All Along He Knew He Was Innocent

Bob Herbert recounts a tale of bitter irony–beginning on 9/11, when Abdallah Higazy was evacuated from the hotel he was living in across the street from the World Trade Center. He was a student at Brooklyn Polytech, and waiting for housing. He fled, like everyone else, then three months later when he returned to collect his belongings, his passport was gone, and he was arrested by the FBI. A hotel security guard said they found an aviation radio in his room. “Impossible,” said Higazy. It’s a fact, said the FBI, and sent him to prison. Later when he was interrogated, agents told him his family in Cairo would be put at the mercy of Egyption security, a thinly veiled way of saying tortured. Higazy panicked and began telling made up stories, anything to stop their questioning.

A month later, a pilot strolled into the Millenium Hotel and said he had lost his radio. He’d left it in the room on the 50th floor, just one flight down from Higazy’s room. He had been telling the truth all along; it turned out the security guard had been lying, he’d not found that radio in Higazy’s room after all.

Higazy is back in Egypt now, since married and teaching in Cairo. He is not bitter, but his lawyer is filing an appeal on his behalf.