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New York Times - August 1, 2006
$ 100,000 spent on false ‘terror’ alert
Man is accused of reporting terrorist hoax to hot line
BY Anemona Hartocollis
In a call to New York City’s terrorism hot line in May (2006), the informant described the plot in chilling detail: Syrians working in the jewelry business had hatched a plan to carry out a suicide bombing in the subway system on one of the most symbolic days of the year, Independence Day.
They had hidden explosives in hollowed-out jewelry, the informant said, and then used their professional know-how to import the jewelry and bring it to a store that one of them owned in New York.
To clinch the story, the informant, who identified himself as Jose Rodriguez and said he was from Israel, told the police officer answering the hot line that he had overheard the plotters use the Arab expression “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great.”
The post-Sept. 11 antiterrorist law enforcement apparatus sprang into action, with city, federal and even Israeli officers following leads, conducting 24-hour surveillance and searching homes and businesses with bomb-sniffing dogs. A New York detective stationed in Jerusalem tried to track down the man called Jose Rodriguez.
In the end, the investigators concluded that the call was a hoax, they said yesterday, perpetrated by a Syrian Jewish refugee named Rimon Alkatri, 34, the owner of a jewelry store in Brooklyn. The five conspirators identified by Mr. Alkatri were not Muslims but Christians and Jews, the police and prosecutors said. He had done business with four of the men, officials said, and had named them as terrorists because he had a grudge against them stemming from a business deal that had ended in a bitter disagreement.
The arrest offered what investigators said was a disturbing account of how law enforcement officers could be manipulated by a malicious prankster, especially in these times, when the specter of a terrorist attack seems possible and almost no threat seems too outlandish to ignore. This caller seemed credible because of the specific names and details that he offered, officials said.
Officials said they were fairly sure at least 10 to 12 days before the Fourth of July that the account of a conspiracy was a hoax, but felt compelled to continue the investigation until every person had been interviewed and every suspicion allayed. “Then the investigation turned towards who the hoaxer was and why,” said Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney. “It took tremendous resources and manpower.”
Mr. Alkatri was arrested yesterday as he was leaving his apartment on East Ninth Street in a Syrian Jewish neighborhood of Brooklyn to work at his jewelry store, El Castillo De Oro, on Knickerbocker Avenue. A grand jury has indicted him on a felony charge falsely reporting an incident in the first degree, and he faces up to seven years in prison if convicted.
Speaking outside State Supreme Court in Manhattan yesterday after Mr. Alkatri’s arraignment had been postponed, his lawyer, Samuel J. Karliner, said his client’s only motive was to be a good citizen. Mr. Alkatri called the hot line, Mr. Karliner said, because he truly believed that the five men were conspirators and had apparently made a mistake…..
But investigators announcing Mr. Alkatri’s arrest yesterday at a news conference in the office of Mr. Morgenthau, were clearly irritated by the amount of money and resources they had spent following a false trail. The investigation of the threat cost more than $100,000, according to Chief Phil T. Pulaski, commander of the Police Department’s Intelligence Division……
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/01/nyregion/01false.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
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