'Terrorist suspects had germ warfare magazines'

Investigators have found magazines relating to germ warfare at the home of two men arrested soon after the US terror attacks.

The men, Mohammed Jaweed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan, were arrested on September 12 after being found on a train in Texas with boxcutters, thousands of dollars in cash and black hair dye.

They had flown from Newark airport just minutes after one of the four hijacked flights left from the same airport. They also lived in Jersey City where some of the dead hijackers had apartments.

The New York Times reports the FBI is checking documents found in their apartment for traces of anthrax after discovering two magazines with cover stories about poison gas and biological weapons.

Neither man is co-operating with investigators. They have been held in custody since their arrests as "material witnesses" to the hijackings.

And neither has offered an adequate explanation as to why they flew from Newark on the day of the attacks and then left the flight when it was grounded in St Louis, Missouri, in the aftermath of the hijackings.

Their flatmate, Mohammed Pervez, has already been charged with lying to the FBI about more than £70,000 that moved in and out of his bank account in 1995 and 1996.

Pervez worked at one time in Trenton, New Jersey, the town where the anthrax letters were postmarked and although FBI agents doubt that he and the other two men carried out the anthrax attacks, they are looking into all three's activities.

Indian authorities are also helping the FBI conduct checks on how the two men arrived in the US with virtually no money in the mid-1990s and were able to send more than £40,000 to their families in India in 1999, the newspaper said.

And the Indian investigators have also revealed Ayub Ali Khan is an alias of Gul Mohammad Shah, while Azmath's passport was also obtained by giving false information.