Associated Press

Boston police officers and members of the tactical squad leave the entrance to the Westin Hotel in downtown Boston yesterday after a team of FBI agents searching for suspects in Tuesday's terrorist attacks stormed the hotel. Authorities reportedly arrested three people in possible connection with the hijacking and crashing of two airplanes originating from Boston's Logan International Airport

Thursday September 13, 2001

BOSTON, Mass. - A heavily armed FBI team searching for suspects in the terrorism attacks in New York and Washington stormed a Boston hotel, yesterday.

Guests were ordered to evacuate the 36-story Westin Hotel in the Back Bay section, according to a guest leaving the hotel who declined to give his name. As a large crowd gathered outside, one person was taken out of the hotel and put in a van.

"SWAT teams were all around holding machine guns," said R.J. Ryan, who was among hundreds of onlookers. "They put somebody in the van. Then they started moving everybody."

In Washington, FBI head Robert Mueller said no arrests had been made in the case. Five people were detained because of their immigration status, but Justice Department officials would not say where they were taken into custody.

The Boston Globe reported on its Web site, yesterday, that three people were taken into custody at the hotel. The Globe said the three were linked to a credit card used to buy tickets on the flights that crashed into the World Trade Center. It cited an anonymous source close to the investigation.

A law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press that while no one was arrested in the hijackings, a Boston search turned up a link to a name on the manifest of one of the hijacked flights. Two of the four planes that were hijacked and crashed, Tuesday, came from Boston.

Officers also converged yesterday on the Park Inn at Chestnut Hill in Newton, a Boston suburb. Newton police officer Russ Adam said the FBI was conducting an investigation at the hotel, but it was unclear if the search was related to the attacks.

In Boston, agents wearing bulletproof vests and carrying shields were seen bringing fiber-optic equipment, which can check under hotel room doors, into the Westin Hotel.

In Providence, R.I., authorities stopped an Amtrak train that had come from Boston, ordered off passengers and went on board. One man wearing a green turban was led away in handcuffs.

Col. Richard Sullivan, the Providence police chief, said later that the man did not appear to have any connection with the terrorist acts. But he was charged with a weapons violation for carrying a knife, Sullivan said. He remained in custody at late afternoon.