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.
[3] 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.
[1][2] 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.
He stayed in Afghanistan for 4 years until in 1995, he suffered an abdominal gunshot wound in Kabul, and was treated in a Peshawar hospital, where he was visited by Ahmed Khadr.
When Hijazi, the fourth friend from Afghanistan, applied for a Massachusetts drivers license to begin driving a cab, he used Elzahabi's residential address: 15 Appleton Street, Everett, as his own.
[1][4] Elzahabi left the United States in 1998, and later received a phone call from Abu Zubaydah, who wanted to know if he could support the Khalden camp.
[3] He left briefly to perform the hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia,[4] but returned to Lebanon, where he trained a number of fighters for Kanj, his friend from the Afghan camps.
[1][8] Classified American documents leaked to The Globe and Mail showed that Elzahabi also told the FBI he vaguely knew Arar in Afghanistan, having "spotted him there in the early 1990s".
They had found a "drug-addicted ex-stripper" at the Pink Pussycat Club in Houston, who testified a Lebanese student "named something like 'Lazahabi'" had paid her to marry him for a green card.
[12][1][13][14] The RCMP provided faxes seized from Abdullah Almalki's house during Project O Canada, detailing the sale of the walkie-talkies to Elzahabi's brother.
[1] He was taken from prison in Elk River, Minnesota, to the Immigration Holding Centre in El Paso, Texas[2] and was eventually deported from the United States the same year.