US authorities have arrested a stepson of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Miami on charges of entering the United States to attend a flight training seminar without the proper visa, the FBI said.
Agents with a federal anti-terrorism task force arrested the suspect, Mr Mohammed Saffi, at a Miami hotel, FBI spokeswoman Ms Judy Orihuela said.
Mr Saffi, a flight engineer who lived in New Zealand, flew from New Zealand and entered the United States in Los Angeles. He was under federal scrutiny as he made his way to Miami.
"He was coming here for flight engineer training," Ms Orihuela said. But he did not have the student visa required for foreign citizens to attend flight training schools in the United States, she said.
Mr Saffi, born in 1966, was to be moved to an immigration detention center south of Miami pending deportation proceedings, Ms Orihuela said.
The FBI declined to say how investigators learned of his connection with Hussein and his whereabouts.
Mr Jim Goldman, an assistant director with the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, told a Miami television station that, "We find the circumstance to be somewhat disturbing."
The United States has toughened visa requirements for foreign citizens attending flight schools after the September 11th hijacked plane attacks on New York and Washington. Some of the hijackers implicated in the attacks had trained at Florida flight schools and received training on flight simulators in Miami.
Ms Orihuela could not confirm reports that the seminar Mr Saffi planned to attend was hosted by one of the same flight schools one of the hijackers attended.
According to a December 12th report in the New Zealand Herald, Mr Saffi worked for Air New Zealand, lived in Auckland with his family and had been in the country at least since 1997.
The newspaper said New Zealand authorities investigated his background last year after the September 11th attacks and after learning of his connection with the Iraqi president but took no action.