Prosecuters seek to detain Indiana man charged with Iraq dealings

INDIANAPOLIS -- A man accused of trying to conspire with Saddam Hussein's government to undermine the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq lived in Indianapolis under two identities with different wives, an FBI agent testified Wednesday.\nThe agent was in court as federal prosecutors sought to have Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban detained without bond.\nSpecial Agent Byron Franz testified he found copies of 1999 income tax returns for both identities during a search last week of Shaaban's home in Greenfield, about 20 miles east of Indianapolis.\nThe same search turned up other documents linked to the different lives investigators believe Shaaban led, said Franz, a counterintelligence specialist with the FBI's Indianapolis office.\nU.S. Magistrate Judge Kennard Foster recessed the hearing after Shaaban's defense attorney invoked a rule requiring prosecutors to produce documents upon which Franz's testimony was based. The hearing was to resume later Wednesday.\nA federal grand jury last week indicted Shaaban, who legally changed his name to Joe H. Brown in 1997, on immigration violations and charges that he illegally traveled to Iraq in 2002 to negotiate the sale of names of U.S. intelligence operatives inside that country.\nProsecutors have said Shaaban sought the names from foreign sources but investigators believe he never obtained them.\nNeither Shaaban nor defense attorney William Dazey have commented in public about the allegations.\nShaaban, who entered the courtroom in shackles and a red jail uniform, sat quietly throughout Franz's testimony, smiling frequently and looking thoughtful at times.\nFranz testified that Shaaban acknowledged during questioning by FBI agents that he had worked for the Soviet KGB, starting in 1980 as a student and had done work for the Soviet secret police while he worked at the Kuwaiti embassy.\nFranz said Shaaban also told investigators that the KGB had sent him on missions to China and Tucson, Ariz.\nShaaban, a permanent legal U.S. resident born in 1952 in Jordan, and Shaban Shaban Hafed, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in 1956 in Lebanon, are the same man, Franz said.\nFranz testified he found passports from Russia, Jordan and Lebanon during the search of the one-story home along a subdivision cul-de-sac that Shaaban shared with his wife Hanan, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Jordan.\nAgents also found a 1999 joint tax return for Shaaban and Hanan listing an Indianapolis post office box, along with another return for Joe H. Brown and Svetlana Shaban listing another address in Indianapolis, Franz said.\nThe indictment alleges that Shaaban married a woman named Svetlana Anatolevna in Moscow in 1972.\nSvetlana Shaban's whereabouts were not clear, and neither Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison nor Franz would comment to reporters as the court's recess began.