SAN DIEGO -- Authorities arrested a Virginia man Wednesday after finding his name and phone number in a car registered to one of three suspected hijackers who had lived in San Diego, 10News reported.

Nawaf Alhazmi (photo left courtesy New York Times), also identified as Nawaq Alhamzi, was believed to have lived in the Parkwood Apartments in Clairemont last year along with Hani Hanjour and Khalid Al Midhar. All three men were identified by the FBI as terrorists aboard the Boeing 757 that smashed into the Pentagon.

Authorities said Wednesday that the day after the attack they found a 1988 Toyota registered to Alhazmi at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, where American Airlines flight 77 was hijacked.

Inside the car, according to 10News, investigators found:

The name and phone number of security guard Mohamed Abdi of Alexandria;
A cashier's check to a Phoenix flight school;
Four drawings of a Boeing 757 cockpit;
A box cutter;
Maps of Washington, D.C., and New York City.

Alhazmi was known to have attended flight school last year in Phoenix, as well as at Montgomery Field in San Diego, where he flunked out.

Hanjour, who was believed to be at the controls of the hijacked plane, also took flight lessons at Montgomery Field and booked time at a Phoenix flight simulator.

Investigators said the name "Mohumed" and a phone number registered to Abdi were written on the Washington road map found inside Alhazmi's car.

Abdi was arrested Wednesday and ordered held without bond following a hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, a suburb of Washington.

When Abdi (pictured, left) was arrested, FBI agent Kevin W. Ashby testified, he had a newspaper article about Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian who was convicted of conspiring to bomb the Los Angeles airport as part of a millennium terror plot. Ressam testified at a separate trial earlier this year that he spent six months training at terrorist camps in Afghanistan.

Abdi, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia, works as a $22,000-a-year security guard, said Joseph Bowman, his lawyer. He did not say where Abdi is employed. Ashby testified that Abdi also had worked for an airline catering company at Reagan National Airport several years ago.

Spencer, who described Abdi as an essential witness and possibly more, argued that he should be held without bond. "The pressure on him to abscond will be incredible," he said.

Abdi was charged with forging his landlord's signature on housing subsidy checks that he was receiving from Arlington County and cashing the checks.

Bowman, appointed by the court to represent Abdi, said that the Alexandria man is just "a guy trying to make his way" who had "his name found in an unfortunate place."

When he was arrested, Abdi told authorities that he had donated his car to the Salvation Army in 1999 and speculated that the map with his phone number and name had been left in that car and somehow transferred to Alhamzi's car.

But Ashby said the FBI determined that Abdi did not have that phone number in 1999.

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Jamal Awadallah Defends His Brother

In the meantime, three men who were arrested in San Diego over the weekend as material witnesses have been denied their freedom, for now. After a hearing in federal court Tuesday, Mohbar Abdallah, Osama Awadallah and Yazeed Al-Salmi were ordered held without bond.

The men lived in the same apartment complex as the suspected hijackers, and they were believed to have been acquaintances. A law enforcement official said that the witnesses may be transferred to New York to appear before a grand jury.

Awadallah's brother, Jamal Awadallah said Wednesday that his brother is innocent. "The United States is our home," Jamal Awadallah told reporters. He said that Osama planned to become a computer engineer and spend his life in the United States.

"Me and my family are very distressed," Jamal said. "I can't talk to him, even in court. I asked to hug him. They won't allow me to do that."