Family Members Defend Man Sought as 'Imminent Threat'

As state and federal law enforcement officials followed leads from South Florida to Morocco in an extensive search for a suspected operative of Al Qaeda, the man’s family insisted that the authorities were looking for the wrong person. The family of Adnan G. el-Shukrijumah has been holed up in its modest, single-family home in a working-class neighborhood of Miramar, near Fort Lauderdale, since almost immediately after the Federal Bureau of Investigation posed a worldwide bulletin on Thursday declaring Mr. Shukrijumah, 27, an “imminent threat” who could be planning a terrorist attack on the United States. Late this afternoon, Mr. Shukrijumah’s brother emerged before a horde of reporters and declared his brother’s innocence. “I don’t understand why when the war started they put him on TV,” said Nabil el-Shukri, the man’s 21-year-old brother. “They don’t have no evidence, nothing.” But family members could not explain why they had no phone number or address for him and said they had not been in regular contact with him for about three years. Full Story