Officials Hunt for Associate of N.Y. Bombing Suspect : Probe: Investigators say the Egyptian-born man has links to Mohammed Salameh and a New Jersey bomb lab.

By WILLIAM C. REMPEL and ROBERT C. JACKSON

March 14, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

NEW YORK — Federal investigators said Saturday that they were searching for an unnamed Egyptian-born man who was an associate of World Trade Center bombing suspect Mohammed A. Salameh and who had been linked to a suspected makeshift bomb lab in Jersey City, N.J.

Authorities said witnesses had seen the man around a storage shed where federal agents later found potential bomb-making chemicals during a raid after the Feb. 26 blast. They offered no further details about his possible role but said they intend to charge the man with aiding and abetting the attack.

However, one investigator said that “he hasn’t been seen in recent days, and we suspect he may have left the country.”

According to New York Newsday, also quoting an unidentified investigator, the man is a 33-year-old former Brooklyn cab driver and a friend of Salameh.

In an interview Saturday, Salameh’s attorney dismissed speculation about foreign financiers backing the alleged bombers.

Public defender Robert E. Precht said money transferred from a German bank to the joint account of Salameh and a second suspect shortly before the bombing was simply a loan from Salameh’s relatives “for a totally innocent purpose.”

“If the FBI is going to continue trying to use this loan transaction to connect Mr. Salameh to the bombing, it is going to be shown to be very foolish,” Precht said. He declined to say why Salameh had sought the loan.

“I’m pursuing my own investigative leads,” he said. “It will all come out in the proper time and place, which is in a courtroom.”

Precht, who said he knew nothing about any missing Egyptian associate of Salameh, also complained about what he called the FBI’s “daily leaks.” He said such disclosures could harm Salameh’s chances of getting a fair trial.

Precht also complained that investigators were attempting to characterize his client as a sinister figure because of a lifestyle that the public defender called typical of immigrants from the Mideast.

“It is not unusual in that (immigrant) community to move often, have many addresses, to share apartments, to be struggling for a living,” Precht said. “That doesn’t make you bad, or even mysterious.”

About Salameh’s joint bank account with Nidal Ayyad, the chemical engineer arrested last week in connection with the bombing, Precht such banking arrangements are “extremely common in that community.” He said well-established friends often are asked to open joint accounts to help fellow immigrants get started in a new neighborhood.

According to published bank records, first disclosed by the Bergen County Record, the joint account was opened at a Jersey City branch of National Westminster Bank with a $414.98 deposit on Jan. 21, five weeks before the bombing. On Feb. 17, nine days before the trade center blast, the New Jersey bank branch received a wire transfer to that account from Westdeutsche Genossenschafts Zentralbank in Dusseldorf for $2,420.87.

Precht said the amount represented a loan from several members of Salameh’s family. He declined to identify the lenders or their precise relationship to his client.

The bank records show a $400 cash withdrawal from that joint account at an automated teller machine four days before Salameh put down a $400 deposit securing the rental of a van. Bomb investigators believe that van contained the bomb that killed at least five people and injured more than 1,000 others. Salameh reported it stolen soon after the explosion.

At the bomb site in the trade center parking garage, where investigators continued to work despite blizzard conditions Saturday, the search for parts to the shattered van continued. Investigators said they are reconstructing the vehicle and are looking for pieces of the timing device that set off the blast.

In Albany, N.Y., a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections said El Sayyid A. Nosair, the cousin of Ibrahim A. Elgabrowny, a third man arrested in connection with the bombing, was being held in isolation in a disciplinary move because investigators discovered a cache of fake Nicaraguan passports in the cousin’s Brooklyn apartment.

Nosair, serving up to 22 years at Attica State Prison for weapons violations related to the killing of Jewish right-wing leader Meir Kahane, also is under investigation by federal authorities for possible links to the bombing, investigators said. All three men arrested so far in the bombing case have been identified as supporters of Nosair.