Posted on 07/05/2002 11:00:30 PM PDT by stilts
CAIRO: The father of Egyptian gunman Hisham Mohammed Hadayet who opened fire at a check-in counter of Israeli carrier El Al in Los Angeles was a general in Egypt's army, his neighbors said Friday.
The former general, Ahmad Ali Hadayet, lives in the family household in the central Abbassiya district in Cairo, an AFP reporter said.
The information was confirmed by security sources here, but the family refused to talk to reporters.
On Thursday, Hisham Hadayet opened fire at the check-in counter of Israel's national airline El Al killing a 20-year-old female clerk and a middle-aged man, before being shot dead himself by an El Al security agent.
"I have known Hisham for several years. He was a normal person, he was religious but did not go often to the mosque," one of his neighbors said, requesting anonymity.
Hadayet's wife and two children returned to Egypt in June, security sources said. They added that his wife has been questioned, without elaborating.
FBI officials said that Hadayet was on their watch list, without saying why. They added he had lived in the United States since 1992 and worked as a limousine driver.
Egyptian officials kept mum Friday after the FBI revealed one of their fellow nationals carried out the Los Angeles attack. Officials at the interior ministry refused to comment when questioned by reporters.
Lawyer Montasser al-Zayet, who defends Egyptian Islamists in court, said Hadayet was not known to be a member of any Islamist movement.
Why watch them, just round them up.
How many human time bombs must go off until they round up those who tell you straight out that they are sworn enemys of our open soceity?
Makes you kind of wonder about TWA 800 where the government keeps telling us that it couldn't have been terrorism . . . what about the Long Island crash a while ago . . . same thing . . . . no terrorism here, move along . . . now LAX . . . no terrorism here, move along . . .
How about just telling the truth? The Israelis only seem to be stating the obvious.
AND.... it was his 42nd birthday, and he had sent his wife and kids back to Egypt after the Sept. 11th attacks. Likely this sleeper was awoken, and thus the action. If not for the quick thinking Israeli security, he may have offed many more (two guns, knife, extra ammo on him...)
I don't wonder. Over a hundred people saw the missile, from different angles and vantages, all basically agreeing. The Chief Investigator announced it was not terrorism before the investigation began, issued orders that investigators were not allowed to talk even to each other, refused to interview anyone who claimed to have seen a missile, and then at the end ignored the findings of his own investigators to announce that, sure enough, it wasn't terrorism.
The Long Island crash was still in flames, the fire fighters couldn't even get in to fight the fire, when the feds announced that it wasn't terrorism. How could they know that? Of course they couldn't know that, but they determined within minutes of the plane going down that they weren't going to give the enemy a victory. I understand that, though I don't agree. I would allow Clinton that excuse if there were evidence that, in the shadows, our spooks were dealing with the perpetrators of TWA 800, but as you know the evidence is to the contrary.
Yes, as a member of the world’s most peaceful religion (don’t forget, islam worships a “prophet” who enjoyed raping children) I guess he was “normal.”
Thank God he “did not go often to the mosque.” If he had, he would have aspired to a homicide bomber.
And that may be next.
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