Saturday October 26, 11:48 AM

US authorities were warned a year ago that the ex-soldier suspected of carrying out 13 sniper attacks near the US capital may be a potential Islamic terrorist.

A priest who runs a homeless shelter in this Pacific Northwest town where John Allen Muhammad lived for several months in 2001 and early 2002, raised the alarm last October, the Bellingham Herald newspaper said Friday.

"I felt like he was part of an organization," said Reverend Al Archer who runs the hostel where the Gulf War veteran stayed along with John Lee Malvo, 17, who was Friday charged along with Muhammad with six counts of murder.

"I felt like he had some connection with terrorists. ... I (told the Federal Bureau of Investigation) he's got connections somewhere with somebody who's got money," Archer told the Herald..

"On the surface he was squeaky clean. He was almost too good to believe," added the cleric who is in charge of the Lighthouse Mission where Muhammad stayed with Jamaican immigrant Malvo who attended the local high school.

Archer said that while Muhammad was staying in the shelter, he frequently left town on plane trips to places such as Denver and New Orleans, behaviour he thought unusual for a homeless person.

"At the mission, not many airline agents call and ask for residents," Archer said, recalling a phone conversation with Muhammad's travel agent.

Archer grew so suspicious of Muhammad's "odd behaviour" that he suspected him of being part of a terrorist organization and called the FBI, the Herald said. "I felt they probably threw my note in the trash," Archer said.

The FBI would not comment Friday on whether it had received such a report on Muhammad in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks on US targets.

A Bellingham musician to whom Muhammad took a shine earlier this year said that while Muhammad was homeless he sometimes "flashed a wallet thick with currency, and showed off expensive-looking watches and gold bracelets."

Hannah Parks also told the paper that Muhammad "definitely talked about how he wasn't into America" and "passed out pro-Islamic fliers on the street from time to time."

Other reports here said that federal records in Seattle, Washington, 80 miles (130 km) south of here, showed that Muhammad had owned the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle found in his car Thursday as far back as May 2000.

The army marksman and Malvo were arrested Thursday in a rest stop in the eastern state of Maryland as they slept in a car in which a high-powered rifle and an area converted into a sniper's lair were reportedly found.

Their detentions appeared to end a massive nationwide manhunt sparked by the three week reign of terror around Washington DC sparked by the 13 apparently random sniper attacks which left 10 people dead and three wounded.

-- Anonymous, October 26, 2002