The Plot Comes Into Focus

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Al-Marabh moved to Detroit after he was arrested in Boston in May 2000 for assault and battery with a knife. (He stabbed his roommate in the knee after an argument.) The Boston police had been trying to arrest him since March for violating probation on the assault charge. Since Sept. 11, 2000, he has held a commercial driver's license that certifies him to transport hazardous materials--more than 10,000 lbs. of explosives, for example. In recent weeks, according to Michigan records, he applied for two duplicate copies of this license; one application was made six days after the attacks.

An FBI source says investigators are trying to "sort out what connection," if any, Al-Marabh has to the plot. And the bureau is not willing to say this Al-Marabh is the man on its watch list. (The bureau is sure, however, that he is the Boston cabdriver who stabbed his roommate.) In interviews with TIME, neighbors and co-workers describe Al-Marabh as a hot-tempered slacker with a fondness for fruity, slushy drinks and a longing for female companionship. "He was always asking if anyone could hook him up with women," says a co-worker calling himself Haidar. As of Saturday Al-Marabh had not been charged with any offense and had not asked for a lawyer, sources told TIME. Investigative sources suggest the slacker pose was just a cunning cover. Still, Al-Marabh didn't try very hard to evade capture last week: minutes before his arrest, he told his boss at 7 Days Liquor in Burbank, Ill., that the authorities wanted him for something that had happened in Boston. "I knew you were coming," he said when FBI agents came to take him away.

By then Al-Marabh had probably already heard about the arrests of three men whom federal agents had found in his former Detroit home when they were looking for him. As with Al-Marabh, it is unclear whether Farouk Ali-Haimoud, 21, Karim Koubriti, 23, and Ahmed Hannan, 33, have any connection to the attacks. Yet two of them--Koubriti and Hannan--had worked for two months for LSG Sky Chefs, a catering company providing airplane meals at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. The agents who arrested the three men uncovered several phony documents including a passport, a Social Security card and U.S. immigration papers. Investigators also found a day planner containing Arabic notes about an American military base in Turkey. Sketched diagrams of an airplane-servicing area and runways of an unidentified airport were also in the planner. Lawyers for the men suggested during a detention hearing Friday that many of the possessions collected as evidence by the FBI do not belong to the three men.

The men's company identification would allow them access only to the kitchen facilities, which are not located at the airport, and they stopped working for Sky Chefs in July. Were other support personnel aiding the hijackers on Sept. 11? Senior federal and airline officials told TIME last week that two knifelike weapons were found on two separate Delta Airlines planes that never took off on Sept. 11; a similar weapon was discovered on another company's aircraft. The officials would not say where the planes were parked and are not certain who may have left the weapons. But they are investigating whether would-be hijackers somehow arranged to have the weapons hidden onboard. A U.S. official told TIME, "These look like inside jobs." On Wednesday the FAA ordered all U.S. airlines to immediately check every single employee against the FBI's watch list.

Canadian authorities are holding Nageeb Abdul Jabar Mohamed Al-Hadi, reportedly a contract employee for Lufthansa who authorities say was trying to fly into Chicago on Sept. 11 with three false Yemeni passports and two Lufthansa uniforms. His flight was grounded in Toronto after the attacks. U.S. investigators are seeking extradition, although they have no information he was connected to the terror plot.

Perhaps the most intriguing fellow to be detained after the attacks is Khalid S.S. Al Draibi. About 12 hours after the planes crashed, a police officer in Manassas Park, Va., pulled Al Draibi over. He was about 10 miles along the highway that leads north from Dulles International Airport, and he was so eager to leave that he was driving with a flat tire and bending his rim. When Al Draibi's white Lincoln Town Car was searched, the cop and an FBI agent found aviation manuals. He was charged with an immigration violation for lying to the agent about his citizenship--Saudi, not American, as he first said.