By Tom Beyerlein and Joanne Huist Smith, The Dayton Daily News
BEAVERCREEK, Ohio -- Ali Kareem Aladimi, his wife and six children live in a $350,000 home on a cul-de-sac in a subdivision called Tranquil Haven.
Neighbors said Tuesday it’s been anything but tranquil there since Aladimi’s arrival there in early May 1999.
Semitrailers came to Aladimi’s home in the middle of the night, awakening neighbors and arousing their suspicions. Within weeks of Aladimi’s arrival, federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided the house and seized $784,000 in cash that Aladimi had stashed in resealed cartons of Lady Clairol hair coloring.
“He was suspicious from the time he moved in,” said a neighbor, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Aladimi, a 41-year-old naturalized American citizen born in Yemen, was ordered detained without bond Monday by a federal magistrate in Cincinnati after prosecutors said a search warrant produced records showing he tried to bring 25 Yemeni citizens to the United States improperly.
Yemen is a Middle Eastern nation whose government is allied with the United States in the war on terrorism. It is also the ancestral home of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Terrorists attacked the USS Cole there in 2000, and last week three American missionaries were shot to death there.
Magistrate Judge Timothy Hogan of U.S. District Court in Cincinnati said Tuesday that he ordered Aladimi held without bond because prosecutors said he used an alias and because of the large amount of cash seized in his Beavercreek home in 1999.
He said Aladimi’s attempts to bring the 25 Yemenis to the U.S. is “a huge red flag in today’s environment.”
But Aladimi’s attorney, Janet Kravitz of Columbus, said he had been working with federal immigration officials to bring the men to the states as skilled workers to make Qamareya, an ancient form of gypsum stained glass used in Yemen.
On an Internet site, Aladimi said he secured a patent to a glass-making process in March 2000. He said he had high hopes of marketing the decorative windows in the U.S.
“The project was short-lived and the dream remained unrealized, however, because of the tragic events of 9-11-01, at the very same moment when I was at the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, facilitating the visa process for 25 skilled artisans who were authorized by the INS (U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service),” Aladimi wrote. The purpose of the Web site is to help him to sell the patent.
Kravitz said she believes “the government was trying to inflame the court” by bringing up the 25 Yemenis at Aladimi’s bond hearing before Hogan on Monday. She said he has not been charged with anything in regard to the men, and they have nothing to do with the charges that brought him to Hogan’s court.
Aladimi stashed money in hair-coloring cartons because he, like many Muslims, doesn’t trust banks, she said.
Aladimi, who has a wholesaling business in Butler County’s West Chester Twp., is facing federal charges in Cincinnati, accused of transporting stolen merchandise in interstate commerce.
Acting on a tip from federal officials, West Chester police executed a search warrant at Aladimi’s Twins Wholesale Inc., 4610 Interstate Drive, around 8 p.m. Dec. 30. They found about 45 pallets of baby food believed to have been stolen from Mississippi, Sgt. Erik Niehaus said. They also charged Aladimi with drug abuse after allegedly finding khat, a narcotic illegal in the U.S. but commonly chewed by people in Africa and the Middle East. The state charges were dismissed Jan. 2 because federal charges took precedence, police said.
Prior to his detention, Aladimi was free on $400,000 bond pending charges in federal court in Fresno, Calif., that he conspired to distribute the over-the-counter drug pseudoephedrine for use in illicit methamphetamine labs. No trial date has been set in that case.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Pamela M. Stanek said an agreement was reached with Aladimi’s attorneys that the assets seized in the 1999 Beavercreek raid would be forfeited if he violated the conditions of his $400,000 bond in Fresno, Calif., by failing to appear at any required appearance there.
Kravitz said Aladimi has lived in the United States for 20 years and is a licensed distributor of pseudoephedrine, an ingredient in Alka-Seltzer, Aleve, Sudafed, Tylenol, Motrin, and many other over-the-counter products. However, in 1999 the Ohio Board of Pharmacy refused to register or license Twins Wholesale to distribute the drug, after finding that the business shipped hundreds of cases of pseudoephedrine “for no apparent legitimate medical purpose.”
Several of Aladimi’s neighbors Tuesday said they wish he’d move out. One said he called the FBI about Aladimi after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“I just want to see the house for sale,” one of the neighbors said.