Anwar Al-Mirabi's captors sometimes greeted him with "Good morning, terrorist." Shuffled among a half-dozen jails in three states during the last eight months, he was denied a drinking cup, mattress, and toilet paper. The businessman asked for a change of clothes, but didn't get that either. Nor did he get prompt treatment for a painful, infected mass which swelled to the size of a fist.

Al-Mirabi's wife said he's been treated like an animal. More like an axe murderer, his attorney said. The fact is, Al-Mirabi's been treated like a terrorist.

And that might be OK if he was one. But the 29-year-old Arlington resident hasn't been charged with terrorism or any other crime. Unless you want to call ignoring an immigration deadline to be with your wife during childbirth a crime.

Al-Mirabi was arrested Sept. 13, two days after the terror attacks on New York and Washington. In the panic that gripped the nation following those tragedies, authorities were tipped to check on the young, well-traveled Saudi businessman with roots in North Texas.

As an Arab and a Muslim with a dark and sometimes unruly beard, Al-Mirabi outwardly fit the coarse stereotype some people have for a terrorist. Further, some details of his life -- who he knew, where he traveled -- made federal officials suspicious. In reality, though, the attacks on Sept. 11 angered and offended Al-Mirabi.

"He was upset,'' his wife, Marlene Kanj Al-Mirabi, recalled. "He didn't think a Muslim would do something like this.''

By the time the agents appeared at his front door last fall, Al-Mirabi had been traveling between Saudi Arabia and the United States for seven years. He had established an automobile exporting business and was dabbling in several others. He met a recently widowed, American-born Muslim and married her in the summer of 2000. Two weeks before federal agents knocked on their door, the newlywed couple celebrated the birth of their first child, a boy they named Bassam. NEXT »

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