Mohamad Elzahabi

Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi (a.k.a. Mohamad Kamal El-Zahabi) is a Lebanese national who was granted permanent resident status in the United States in 1986, after first arriving on a student visa. During the 1990s, he worked as a small arms instructor at an Afghan training camp when the country was engulfed in civil war among the mujahideen following the Soviet withdrawal. He also fought in Lebanon and Chechnya in the 1990s.

After returning to the United States in the 1990s, he and his brother had a garage in New York. Later he worked as a taxi cab driver and last, became a truck driver. The FBI started tracking him, and they interrogated him at length in 2003, with his cooperation.

He was arrested in Texas in 2004 based on his past associations. In 2007, he was convicted of immigration fraud, sentenced to time served and deported.

Elzahabi entered the United States in 1984 on a student visa. He was married that year, but divorced in 1988. The marriage later led to his criminal conviction of immigration fraud. In 1986, he was granted permanent resident status.

In 1988, Elzahabi attended a religious conference in the Mid-Western United States, where he was persuaded to travel to Afghanistan to help repel the Soviet invasion.

He was a sniper and trained others on the use of the Dragunov sniper rifle at the Khalden training camp. He became acquainted with Abu Zubaydah, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and others during his time in the country. He also met Nabil al-Marabh, Bassam Kanj and Raed Hijazi at Khalden, men with whom he renewed acquaintance in Boston in the United States a decade later, where three worked for the same taxi cab company.

With the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989, Elzahabi returned to the United States. When later asked by the Globe and Mail to explain what had happened amongst the Afghan Arabs following the war, he replied, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas". In 1991, Elzahabi returned to Afghanistan for four years. In 1995, he suffered an abdominal gunshot wound in Kabul, and was treated in a Peshawar hospital, where he was visited by Ahmed Khadr.

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