A Brooklyn greeting-card salesman – who worships Osama bin Laden and hopes for another Sept. 11 – masterminded a Muslim immigration ring in which more than 200 people obtained green cards by pretending to be religious workers teaching the Koran, the feds charged yesterday.
Muhammad Khalil, 62, who acts as the imam at a makeshift mosque under his greeting-card store on Ditmas Avenue, was recorded on a surveillance tape declaring his support for bin Laden and fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, according to a federal prosecutor.
“He said to a confidential informant, ‘Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and me the same,’ ” Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward O’Callaghan said in Manhattan federal court.
Khalil – who was busted for his two-year immigration scam along with his son Asim and three cronies – allegedly let fly with a burst of inflammatory remarks on the tape, including his belief that America was “the terrorist” and that all Muslims living in the United States should arm themselves.
“He said hopefully there would be another attack shortly,” O’Callaghan said.
Khalil, who moved to New York from Pakistan in 1973, has been under investigation for potential terrorist links since shortly after Sept. 11.
The probe revealed he was the kingpin behind a massive scam that allowed a flood of illegal immigrants who were not religious workers to become permanent U.S. residents.
Khalil, who named one of his other sons Osama, billed the immigrants from $5,000 to $8,000 for filing fraudulent visa applications on their behalf, court papers said.
Under the INS program, a religious organization can seek visas for foreign religious workers that allow them to enter the United States to engage in a religious vocation.
Khalil faces up to eight years in jail if convicted of conspiring to submit false immigration applications and conspiring to obtain false Social Security cards. Bail was set at $300,000. His son Asim was released on a $50,000 bond.
The other men arrested were Mohammad Amin Ahmad, Ishrat Lnu and Aklaq Ahmed.