The Israeli national who was called a threat to security by President Bush because of his wide-ranging drug activities in Pittsburgh and elsewhere in the United States has died while awaiting trial. Oded Tuito, who may have been born Eliyahu Mamo but who has been known by a number of aliases since then, died of an apparent heart attack on June 20 at a federal detention center in Brooklyn, N.Y., authorities said. Various court documents listed his age as 42 or 44. Tuito, who federal agents said once headed the largest Ecstasy distribution ring in the world, was under indictment on money laundering and drug charges in New York, California and Pittsburgh. He was one of seven drug traffickers designated by Bush as being a threat to U.S. national security, foreign policy and the economy under terms of the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Pittsburgh filed a six-count indictment against Tuito in December 1999, saying he conspired to distribute cocaine, marijuana and Ecstasy in Western Pennsylvania. Tuito was accused of operating a nationwide drug ring centered in Pittsburgh that smuggled as much as 6,000 pounds of marijuana and as many as 100 kilograms of cocaine to the city from Florida, New York and California from1995-99. Prosecutors also accused him of negotiating a 1999 deal to distribute Ecstasy in Pittsburgh. Tuito was accused of ordering his minions to recruit strippers as couriers, believing their appearance would deflect suspicion at airports. The women were offered free trips to Europe and $10,000 in cash in exchange for smuggling tens of thousands of pills in false-bottom suitcases in each trip they made from Paris, Brussels and Frankfort, prosecutors said. Tuito, who prosecutors said often visited Pittsburgh, was captured in Spain in 2001. He was arraigned on the federal charges in Pittsburgh last year.

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