A former Toronto resident has been arrested in Minneapolis on suspicion he is associated with al-Qaeda.

Mohammed Warsame is a 30-year-old college student, and a Canadian citizen of Somali descent. Prosecutors say he has knowledge about Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Moussaoui is widely thought to be the missing 20th hijacker among the team that flew three planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and took over a fourth plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. He was arrested in Minnesota before the attacks. Like the hijackers, he had taken flight training school.

Zacarias Moussaoui
Zacarias Moussaoui

An American judge has sealed the evidence against Warsame, and enforcement officials are refusing to comment.

But Omar Jamal, of the Somali Justice Advocacy Centre in Minnesota, says local media are reporting that Warsame will be a material witness against Moussaoui.

"They're claiming he knew this man back in training camps in Afghanistan," Jamal said.

Jamal met with Warsame's wife for more than four hours Thursday night. She told him she'd never heard her husband talk about Moussaoui, or about going to al-Qaeda training camps.

"She was in a state of shock, crying, not knowing what's going on," Jamal told CBC News. "Law enforcement agents came to her apartment. They ransacked everything."

Foreign Affairs officials in Ottawa have confirmed that the FBI notified Canadian officials about Warsame's arrest on Tuesday. They say a Canadian consulate official in Minneapolis has spoken with him since then.