Two who didn't get away

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Admitted felon Ilyas Ali, who once ran a butcher shop in Minneapolis, Minn., is also a master of political spin.

When a reporter visited Ali in a Hong Kong jail last year after Ali had been arrested for trying to trade heroin and hashish for shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles that he intended to resell to al Qaeda, Ali posed as the victim of Attorney General John Ashcroft and his overzealous Justice Department.

American law enforcement messed up on September 11, 2001, "and now they're arresting innocent people for political purposes," Ali, a naturalized citizen born in India, told the Associated Press. "I'm very, very sad that they got an innocent person and they don't care.

"Ashcroft just used me," he said. "They just want to make something out of me to prove to the taxpayers they are doing something.

"Nine-eleven, me and my wife cried," said Ali. "We cried for three days."

But last month in a federal court in San Diego, Ali pleaded guilty to felony charges of conspiring to distribute hashish and heroin and conspiring to provide material support to al Qaeda.

What happened to the defiant victim of Justice Department persecution? He ran into the facts developed in a remarkable undercover investigation carried out by daring FBI agents, who were helped along by legal reforms incorporated into the Patriot Act, which was not enacted until Oct. 26, 2001, more than a month after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

"The FBI's investigation began in 2000 and focused on Ilyas Ali's connections to individuals in Pakistan who had an interest in selling narcotics and obtaining weapons," Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael P. Skerlos told me. "The investigation was at a preliminary stage prior to the 9/11 attacks and didn't resume in earnest until approximately March 2002."

Justice Department officials both in D.C. and San Diego say the Patriot Act provision that allows information that has been gathered in intelligence investigations to be shared with criminal investigators was particularly helpful here.

The basic facts of the case were revealed in five points that both Ali and one of his co-defendants, Muhammed Abid Afridi, stipulated as "true and undisputed" in the plea agreements they signed last month in federal court. A third defendant, Syed Mustajab Shah, has pleaded not guilty and now awaits trial.