filled with bundles of hundreds."

U.S. authorities allege that Marri had gone to the United Arab Emirates in August 2001 to get more than $13,000 in cash from Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the alleged paymaster for the Sept. 11 plotters.

Metz's call wasn't the only one about Marri to reach the Springfield FBI office in the days after Sept. 11, when thousands of tips about Arab men poured in to law enforcement offices around the country. A cellphone salesman called, as did someone who saw something suspicious in Marri's effort to ship a big steamer trunk from Chicago to Peoria. Bradley University officials also told the FBI that they were suspicious about Marri's hurried arrival on Sept. 11, barely under the deadline for late enrollment.

On Oct. 2, FBI agents Nicholas Zambeck and Robert Brown knocked on the door of Marri's new apartment on the edge of town. Marri obliged them when they asked to come in and have a look at the steamer trunk, which contained just clothing and spices. The apartment was sparsely furnished, Zambeck would later testify, with a television, bedding on the floor and a few chairs.

The agents left after asking about Marri's travels to the United States and about a possible issue with his Social Security number, which was resolved the next day.

Marri was soon raising more suspicions, though -- this time back in Macomb. Several times that fall, he made the 90-minute drive to the tiny town west of Peoria. He pushed for admittance to Western Illinois University's intensive English program, but school officials were puzzled and wary. "His English was fine," said former Western administrator Julie Rose. "He had been through two or three English programs already."

Marri would not provide a home address or sign the application. "He was a very pugnacious individual," Rose said. "He was calling students. It just seemed strange" -- so much so that she warned a Saudi student who was trying to help him. "I said, 'Don't get involved with this guy, be careful -- we don't know who this guy is.' "