ALBANY — Nauman Hussain and his father, Shahed Hussain, separately sought help from FBI agents in the days after a 31-foot stretch limousine they owned caused the death of 20 people in Schoharie County. According to an internal FBI investigation, they received no assistance from anyone associated with the bureau.
The revelation of the panicked phone calls — which have never been publicly revealed — come just days before Nauman Hussain is set to go on trial in Schoharie County Court on charges of criminally negligent homicide and manslaughter in connection with the deadly crash, considered the worst U.S. highway transportation disaster in decades.
Shahed Hussain, who has lived in Pakistan since before the crash occurred, had been a longtime undercover operative for the FBI working on counterterrorism investigations. Following years of reporting by the Times Union on his suspicious business activities while he was working for the agency in New York and abroad, U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik and others began demanding a full accounting of the bureau’s relationship with him — and an answer to the question of whether the bureau offered any assistance to the Hussains in their operation of the unlicensed company, Prestige Limousine, which was run out of a dilapidated Wilton motel.
Although the FBI has not made its internal report public, the families of those who died in the crash were briefed Thursday on its findings by senior staff from U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko’s office. The Democrat is a longtime resident of Amsterdam, home to many of the families involved in the crash, and has been an advocate for them in the years since the disaster.
According to those familiar with the content of that briefing, the bureau’s internal inspector general came to the conclusion that the FBI never intervened with state transportation officials on behalf of Prestige Limousine in the years…
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