Budiman helped man linked to Osama

Budiman helped man linked to Osama

Mark Wilkinson, Reuters, Alexandria, Virginia

An Indonesian man suspected of having ties to the hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks pleaded guilty on Monday to helping a man linked to Osama bin Laden get a driver's license in Virginia.

Agus Budiman, 31, appeared in U.S. District Court in Alexandria and pleaded guilty to a single count of document fraud. Budiman is slated to be sentenced on April 26 and likely will face deportation to Indonesia after he is released from prison.

Budiman was arrested in late October after the U.S. government said he had "direct and troubling ties" to accused hijackers Mohammad Atta and Zaid Samir Jarrah.

In a plea agreement, Budiman admitted that he helped Mohammad Bin Nasser Belfas obtain a false Virginia driver's license. Prosecutors have said Belfas has ties to bin Laden, the Saudi- born extremist who heads the al-Qaeda guerrilla network and is accused by the United States of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

"I plead guilty, sir," Budiman, wearing a green prisoner's jumpsuit, quietly told Judge Gerald Lee.

As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors dropped a single conspiracy count related to document fraud. The charge to which he pleaded guilty carries a maximum of 15 years in prison, but he is expected to be given a sentence much shorter than that.

The government said Budiman's name was used on the visa applications of Jarrah and Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni national who the FBI believes would have taken part in the attacks had he not been kept from entering the United States.

Budiman's lawyer, William Moffitt, said he did not know why his client's name appeared on the applications. Moffitt said Jarrah and Binalshibh, both of whom knew Budiman in Germany, probably used the name without Budiman's knowledge.

The government said Budiman knew Atta when he lived in Hamburg, Germany, in 1992 and had helped him move to an apartment in the United States in 1998.

Moffitt said Budiman was not involved in the Sept. 11 attacks nor had any advance knowledge of the attacks. Moffitt said the fact that his client knew Atta, albeit under a different name, as well as Jarrah and Binalshibh from a mosque in Germany had been exaggerated by the U.S. government.

"This was all blown out of proportion in a manner that it has been quite insulting," Moffitt told reporters outside the courtroom. "It got off target from the very beginning and he has been mistreated since that time."

Moffitt said that Budiman, who has been held at an Alexandria jail for more than four months, often was confined to solitary detention.

"The level of punishment is higher than anything of this nature warrants," he said, adding that the fact that Budiman voluntarily told the FBI that he knew Atta, Jarrah and Binalshibh made the government's suspicions "a travesty."