He's arrested and charged with conspiracy to support militants
March 29, 2005
BY DAVID ASHENFELTER and CHASTITY PRATT FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
A former Detroit schools official has been charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.
A criminal complaint unsealed Monday in Miami said Kifah Wael Jayyousi, 43, formerly of Detroit, conspired with Kassem Daher of Broward County, Fla., in the mid- and late 1990s to raise money and recruit Muslim extremists to fight in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya and Somalia. The complaint was issued in December.
Authorities said Jayyousi, a former assistant superintendent, was arrested around 12:30 p.m. Sunday at Detroit Metro Airport after stepping off a flight from Amsterdam. U.S. Customs agents detained him after conducting a routine computer check that showed Jayyousi was wanted on a federal terrorism warrant out of Miami. It's unclear whether he was traveling alone. Authorities said he had flown to Amsterdam from Qatar.
Jayyousi made a brief appearance Monday in U.S. District Court in Detroit, where the U.S. Attorney's Office requested that he be sent to Miami to answer to the charges.
U.S. Magistrate Steven Whelan ordered him held until a detention hearing Wednesday, when his lawyer, Jon Posner, could be present. Posner is in the hospital, according to his law firm.
Jayyousi and Daher are charged with conspiring to provide material support and resources for terrorism and conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure people or damage property in a foreign country. The first charge carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The second carries a maximum penalty of 35 years to life in prison.
Daher, a former resident of Leduc, Canada, is a fugitive living in Lebanon.
A court affidavit signed by FBI agent John Kavanaugh Jr. said an investigation that began in late 1993 found that Jayyousi, Daher and two other men -- Mohamed Zaky and Adham Amin Hassoun -- were involved in a North American network to raise money and recruit fighters to wage violent jihad around the globe.
Money initially was raised through charitable organizations known as Save Bosnia Now and American Worldwide Relief, the affidavit said. They were founded by Zaky of San Diego, who was killed in Afghanistan while fighting Russians in May 1995.
Hassoun, a Palestinian national who was born in Lebanon, came to the United States in 1989 and has been in U.S. custody since June 2002, is awaiting trial in Miami on similar terrorism charges. He lived in Broward County, Fla.
The affidavit said Jayyousi is a Jordanian national and naturalized U.S. citizen who has lived in San Diego, Los Angeles, Detroit and Baltimore. It said he moved to Egypt in 2003.
After Zaky's death, Jayyousi allegedly took over American Worldwide Relief. He also founded the American Islamic Group. Although that group touted itself as a nonprofit, religious service to protect the rights of Muslims and provide economic aid to needy people, it actually promoted terrorism, the affidavit said.
The affidavit said Jayyousi used the group's monthly newsletter, Islam Report, to raise money and recruit fighters for jihad and to disseminate the accomplishments of terrorists worldwide. The affidavit said the newsletter described murders, executions and massacres committed by terrorists.
The affidavit said all four men were followers of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian cleric who was sentenced to prison in 1995 for plotting to blow up New York landmarks.
From 1994 through late 1995, Jayyousi allegedly called Rahman in prison to update him about terrorist developments. Much of the information contained in the complaint came from court-authorized electronic surveillance.
Jayyousi worked as a senior engineer at the University of California-Irvine before he was hired in 1997 as assistant superintendent for physical facilities and capital improvement at Detroit Public Schools.
In Detroit, he was responsible for overseeing the early stages of spending of the $1.5-billion school bond. During his tenure, the bond program was mired in two controversies: skepticism about the costs associated with a construction program led by then-Wayne County prosecutor candidate Mike Duggan and the firing of a minority company that managed the bond program, which led to a lawsuit against the district.
Jayyousi also is listed as an adjunct engineering professor at Wayne State University on the college's Web site.
Jayyousi left Detroit Public Schools in 1999 and was hired to run the Washington, D.C., public schools facilities department.
JPost.com » Middle East » Article-By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Mar. 29, 2005 3:22 | Updated Mar. 29, 2005 6:54
A thorough analysis of the Koran reveals that the US will cease to exist in the year 2007, according to research published by Palestinian scholar Ziad Silwadi.
The study, which has caught the attention of millions of Muslims worldwide, is based on in-depth interpretations of various verses in the Koran. It predicts that the US will be hit by a tsunami larger than that which recently struck southeast Asia.
"The tsunami waves are a minor rehearsal in comparison with what awaits the US in 2007," the researcher concluded in his study. "The Holy Koran warns against the Omnipotent Allah's force. A great sin will cause a huge flood in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans."
Silwadi, who is from the village of Silwad near Ramallah – the home of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal – is not a world-renowned scholar. He said he decided to publish the findings of his research "out of a sense of responsibility because what is about to happen is extremely shocking and frightening."
His fear, he said, is that the world economy, which relies heavily on the US dollar, would be deeply affected by the collapse of the US.
"It would be fair to say that the world would be better off with a US that is not a superpower and that does not take advantage of weak nations than a world where this country does not exist at all," he added."The world will certainly lose a lot if and when this disaster occurs because of the great services that American society has rendered to the economy, industry and science."
Silwadi said his study of the Koran showed that the US would perish mainly because of its great sins against mankind, including the Native Americans and blacks.
"As soon as the Europeans started arriving in the new world discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492, they declared a war on the so-called Red Indians, the legitimate owners of the land," he wrote. "Then they began enslaving and humiliating Africans after kidnapping them from their countries and bringing them to America. Millions of blacks were brought to the US and treated with unprecedented harshness. Those who became ill during the journey were thrown overboard to feed the fish."
Silwadi pointed out that the US continued to commit war crimes and "ethnic cleansing" against humanity by becoming the first country to use nuclear weapons during World War II.
"International law penalizes such crimes," he said. "If these laws were not applied then, they are certainly implemented in heaven. If no one on earth is capable of punishing [the US], Allah was and remains able to do so. All these actions have been documented by Allah in a big archive called the Koran."
Silwadi said he reached the conclusion that several suras (chapters) in the Koran that talk about punishment for those who perpetrate heinous sins actually refer to the US.
As an example, he quotes in his study verse 40 of the Spider Sura, which states: "So each We [God] punished for his sin; of them was he on whom We sent down a violent storm, and of them was he whom the rumbling overtook, and of them was he whom We made to be swallowed up by the earth, and of them he whom We drowned; and it did not beseem Allah that He should be unjust to them, but they were unjust to their own souls."
Drawing parallels between Pharaoh and the US, who share the same "sin" of arrogance and excessive pride, Silwadi noted that the Koran mentions at least 12 times the fact that Pharaoh was punished by drowning for his evil deeds.
The Narrative Sura, he noted, clearly suggests that the US will drown in the sea: "And Firon [Pharaoh] said: O chiefs! I do not know of any god for you besides myself; therefore kindle a fire for me And he was unjustly proud in the land, he and his hosts, and they deemed that they would not be brought back to Us. So We caught hold of him and his hosts, then We cast them into the sea, and see how was the end of the unjust [verses 38-40]."
Explaining his theory about the approaching extinction of the US, the scholar went on to analyze many numbers and letters mentioned in the Koran. He said a careful reading and analysis of words appearing in the Opening and Yusuf suras show that the US will exist for only 231 years.
How did he reach that number? Silwadi said that by combing a number of suras hinting at US sins he reached the numbers 1776 (the year the US achieved independence) and 231. He added the two numbers and the result was 2007, the year when the US is expected to disappear.
In his lengthy study, which is being circulated in many Muslim countries, Silwadi noted that the US has often been compared to a tree that grows very quickly and bears fruit, but has no roots.
In an attempt to find a reference to this metaphor in the Koran, Silwadi said he counted 1776 verses from the beginning of the Koran until he reached verse 26 of the Ibrahim Sura, which states: "And the parable of an evil word is as an evil tree pulled up from the earth's surface; it has no stability."