>
>5 Israelis detained for `puzzling behavior' after WTC tragedy
>By Yossi Melman (Ha'aretz, 17 September 2001)
>
>Five Israelis who had worked for a moving company based in New Jersey are
>being held in U.S. prisons for what the Federal Bureau of Investigation has
>described as "puzzling behavior" following the terror attack on the World
>Trade Center in New York last Tuesday. The five are expected to be deported
>sometime soon.
>
>The families of the five, who asked that their names not be released, said
>that their sons had been questioned by the FBI for hours on end, had been
>kept in solitary confinement for three days, and had been humiliated,
>stripped of their clothes and blindfolded.
>
>The mother of one of the young men explained the chain of events as she
>understands it to Ha'aretz:
>
>She said that the five had worked for the company, which is owned by an
>Israeli, for between two months and two years. They had been arrested some
>four hours after the attack on the Twin Towers while filming the smoking
>skyline from the roof of their company's building, she said. It appears that
>they were spotted by one of the neighbors who called the police and the FBI.
>
>The mother said that the families and friends of the five in Israel had
>known nothing of the men's whereabouts for a number of days.
>
>"When they finally let my son make a phone call for the first time to a
>friend in the United States two days ago, he told him that he had been
>tortured by the FBI in a basement," the mother said. "He was stripped to his
>underwear; he was blindfolded and questioned for 14 hours. They thought that
>because he has citizenship of a European country as well as of Israel that
>he was working for the Mossad [Israel's secret service]."
>
>Seven FBI agents later stormed the apartment of one of the Israelis,
>searched it and questioned his roommate. The Israeli owner of the company,
>who has U.S. citizenship, was also questioned. Both men were subsequently
>released.
>
>The families here complained that the Israeli consulate in New York and the
>situation room set up by the Foreign Ministry there to locate missing
>Israelis had done nothing to help their sons. The Foreign Ministry told the
>families that the FBI had denied holding the five and that the consulate had
>chosen to believe the FBI, the mother said.
>
>The five were transferred out of the FBI's facility on Saturday morning and
>are now being held in two prisons in New Jersey by the Immigration and
>Naturalization Services. They are charged with illegally residing in the
>United States and working there without permits.
>
>The Foreign Ministry said in response that it had been informed by the
>consulate in New York that the FBI had arrested the five for "puzzling
>behavior." They are said to have had been caught videotaping the disaster
>and shouting in what was interpreted as cries of joy and mockery.
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