Guard Sentenced for Lying to FBI

NEW YORK —  A security guard was sentenced Thursday to weekends in jail for six months for lying to the FBI about the location of a pilot radio found in a hotel room near the World Trade Center.

An Egyptian student was jailed for a month after the hotel guard, Ronald Ferry, said the pilot radio was in a locked safe in the student’s room overlooking the trade center.

Ferry, 48, a former Newark, N.J., police officer, apologized Thursday. U.S. District Judge George Daniels told him, “We can only protect ourselves if we protect each other.”

The student, Abdallah Higazy, 31, had insisted he knew nothing about the hand-held device, called a transceiver, which enables pilots to communicate with other pilots or to monitor pilot conversations. The radio was found after the hotel was evacuated because of the Sept. 11 attack.

Higazy, the son of an Egyptian diplomat, was charged with making false statements to investigators. Prosecutors dropped the charges against him after a private pilot, another hotel guest, went to claim his belongings on Jan. 14 and said the radio was his.

Investigators went back to Ferry, who changed his story to say the radio had been found on a table in the room rather than in a locked safe, raising the possibility that someone had put the radio in Higazy’s room after Sept. 11.

Higazy watched the sentencing Thursday from a courtroom bench.

“I’m upset that the punishment is so lame,” he said.