Thief or terror leader?

As his trial nears, papers paint complex picture of Ali Steitiye

By Jim Redden

The Portland Tribune, Jul 9, 2004, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Who is Ali Khaled Steitiye Ñ an unlucky ex-con or an Islamic extremist and would-be terrorist?

Twenty-two months ago, U.S. District Judge Anna Brown called Steitiye (pronounced STAY-tee) a “typical thief” who got caught with a gun he shouldn’t have owned and sentenced him to 30 months in prison.

On June 9, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft accused Steitiye of training local Muslims, including some members of the Portland Seven, to fight allied forces in Afghanistan. Earlier that day, Steitiye had been charged with illegal possession of a fully automatic machine gun and being a felon in possession of a machine gun.

According to court records, prosecutors claim Steitiye actually owned two machine guns and used at least one of them to train several Portland Seven members before they traveled overseas.

Portlanders will have a chance to decide which version of Steitiye is more accurate in August, when he is scheduled to go to trial on the new charges, for which he faces a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each count. He has pleaded not guilty.

Steitiye’s attorney, Susan Russell, disputes Ashcroft’s claim that her client is a terrorist.

“He has never been charged with any terrorism-related crime. The government had plenty of time to indict him as part of the Portland Seven case, and they didn’t do it,” she said.

In the meantime, a review of court documents in that case as well as other public records provides more questions than answers about the 41-year-old Lebanese refugee, who became a legal U.S. resident in 1983.

Steitiye first made local headlines after he was arrested Oct. 24, 2001, by the Portland FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force on numerous weapons, immigration and fraud charges.

At the time, Steitiye’s court-appointed attorney said his client was a victim of the hysteria gripping the country in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

Then-Steitiye attorney Dennis Balske said Steitiye was merely a gun enthusiast who “happens to be from another part of the world after Sept. 11.”

Brown questioned whether there were terrorism links, but she found him guilty of the charges in July 2002 and sentenced him two months later.

But more has been revealed about Steitiye since he went to jail on the 2001 charges Ñ much of it during the successful prosecution of six of the Portland Seven. A seventh man was killed while fighting near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Prosecution documents in that case referred to Steitiye as an unindicted co-conspirator. The government contended that Steitiye helped train several of the defendants on how to use firearms. The documents also revealed that a government undercover agent heard Steitiye talking about attacking a local synagogue or Jewish school with automatic weapons.

Just as Steitiye had completed his sentence and was scheduled to be deported to Lebanon, the federal government brought the new charges against him. The first case concerned a semiautomatic assault rifle and handgun found in Steitiye’s van. The new charges claim he also owned a machine gun.

“We must keep firearms out of the hands of those who train with our terrorist enemies,” Ashcroft said in a statement on the arrest.

It is unclear why the federal government waited so long to file the new charges. Court records in the Portland Seven case reveal the government believed Steitiye had two fully automatic machine guns with him when he and several Portland Seven members traveled to a rural Washington state gravel pit on Sept. 29, 2001.

The U.S. attorney’s office declined to explain why it did not indict Steitiye earlier on the machine gun charges.

Steitiye attorney Russell characterized the new charges as bogus.

“There was no machine gun. The government does not have the machine gun he was supposed to possess,” she said.

A life in three acts

The public record, contained in both court documents and news accounts, paints a complex picture of Steitiye. They reveal that his life can almost be viewed as a three-act play.

The first act took place in Lebanon, where Steitiye spent the first 20 years of his life. According to court records, Steitiye was born in Beirut in 1962. He identified himself as a Palestinian and grew up in the politically charged poverty of refugee camps.

According to both prosecutors and Steitiye’s original attorney, Balske, Steitiye received firearms training from several guerrilla groups in the camps. Steitiye said he first began weapons training at the age of 8.

The federal government referred to the weapons practice as “training to fight a jihad” in its court documents. Balske disputed that characterization, saying that all males practice with guns in refugee camps.

The second act of Steitiye’s life took place in the 1980s in the United States, where court records show he was convicted of a series of petty crimes and ran up a string of bad debts during two failed marriages.

Steitiye obtained a student visa and left Lebanon for the University of Oklahoma in 1981. He was arrested for stealing a $69 car stereo from a retail store in early 1983, then moved to Beaverton before the case was resolved. Steitiye was convicted of two Oklahoma felonies in October 1984 Ñ the original theft and violating the terms of his personal recognizance release. He was placed on probation and continued living in Oregon.

After moving to Beaverton, Steitiye married Rebecca Lynn Smith, the first of his three wives, in September 1983. The marriage made him a permanent U.S. resident. Their daughter, Amanda, was born two years later.

Steitiye apparently moved to Tulsa, Okla., briefly in 1986. According to court records, in April of that year, he cashed a federal benefits check that had been mailed to the previous occupant of his Oklahoma house. He returned to Oregon before the crime was discovered. This time he settled in St. Helens, where he was arrested on federal forgery charges in August 1986. He was convicted of the felony charges in a federal court in Oregon and placed on probation in November.

Two years later, Steitiye was arrested for buying a gun in St. Helens. Because of his three previous felony convictions, Steitiye is prohibited from owning firearms. He was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm in September 1988 and placed on probation again.

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