30 December 1999

U.S. Prosecutors Link Arrests in Vermont and Washington State

Washington -- U.S. Prosecutors in Burlington, Vermont told the U.S. District Court Magistrate there December 30 that they have linked the Canadian woman recently arrested at a remote Vermont border crossing with an Algerian man who had earlier been taken into custody at the border in Washington state.

Authorities arrested Ahmed Ressam in Port Angeles, Washington two weeks ago and charged him with having bomb-making materials on him, as he tried to enter the United States from Canada. His arrest caused the United States to increase the number of Customs inspectors on its border with its northern neighbor. Then Lucia Garofalo of Montreal was arrested at the border in Vermont on December 19 on alien smuggling charges when she allegedly tried to smuggle in Buoabide Chamchi, age 20, also a resident of Montreal.

Federal prosecutors said the two are members of the same cell of an Algerian terrorist organization, the GIA, also known as the Armed Islamic Group.

Deputy U.S. Attorney David Kirby submitted the court documents to a magistrate December 30 in advance of a hearing in which the federal government is seeking to continue holding Ms. Garofalo until trial.

Ressam is charged with attempting to smuggle one of the world's most powerful explosives into the United States. Authorities originally believed Ressam was carrying the common nitroglycerine when he was arrested December 14 near the Port Angeles, Washington border crossing. Federal officials now say he was carrying 200 pounds of a fertilizer called urea, four rudimentary timing devices and two jars of liquid. The liquid turned out to be RDX, or cyclotrimethylene trinitramine, which is used by military forces around the world for demolition.

Ms. Garofalo was arrested five days later at a Vermont border crossing with an Algerian man. At present, both face only immigration-related charges. Authorities had earlier linked her to the GIA, but not until now to Ressam.

Prosecutor Kirby said the information he used in his court filing came from a foreign government, which he did not identify. Authorities in France have closely tracked the GIA for years, and French anti-terrorism officials traveled to Canada in October in an attempt to meet with Ressam but failed to find him.

The document says that Ms. Garofalo's husband is Yamin Rachek, an Algerian national who was expelled from Canada after presenting a false passport.

Rachek, who now lives in Italy, allegedly was arrested in London in 1996 using an altered Greek passport and also faces an outstanding arrest warrant in Germany for theft.

Ms. Garofalo has sought unsuccessfully to persuade Canada to allow Rachek back into the country. In 1997 she allegedly arranged with a man named Said Atmani to buy her an airline ticket to travel to Germany and to hire a lawyer for her husband, Kirby said in his court filing.

GIA is the French abbreviation for the Armed Islamic Group, the fundamentalist faction held responsible for some of the bloodiest attacks in Algeria's nearly eight-year civil war. It has also been blamed for bombings in France in 1995 and 1996.

The U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. has released the complete, official text of the U.S. Memorandum of Law in support of Prosecutors' Motion for Detention in U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont which they filed December 30 in the case of Lucia Garofalo.