AGENTS ARREST MAN WITH SUSPECTED AL-QAIDA TIES

U.S. Customs agents have arrested a Jordanian-born man accused of carrying $12 million in false cashier's checks, alarming counterterrorism officials who said the suspect may have been trained in al-Qaida terrorist camps in Afghanistan.

U.S. officials said the name of Omar Shishani, 47, who was detained Wednesday as he arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport from Indonesia, appears on a watch list of people trained in Afghanistan by al-Qaida. Shishani's name turned up in documents captured in Afghanistan, sources said.``It has really alarmed a lot of people that al-Qaida may be trying to get that much money into the United States for operational purposes,' said one official. ``We don't know what he was up to, but he was coming from Indonesia, he had $12 million in bogus checks ... he was born in Jordan and his family is from Chechnya. There is a lot of smoke there to investigate.'

Agents of the U.S. Joint Terrorism Task Force in Detroit executed a search warrant Thursday night at Shishani's home in Dearborn, Mich., where he lives with his wife.

Andrew Wise, Shishani's court-appointed federal defender, declined to comment. A U.S. magistrate judge granted Wise's request Friday to postpone a detention hearing for Shishani until Wednesday to allow Wise time to review the charges against his client of knowingly making or possessing a forged security. Shishani remained in custody.

Shishani was carrying a U.S. passport and told authorities he is a naturalized U.S. citizen, officials said. Eric Straus, an assistant U.S. attorney on the Detroit anti-terrorism task force, said Shishani was born in Jordan and was of Chechen descent. Other sources said Shishani had served in the Jordanian army.

U.S. intelligence officials said that possibly hundreds of al-Qaida and Taliban fighters who escaped from Afghanistan had gone to Indonesia and that nation has become a haven for the terrorist movement.

``The September 11 attacks only cost $500,000 in total,' said one official, who acknowledged that authorities have no idea how the bogus checks were going to be used. ``One shudders to think what they could do with $12 million.'

Officials noted that counterfeit cashier's checks and other monetary instruments are used in a variety of criminal activities and scams unrelated to terrorism.

Clarence Laster, a special agent of the Secret Service who signed an affidavit presented at Shishani's arraignment, said that he had learned of checks similar to Shishani's being passed near Las Vegas.

``I was informed that several people had been arrested for attempting to pass similar checks there and it had been determined that the cashier's checks were counterfeit.'