U.S. Deports Saddam Hussein's Stepson

Tue Jul 9,10:37 AM ET

MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. authorities deported a stepson of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites) to New Zealand after holding him since last week on charges of trying to obtain flight training in Miami without a student visa, immigration officials said on Tuesday.

Federal agents escorted Mohammed Saffi back to New Zealand, where he holds citizenship, on Monday night, a spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service said.

Saffi, a 36-year-old flight engineer for an airline in New Zealand, was arrested on July 3 in Miami, where he had enrolled in a seminar at a flight school where one of the Sept. 11 hijackers had trained on flight simulators.

Saffi was not charged criminally and was held on an immigration violation charge until his deportation. As a citizen of New Zealand, he did not need a visa to enter the United States but he lacked the student visa that foreign citizens now need to attend U.S. flight schools, federal investigators said.

The United States began requiring those visas after learning that many of the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington had trained at U.S. flight schools.

Asked if the deportation ended the federal investigation of Saffi, INS spokesman Rodney Germain referred questions to immigration officials in Washington, who were not immediately available for comment.

Saffi's mother is believed to be a former flight attendant who became Hussein's second wife, and his father a former senior official with Iraqi Airways.