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 News from Around the Americas | June 2005 
Mexico Releases Man Held on Terror Suspicion
 Sandra Dibble - Union-Tribune
| | This undated hand out photo released by the Attorney General's office shows Amir Haykel, left, who was captured in Todos Santos, Mexico. (Photo: AP) |
A British citizen born in Lebanon was released Wednesday by Mexican authorities, less than 24 hours after his arrest in the state of Baja California Sur on suspicion of having ties to terrorists linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Amer Haykel "does not represent any threat to national security and is not wanted by authorities of any country," read a statement released late Wednesday by Mexico's Interior Ministry.
"He's not a terrorist. He was just a tourist," said Mariana Morales, a spokeswoman at the British Embassy in Mexico City.
Haykel was arrested Tuesday at a fire station in the Pacific coast town of Todos Santos after he was linked by U.S. authorities to "extremist groups presumably involved in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New York," according to a statement by the Mexican Attorney General's Office.
The confusion occurred because Haykel had at one point been on a U.S. "alert" list and been removed, but "they did not eliminate him from the lists sent to the Mexican government," Rubén Aguilar, spokesman for President Vicente Fox, said yesterday at a news conference in Mexico City.
The FBI has refused comment on the case.
Haykel's case is the latest false alarm of supposed terrorism suspects in Mexico or Central America, seen as a potential weak link in the fight against terror. |
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