CHARLIEVILLE, Trinidad and Tobago — Five years ago, as 19 Al Qaeda operatives in the United States put the finishing touches on what would become the Sept. 11 attacks, a frail, asthmatic computer engineer from South Florida paid a visit to this tiny Muslim enclave where he'd lived as a boy.
Adnan Gulshair Muhammad el Shukrijumah, then 25, kept a low profile over the course of the week. He hung out with a small circle of devout older men who were leaders of the local Islamic community. They prayed in mosques, went fishing and enjoyed long walks and leisurely dinners, recalled one of the hosts, Imtiaz Mohammed.
Shukrijumah spoke fondly of his father, an influential Islamic scholar and Charlieville community leader two decades earlier. He also spoke of his family life in Miramar, Fla., his computer technician business and his travels to the Middle East and other exotic locales.
But Shukrijumah said nothing about why he was in Trinidad, nor what his plans were, acquaintances here say.
Two years later, the FBI put out an urgent all-points bulletin for Shukrijumah, depicting him as one of Al Qaeda's most well-trained, intelligent and deadly operatives. He was described as the ultimate "sleeper agent," intent on attacking the U.S., possibly with weapons of mass destruction.
Law enforcement officials and terrorism experts now believe Shukrijumah is one of several young, street-smart leaders of Al Qaeda handpicked by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, to keep the terrorist network alive and humming in the face of U.S.-led efforts to unravel it.
To be sure, the FBI's record on identifying terrorist plotters since Sept. 11 includes some widely publicized failures. In some cases, law enforcement officials have alleged that suspects were centrally involved in plots, only to back off those assertions when cases moved toward court.
And officials concede that there is much they do not know about Shukrijumah, including what he was doing in Trinidad. Within days of the alert in March 2003, agents arrived on the island looking for him, but he was long gone.
Terrorism authorities both inside and outside the government say they believe Shukrijumah is a major Al Qaeda figure, and the hunt for him is intense, with an FBI team tracking him virtually full time. So far, their quarry has remained elusive.
