The Oklahoma roommate of alleged “20th hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui has been held secretly for months by feds who are still trying to determine if he was involved in the Sept. 11 terror strikes, The Post has learned.
Mukram Ali, an Indian immigrant, was taken into custody soon after the attacks as a material witness, and has repeatedly denied any knowledge of the hijack plot, sources said.
Ali was living in Norman, Okla., on a student visa to attend the University of Oklahoma last year, when Moussaoui moved in with him.
Moussaoui lived in Oklahoma from late February to late May, taking flying lessons at a nearby flight school.
The feds say Moussaoui was training to be part of a Sept. 11 hijack team when he was arrested in August on immigration charges.
Despite living with Moussaoui at the time he was getting his pilot training, Ali has insisted to investigators that he had no inkling of the horrific terror strikes.
“He says he didn’t know anything about it, and never saw anything [from Moussaoui] that raised his suspicions,” a source told The Post.
Another source said the FBI hasn’t decided whether they believe him, because the two appeared to be friends, not just roommates.
If he is not charged, he may eventually become a key witness at Moussaoui’s death-penalty trial slated to begin later this year.
Ali was eventually charged with immigration fraud.
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Egyptian pilot wannabe Wael Abdel Rahman Kishk is a liar, but he’s no impostor, a federal jury decided yesterday.
In a split verdict, jurors convicted Kishk on the most serious charge of lying to agents on Sept. 19 at Kennedy Airport – Kishk said he planned to study business administration in the United States when he’d set his sites on flight school – but acquitted the 21-year-old on charges related to fake pilot’s papers he was carrying.
Kishk faces up to six months in prison for deceiving anti-terrorism agents who questioned him on his arrival in the country as part of a massive effort to prevent a second wave of attacks.
“We’re very pleased with the verdict. If you lie to federal investigators, you should be prosecuted and convicted. This was obviously a very important investigation in light of the tragic attacks,” said U.S. Attorney Dwight Holton.
Jurors agreed on a verdict after more than a day of deliberations, acquitting Kishk on allegations he planned to use phony documents he carried in his luggage on a flight from Cairo – including a bogus pilot’s medical certificate and doctored flight school documents indicating he was a student pilot.
Sentencing is set for Feb. 15.
–Kati Cornell Smith