Mohammed Jaweed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan worked in a newsstand in Newark, in the United States. They sold newspapers to people who went to work in Manhattan. They worked twelve hours a day. They lived in a small apartment in Jersey City. They sent money home to India.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, the two men took a plane from Newark to San Antonio. After the attacks, the plane stopped in St. Louis. So the men bought train tickets to Texas. They had two box cutters, black hair colour and about $5,600. They said they wanted to open a fruit stand. On September 12, the police took them off the train in Fort Worth.
The police first thought the men sold drugs. The men paid cash for the tickets. They looked nervous. The police kept them in prison.
A friend, Rashed Mazhar, said the two men were not terrorists. He said they lost their jobs in Newark. He said they went to San Antonio to find new work in a shop.
The men stayed in prison for fourteen months.
In the end, a court said the men were not part of the attacks. The court said they did a different, smaller crime with credit cards. Azmath went to prison for twelve months and one day.
Azmath came home to Hyderabad at two in the morning, on a Friday in January 2003. He was thirty-two years old. He said the police told him he attacked the World Trade Center. He said they told him he would never see his family again. He said the lights in the prison were on all day and all night, and he could not sleep. He said he would rest for a few days and then start again.