The Rough Justice of War

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It's a safe bet that the Abu Ali case never will. The U.S. first got wind of him in the spring of 2003, when close to 70 FBI agents from the Washington field office went to Saudi Arabia to help investigate bombings in Riyadh that killed 34 people, including nine Americans. This time the Saudis were more willing than in previous joint operations to share with their American counterparts evidence from the interrogations of hundreds of suspects rounded up after the attacks. As it turned out, the indictment alleges, two of the most sought-after suspects in that case met with Abu Ali sometime after September 2002. Described in the U.S. indictment as his co-conspirators, they allegedly taught him how to use weapons and discussed setting up an al-Qaeda cell in the U.S. A week after Abu Ali's arrest, the FBI searched his parents' home in Virginia and found, among other things, Arabic audiotapes "promoting violent jihad"; a book by Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, condemning democracy as a "new religion that must be destroyed"; and an issue of Handguns magazine. "That was pretty damning stuff," says Victoria Toensing, a former terrorism prosecutor now in private practice. But, she adds, "a professor of terrorism could have that stuff too."

And so could any student, like Abu Ali, who attended the controversial Islamic Saudi Academy (I.S.A.) in northern Virginia while growing up. The eldest of five children, Abu Ali was born in Houston in 1981, but by the time he was 3, his family had settled in suburban Virginia, a short commute from his father's job as a computer systems analyst at the Saudi embassy in Washington. In many ways, young Abu Ali had a fairly typical American upbringing, playing soccer, tutoring other kids, passionately cheering on the Washington Redskins and even dreaming of one day becoming President of the U.S.

What may have changed his dreams were the years Abu Ali spent at I.S.A., a school set up by the Saudi government in 1984 for children of its diplomats and eventually open to Muslims of all nationalities. The school insists it does not teach intolerance, but many of the religious textbooks once used there had the markings of the Saudi brand of fundamentalist Islam. It was enough to launch Abu Ali on a career in Islamic studies that eventually led him to Saudi Arabia, where he enrolled at a school known for having turned out several militants. Still, his former teachers and classmates swear that he was far from an angry budding young terrorist at I.S.A. They remember him as someone who regularly attended an interfaith group and spoke with "the voice of reason" whenever schoolmates launched into anti-Israel tirades. Yahya Fouz, a former classmate, says, "I remember him telling me that, yes, there is only one God, but the beauty is the fact that people are able to take numerous paths to find him." Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, unfortunately, found trouble, and lots of it, on the path he chose. --Reported by Elaine Shannon and Perry Bacon Jr./Washington and Scott MacLeod/Tangier