WASHINGTON: US authorities said on Tuesday they had arrested a longtimeSaudi resident of Oklahoma who had trained with Al-Qaeda and sought flyinglessons.
The Department of Justice said Naif Abdulaziz Alfallaj, 34, applied in 2000to attend the same Al-Qaeda militant camp in Afghanistan, called al-Farouq,where several of the September 11 hijackers had trained.
He came to the United States in 2011 on a non-immigrant visa, travelingwith his wife, who was a student. In 2016, he took pilot lessons at anOklahoma flight school, the Justice Department said.
He was only discovered recently after investigators matched 15 fingerprintsfound on a document recovered by the US military from an Al-Qaeda safehouse in Afghanistan in 2001 with his fingerprints in official US records.
The document was an application to the al-Farouq camp, and included anemergency contact number in Saudi Arabia that was linked to Alfallaj’sfather.
Other than attending the same militant training camp, officials did notclaim any links between Alfallaj and the September 11, 2001 plot in which15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.
Several of them took flight training inside the United States beforelaunching their attack.
Alfallaj was arrested in Weatherford, Oklahoma on Monday and charged withtwo counts of visa fraud – for not reporting his links to Al-Qaeda – andone count of lying to the FBI about his past with the extremist group.
He faces up to 10 years in prison on each count.