reply by
John Rogers
5/14/2002 (15:57) |
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Sorry to burst your bubble...
Israelis arrested in Washington cleared by FBI
By MELISSA RADLER
NEW YORK
Two Israelis who were arrested in Washington State last week, after the moving van they were driving was found to contain traces of explosives, were cleared by the FBI which said previous tests yielded a false positive.
'They did not have explosives on them,' said a spokesman at Seattle's FBI office, Ray Lauer.
The Israelis, who were pulled over last week by local police in Oak Harbor, Washington on a speeding violation, were taken into INS custody after it was determined that they were working in the US illegally as movers.
Stopped near the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, the duo attracted suspicion after one was found to be carrying an altered Israeli passport and the second had no passport at all.
Stopped close to a military base, Whidbey Island immediately supplied bomb-sniffing dogs and an ionizer to the local police. The dogs and ionizer originally determined that the vehicle was laden with trace amounts of explosives, though further tests conducted a few hours later found that nothing more malignant than diesel fuel was to be found in the vehicle, said Lauer. 'The tests that they conducted appear to be false positives,' he said.
The Israelis are currently being held on immigration violations, including entering the country illegally and working without proper documentation, said a spokesman at Seattle's INS office.
'The two gentlemen that were stopped were held on immigration violations. They are in the custody of the INS. We are only charging them with immigration violations,' said the spokesman.
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