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Posted on 04/14/2005 4:02:23 PM PDT by nwctwx
ON THE NET...
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/002445.htm
"PHOTO OF THE DAY" (May 13, 2005)
CAPTION BRIEF: "Mohammad Hossein, 4, plays with his toy gun, in front of his mother, who is a member of a suicide commandos unit, during a meeting where more than 200 young men and women volunteers prepared themselves for special training to carry out suicide bomb attacks against Americans in Iraq and Israelis, at the Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery, just outside Tehran, Iran, Thursday, May 12, 2005. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi via Yahoo!.)"
http://us.news3.yimg.com/img.news.yahoo.com/util/anysize/345,http%3A%2F%2Fus.news2.yimg.com%2Fus.yimg.com%2Fp%2Fap%2F20050512%2Fcapt.vah10305121843.iran_suicide_bombers_vah103.jpg?v=2
The names look familiar, but I don't recall if there is an update on that case yet.
UPDATE...
Note: The following text is an exact quote:
===
===
http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2005/May/05_crm_257.htm
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
THURSDAY, MAY 12, 2005
WWW.USDOJ.GOV
CRM
(202) 514-2008
TDD (202) 514-1888
CURRENT, FORMER U.S. SOLDIERS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS
AGREE TO PLEAD GUILTY TO PARTICIPATING IN BRIBERY AND EXTORTION CONSPIRACY
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Acting Assistant Attorney General John C. Richter of the Criminal Division and Special Agent-in-Charge Jana D. Monroe of the FBI’s Phoenix Field Office announced today that 16 current and former U.S. soldiers and law enforcement officers have agreed to plead guilty to participating in a widespread bribery and extortion conspiracy.
The criminal charges against the defendants arise from Operation Lively Green, an FBI undercover corruption investigation that began in December 2001.
In documents filed today in federal court in Tucson, Arizona, each defendant agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to enrich themselves by obtaining cash bribes from persons they believed to be narcotics traffickers. Those individuals were actually Special Agents from the FBI, and the defendants used their official positions to assist, protect and participate in the activities of what they believed was an illegal narcotics trafficking organization engaged in the business of transporting and distributing cocaine from Arizona to other locations in the southwestern United States.
In order to protect the shipments of cocaine, the defendants wore their official uniforms and carried their official forms of identification, used official vehicles, and used their color of authority, where necessary, to prevent police stops, searches, and seizures of the narcotics as they drove the cocaine shipments on highways that passed through checkpoints manned by the U.S. Border Patrol, the Arizona Department of Public Safety, and Nevada law enforcement officers. Many of the defendants also accepted additional cash bribes in return for recruiting other public officials they believed to be corrupt to further facilitate the activities of the fictitious narcotics trafficking organization.
According to court documents, all of the defendants escorted at least two shipments of cocaine from locations such as Nogales, Arizona and Tucson, Arizona to destinations which included Phoenix and Las Vegas, Nevada. The defendants pleading guilty today transported a total of over 560 kilograms of cocaine and accepted over $222,000 in cash bribes as payment for their illegal activities.
In one instance, on Aug. 22, 2002, several of the defendants drove three official government vehicles, including two military Humvees assigned to the Arizona Army National Guard (AANG), to a clandestine desert airstrip near Benson, Arizona, where they met with a twin-engine King Air aircraft flown by undercover agents of the FBI. Those defendants, while in full uniform, supervised the unloading of approximately 60 kilograms of cocaine from the King Air into their vehicles. They then drove the cocaine to a resort hotel in Phoenix where they were met by another undercover agent of the FBI, posing as a high-echelon narcotics trafficker, who immediately paid them off in cash.
In another instance, on April 12, 2002, defendant John M. Castillo, 30, while on duty as an inspector for the INS at the Mariposa Port of Entry located on the U.S. border at Nogales, Arizona, twice waved a truck he believed to be carrying at least 40 kilograms of cocaine through the border without being inspected. On or about Aug. 1, 2002, Castillo also sold an undercover FBI agent INS documents which fraudulently provided for the entry of undocumented aliens into the United States.
In addition to Castillo, the defendants who have agreed to plead guilty are:
Robert L. Bakerx, 43, a Sergeant in the AANG;
David M. Bustamante, 35, formerly a corrections officer with the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADOC);
Joel P. Bustamante, 33, formerly a corrections officer with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons;
Jorge A. Calzadillas, 22, a private first class in the AANG;
Demian F. Castillo, 33, a specialist first class with the AANG;
Mark A. Fillman, 55, formerly a specialist first class with the AANG;
Jimmy L. Ford, Jr., 29, formerly a corrections officer with the ADOC;
Guillermo German, 36, formerly a corrections officer with the ADOC;
Angel S. Hernandez, 31, formerly a sergeant in the United States Army;
Moises Hernandez, 21, a Private in the AANG;
Leslie B. Hidalgo, 24, a Private First Class in the AANG;
John F. Manje, 36, formerly a sergeant in the AANG and formerly a corrections officer with the ADOC;
Gladys C. Sanchez, 24, formerly a corrections officer with the ADOC;
Angel M. Soto, 41, formerly a corrections officer with the ADOC;
Phillip Varona, 22, formerly an officer with the Nogales, Arizona Police Department.
“Now more than ever, it is critically important that those on the front lines of our nation’s borders remain uncorrupted,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Richter. “A corrupted border creates a grave threat to the national security of this country. We will continue to work to ensure that those employed to protect our homeland do not sell their offices and badges to the highest bidder.”
“The actions of those charged in this investigation should not reflect upon the integrity of the agencies that once employed them, nor should it be a reflection upon the honorable men and women who continue to serve within their ranks,” said Special Agent-in-Charge Monroe. “We also want to commend these agencies for their partnership as they remained focus on their mission to serve and protect the American public.”
The conspiracy charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The defendants are expected to enter their pleas in federal court in Tucson beginning at 4 P.M. PT today before Magistrate Judge Charles R. Pyle. Each defendant has agreed to cooperate in this ongoing investigation.
These cases are part of a joint investigation being conducted by the Southern Arizona Corruption Task Force (SACTF), which is comprised of the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Tucson Police Department. Though not part of the SACTF, the Arizona National Guard, Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Defense Criminal Investigative Service, and the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service are also participating in the investigation. The cases are being prosecuted by Senior Trial Attorney John W. Scott of the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice, headed by Section Chief Noel L. Hillman.
###
05-257
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1403409/posts
"Bird Flu Jumps to Pigs"
FOX News ^ | 5/14/2005 | Staff Writers
Posted on 05/14/2005 10:06:40 PM PDT by ex-Texan
American soldiers in the mountain valley of Deh Chopan expect to be targeted by an unseen enemy. But the amateurish hit-and-run attacks of the Taliban - wildly fired rockets and mistimed roadside bombs - rarely inflict casualties. It was a shock, then, when a patrol was ambushed a fortnight ago with rocket-propelled grenades and sustained small arms fire. Six Americans were wounded. Two had their legs blown off. Two more were wounded badly enough to require evacuation to Germany for surgery.
The outcome of the ferocious five-hour battle was predictable enough - withering air power obliterated the Americans' enemies - but not before a US unit had suffered serious casualties and was forced to fall back before a determined enemy assault. A couple of days later nine Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers died when they were ambushed by machine-gun fire as they got down from a truck in Kandahar province - the newly formed ANA's worst-ever combat loss. Then two US marines were killed in a cave where they had insurgents pinned down.
This wasn't what US military planners were expecting at the start of this spring's "fighting season" when the snow thaws in the mountains. After all, Afghanistan is supposed to be the war that the American military has won. The official emphasis has changed from combat operations to "hearts and minds" programmes.
Then, over the freezing Afghan winter, there were few attacks, leading to talk from the Kabul government and US military that the Taliban were short of recruits and low on morale. Soon, went the word, their commanders would be joining the amnesty set up to lure tired fighters in from the mountains. This programme is the hoped-for endgame after three and a half years of desultory guerrilla warfare which has tied down 18,000 US combat troops and cost the Pentagon more than $10bn (£5.4bn) a year. The military is desperate to scale down troop numbers after September's parliamentary elections and hand over to Afghan forces and the 5,000 British troops who arrive at the end of this year.
That plan may now need a rethink. Instead of fizzling out, the Taliban have staged what has become a now-annual spring resurgence, and with a surprising new fighting spirit. Particularly worrying are signs that al-Qa'ida may once again be taking an interest in the war in Afghanistan. Since their rout in 2001 and the fall of their Taliban allies, the Arab and Chechen fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden seem to have concentrated efforts on Iraq, or simply on survival in the tribal belt of Pakistan. Now there are fears that surviving elements may be trying to open a second front to Iraq. Fighting spirit has been rare among the Afghan recruits from the religious schools, the boys the Taliban fling into battle usually to be slaughtered. But this year their ranks seem to have been reinforced by more experienced and more determined men.
The soldiers at Deh Chopan found evidence of that. When they had finished combing through the body parts of their enemies, among the 44 dead were Chechens and Pakistanis, feared al-Qa'ida fighters. Other reports indicate that more sophisticated tactics are being used and that new weapons are being smuggled in over the Pakistan border. When a Romanian soldier was killed near Kandahar last month it was a modern anti-tank mine that blew up his armoured personnel carrier, not an improvised bomb or one of the old Soviet landmines that frequently don't work.
Further north along the Pakistan border, near Khost, the war hasbecome a hot one - human waves of Taliban fighters launch night assaults against the fortified bases of an Afghan mercenary force recruited by the CIA. Those insurgents are under the command of an old warlord with links to Saudi Arabia - Jalaluddin Haqqani - whose Pakistan-based operations seem to have received a new infusion of Gulf money.
The capital, Kabul, has also seen a revival in terrorism. An apparent suicide bomb attack on a Kabul internet café popular with foreigners killed a UN employee and terrified foreign aid workers and diplomats. Then the worst anti-US riots since the fall of the Taliban devastated eastern Afghanistan last week. Seven died, aid agency buildings were burnt and looted, causing millions of dollars of damage.
Orchestrated as they may have been, the riots showed a new mood of anti-Americanism which will worry the US military and the Kabul government. The flashpoint for the protests were claims that the Koran had been desecrated during an interrogation at Guantanamo Bay, but the agitators found a willing following among Afghans angry with America. US commanders still insist they are winning in Afghanistan. In briefings they claim that Afghans who are sick of the war increasingly come forward with information about insurgent activity.
The tone has changed in recent months, however, with the outgoing US commander, General David Barno, warning of the danger of "terrorist spectaculars" and of a hard core of Taliban who would not surrender but fight on as a "wholly owned al-Qa'ida subsidiary".
The US military machine cannot really be damaged by a low-level insurgency that refuses to die, and US forces suffer nothing like the terrible casualty figures in Iraq. But increasingly it looks less and less as if the US military has won and more and more as if GIs are bogged down in a guerrilla war that threatens to go on for years to come.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1403405/posts
"Saudi ‘martyrs’ fuel Iraq’s insurgency"
MSNBC ^ | May 14, 2005 | By Susan B. Glasser
Posted on 05/14/2005 9:46:21 PM PDT by rdl6989
INTERNET-HAGANAH.US: "TALIBAN ONLINE UPDATE http://www.taliban-online.info/ loads content from http://tonline.dkmhosting.com/mpn/index.php" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Finally, there's a Taliban Online eGroup, but it doesn't look particularly active: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/taliban_online/") (April 22, 2005)
Note: The following text is an exact quote:
===
===
http://www.centcom.mil/CENTCOMNews/News_Release.asp?NewsRelease=20050516.txt
NEWS RELEASE
HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND
7115 South Boundary Boulevard
MacDill AFB, Fla. 33621-5101
Phone: (813) 827-5894; FAX: (813) 827-2211; DSN 651-5894
May 13, 2005
Release Number: 05-05-16
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TASK FORCE LIBERTY SOLDIERS LED TO SUSPECTED VBIED WEAPONS CACHE
TIKRIT, Iraq – A walk-in tip from an Iraqi citizen led Task Force Liberty Soldiers to a munitions cache and to the discovery of a suspected vehicle borne improvised explosive device cache near Samarra at about 6:00 a.m. May 12.
The total munitions and car bomb components seized from the locations consisted of approximately 1,500 small-arms rounds, approximately 90 artillery projectiles, more than 80 mortar rounds, 2 SA 3 booster sections, 125 half-pound blocks of TNT, 400 pounds of PE-4 explosives, 13 anti-tank landmines, 50 electrical blasting caps, firing wire, more than 300 fuses, 8 rockets, 128 RPGs, 7 RPG launchers, 10 RPG propellant charges, 75 hand grenade detonators and various other bomb making materials.
Task Force Liberty explosive ordnance disposal personnel destroyed both caches.
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION CONCERNING THIS RELEASE CONTACT 42ND INFANTRY DIVISION PUBLIC AFFAIRS AT: Fortysecond.id.pao@us.army.mil
-30-
IT'S HARD TO imagine Ayman Al-Zawahri as a poet a deeply moving poet, in fact. But he was, and may well still be. His colleagues in prison, including Aboud El-Zumor, whom Al-Zawahri succeeded as the leader of Al-Jihad's military wing, used to learn his poems by heart. Poems that talk about human weakness, suffering and the need for companions who stand by you when life gets rough.
Reading Al-Zawahri's soft, gentle words while keeping in mind the deeds for which he is responsible makes it all the more difficult to fathom where things went wrong with this man, a man who devoutly believed in his youth that the pen was mightier than the sword.
But even more difficult to accept than Al-Zawahri's talent for poetry is the portrait of Ayman as a young innocent painted by Mahfouz Azzam, his maternal uncle, from his law office on the 20th floor of a Maadi office tower. If Azzam were on an aircraft a thousand meters above, he wouldn't be any more isolated from what people in the streets are saying about his nephew.
"Ayman and his brothers have the best qualities you could wish for in your children," Azzam begins. "They're extremely shy, quiet, modest, cultured and brilliant boys. Ayman was so peaceful as a child; everyone knew that. He never got into fights or arguments. At secondary school, when boys usually become troublemakers and start fistfights, he was the peacemaker, the mediator who brought his friends together to kiss and make up.
"He never enjoyed violent sports, like boxing," Azzam continues, "and used to tell me, 'It's inhumane for people to inflict pain on each other.' Everyone, even the barbers in the neighborhood, used to talk non-stop about his decency and sweetness."
I managed not to raise an eyebrow as I quietly said, "But people change, don't they?"
"Not Ayman," says Azzam, Al-Zawahri's self-appointed lawyer, in a matter-of-fact tone, not a trace of irony or subterfuge in his voice.
And there's the rub. As a young man, Ayman Al-Zawahri simply didn't fit the extremist mold. None of the much-touted factors the pundits say make a man a terrorist a lousy social background, a bad upbringing, poverty, obvious psychological problems were at play.
If his family was known for anything prior to Ayman, it was for breeding doctors, not terrorists. Ayman's father Rabea Al-Zawahri was a prominent professor of medicine, an expert on pharmacology and venereal diseases. Although most of the professionals in the extended Al-Zawahri family were physicians, pharmacists and chemists, there was also a judge, an ambassador and a member of the People's Assembly.
The family was also well-connected politically. Ayman's great uncle was Sheikh Al-Ahmadi Al-Zawahri, the imam of Al-Azhar Mosque in the late 1920s and early 1930s. His grandfather on his mother Omayma's side, Abdel Wahab Azzam, was president of Cairo University, a founder of King Saud University in Riyadh and ambassador to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen countries in which Ayman would later seek refuge as a fugitive from Egyptian law.
With that extended family, Ayman grew up in green, leafy Maadi with his twin sister Omneya, his sister Heba (who went on to become a physician) and his brothers Mohammed and Hussein, who trained as architects. This image of a young Ayman the boy who loved his mother's amazing cooking and devoured both cartoons and Disney movies is the one seared in his uncle's selective memory. To Mahfouz Azzam, Ayman will always be the well-bred, decent, loving young man.
Can he see anything in this upbringing to suggest the outlines of a young medical doctor who went on to become a terrorist and the second-most wanted man in the world?
Azzam agrees that his nephew is an international figure, but hardly for the reasons most of us know. "Right!" he declares, "Ayman isn't an average man anymore, he no longer has a single nationality. Instead, he represents the conscience of the free world. He's a man of principles, standing up to the powers of evil.
"Thousands of people are praying for him, in case you didn't know. For some, he's the only hope in a corrupt, tyrannical, stagnant world." Azzam couldn't care less whether you or I or anyone else finds his alternate reality frustrating.
Ayman's path to radicalism began in the 1970s in medical school, where he trained to become a surgeon. After graduating in 1974, Al-Zawahri did a three-year hitch in the army and soon fell in with members of Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya, which originated in Upper Egypt, then spread to Cairo, where some claim it was covertly armed by Sadat as a tool against Marxists and Nasserists. At least four small cells, including Al-Zawahri's, merged in the late 1970s to form Al-Jihad.
In 1980, Al-Zawahri was filling in at a Muslim Brotherhood clinic when he met a man who convinced him to go to Pakistan and Afghanistan to treat mujahideen wounded in their bloody battle against Soviet occupation troops. He came back from the first of many trips a changed man.
In the meantime, Aboud El-Zumor's plans to assassinate Sadat were advancing. Although he was aware of the plot, Al-Zawahri claims he only learned the plan was to be executed on the morning of the assassination.
Azzam was among the four lawyers who stood in defense of Ayman Al-Zawahri, Defendant #113, charged with being the leader of 45-strong group Al-Jihad cell in south Cairo after he was arrested on the Corniche on his way to the airport for a flight to Pakistan and another tour with the mujahideen. His brother Hussein was at the wheel.
"The government and the rest of the world portray Ayman as a demon; his own family members lose their minds at the mere mention of his name lest they be stigmatized or harassed; and yet he's never committed a single crime in Egypt! Even when his name was dragged into the Sadat case he was declared innocent by the court.
"And they still sentenced him to three years in jail just for possessing weapons. He was brutally tortured in jail for a crime he didn't commit. At the time, Islamists around the world including Ayman and Mohammed were targets."
Azzam has an even harder time accepting that Ayman became Al-Jihad's undisputed leader after he was released from jail, serving as the mastermind (depending on whose accounts you believe) behind everything from the massacre of US Rangers and Special Forces in Somalia in 1993 (which inspired the movie Black Hawk Down) to the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.
To say nothing, of course, of his linking up with bin Laden, with whom he formally founded Al-Qaeda in 2000 or so, laying the groundwork for the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States.
"Listen, I'm a lawyer. I believe only in hard evidence. I can't judge someone is a terrorist until you give me irrefutable evidence right in my hand; otherwise, your claims can go where they belong in the sewer.
"For those who fail to remember history, I'd like to refresh their memories: Ayman the 'terrorist' they're talking about today was a hero in the eyes of the US and the Muslim world when he fought in jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. After the collapse of the world's second superpower, both the Arab states and the US regarded the mujahideen with suspicion: Here they are, a group of young men who mastered the art of war and have the Islamic culture in their hearts. They not only confronted the biggest military power in the world, they forced it to retreat! Of course they were perceived as a threat, a growing power that had to be quashed! It's typical of America: They create a toy to play a certain role, and once it exhausts its purpose, they rush to get rid of it. And the Arab regimes? They feared these warriors might rebel against them and attempt to take power into their own hands, so the heroes of the 1980s became the criminals of the 1990s when they put down their arms."
After the Afghan war, Azzam claims, the US pressured Pakistan to expel the mujahideen, a development, he says ruined Ayman's life.
"These men had no passports and weren't welcome in their own countries. They were homeless, fugitives with no place in the world to call home. Ayman went to Sudan with his family, settled there, and enrolled his children in schools. He wanted to have a normal life. But Egypt started pressuring the Sudanese government to expel him. Bin Laden was there, too. So, they both contacted Mullah Omar in Afghanistan, pleading with him for political asylum. He was grateful for their part in freeing his country, so he took them in with open arms on the condition that they not interfere in politics or embarrass his regime."
Despite leading "normal lives in Afghanistan," Azzam claims, "the US bombed them and lured the Pakistani army to kill them in caves. Can you imagine it? A Muslim killing a Muslim just to please America?"
It's virtually impossible for many to imagine Azzam's story of 'Ayman The Persecuted,' the man denied his chance to live the normal life he craved. In fact, his account completely excludes episodes in Ayman's life attested to by one of Al-Zawahri's own comrades, Ahmed El-Najjar, who says Al-Zawahri was the man behind the bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad and the attempt on President Hosni Mubarak's life in Ethiopia.
And what of Ayman's role in 9/11?
"You're a journalist and you don't read the press?" Azzam retorts. "In France, Germany and even the US, some analysts claim there was no way the Arabs could have done it. Even [Mubarak] said in an interview with Newsweek that he, as a military man, finds it difficult to imagine how they pulled it off."
To make a long story short, Azzam is convinced that blaming Al-Zawahri and bin Laden for 9/11 is "buying into US conspiracy theories. Think about it! In whose interest is it to incite hatred against the Islamic world? These attacks were launched to declare a [Christian] holy war against the Islamic world! No one in the world has given solid evidence that holds Ayman or Osama accountable for the attack."
What about Osama and Ayman's own words in the videotapes they've released? The tapes in which the man who once said inflicting pain on another human being was "inhumane" threatens new attacks similar to those of 9/11.
"What about them? The man only praised those who did it. But that doesn't mean he did it himself. Besides, they're not the only ones who praised it. Some danced in the streets in Palestine. I've been working as a lawyer for 54 years, and I can tell you this: What they're saying is bullshit, it's newspaper nonsense. There's no proof this footage is real. There was no international investigation into how the attacks really happened. Even Germany released one of the suspects because there wasn't enough evidence against him."
As Azzam weaves his own conspiracy theories, he eventually says that Ayman's speeches are so eloquent that they force people to respect him, even side with him.
"He has strong, solid political, cultural and religious knowledge, not to mention his charisma. His experiences in life, his suffering and travails, earned him thousands of prayers from all over the world. Ayman has always been superior. Even as a physician he was brilliant. If he was given the means, he would have been a world-class surgeon. During the war in Afghanistan, he used to volunteer to operate for 15 days straight, saving lives. He always wanted to help others."
As Azzam sips his coffee, it's hard not to think that it's a bit odd to be talking about Ayman Al-Zawahri saving lives. But if Azzam's fate is to sit and rage against what has become of Ayman, it is nothing compared to the hand dealt to Ayman's brothers Mohammed and Hussein.
"There's a principle in Shariah that stresses you don't pay for the sins of others and that no penalty can be imposed without a just ruling. You can't arrest a person for a crime he never heard of or wasn't part of. Just because Mohammed is Ayman's brother doesn't mean he committed a crime."
Azzam also defended Mohammed in court when he was tried in absentia with Ayman in 1981.
"Mohammed was in Saudi at the time, and when his mother told him on the phone that he had been convicted, he started laughing. He thought she was joking. But he won a ruling in absentia that declared him innocent of all charges," Azzam says.
"He used to work for an international relief agency in Saudi, but Egyptian police investigators harassed him even there, calling his bosses all the time; they fired him, so he was forced flee to Yemen in search of peace peace he never got."
Again, Azzam's account conflicts with the "other story," the documented one that describes Mohammed as an active member of Al-Jihad. In 1999, the younger Al-Zawahri, like Ayman, was sentenced to death in the "Albanian returnees" case, in which members of Al-Jihad were charged of plotting against the regime (and against Western targets) from abroad. (The name of the case stems from the fact that many of the Jihad members put on trial were deported to Egypt from Albania, where they were arrested while training at a secret camp.)
Unlike Ayman, who was tried in absentia, Mohamed was apprehended by security officers in the Emirates and brought to Egypt for trial, then held in secret detention for as many as four or five years.
Predictably, Azzam denies the whole story.
"Mohammed didn't go to Albania and wasn't arrested there, so I fail to understand how they can call it the case of the 'Albanian returnees.' It implies they brought them from there, which is not true at least in Mohamed's case. Mohamed was an engineer abroad. For 26 years, he didn't set a foot in Egypt. So, how can they accuse him of a crime here? I'm sure they made up the Albania case to get him, then put his name on the front."
So the security apparatus arranged the conviction of some 101 other extremists just to get Mohammed?
"The military court issued death sentences against them, and that gave them a reason to ask for their arrest and extradition wherever they were. But remember absentia sentences are worthless; once the person is physically arrested, the verdict must be set aside and the accused stands trial again. The interior minister claims Mohammed will get a new trial. But I wonder, how would they do this when military court rulings are not appealable?
"Still," he adds, "I have great faith in the Egyptian justice system."
Perhaps he should have qualified that statement by saying the "Egyptian civilian justice system." While Azzam defended Mohammed and Ayman in 1981, he refuses to stand up in court for either of them today.
"I have respect for myself as a lawyer. I utterly refuse to attend a hearing in a military court, and I'm not alone in this dozens of my colleagues feel the same way. They prefer to keep their dignity and uphold their ethics and stay away."
Throughout it all, Mohammed's six children have suffered, Azzam says. "They have psychological problems from what happened to them. They have been humiliated. And now they've lost their family patriarch."
Azzam seems drained as he starts talking about Hussein, the third brother in the Al-Zawahri family, an architect like Mohammed and a man who most probably has no connection to his brothers' terror groups.
"The poor kid was so young when they arrested him in 1981, just because he was driving his brother to the airport. He knew nothing about what was going on," Azzam says.
More recently, Hussein was arrested on suspicion of being a member of El-Intemaa Lel Jihad (the Followers of Jihad) an illegal organization with ties to known extremist groups including Al-Jihad but was later released.
"He was young when all these events took his family by storm, and now he's psychologically devastated. You'd better leave him be let one in the family enjoy some measure of peace," Azzam asks.
Hussein used to live in Malaysia, but was extradited to stand trial in Egypt. "He lost his job, his house and car and his passport. He has nothing left anymore. He has his freedom now, but I wonder what kind of life he can have here," his uncle says.
It's the one story Azzam tells that actually meshes with the evidence and testimony of others. There is simply no evidence linking Hussein to his brothers' political activities, and his sisters' hands appear similarly clean.
But for Azzam, the suffering of Hussein and Mohammed is nothing compared to the fate Ayman's mother Omayma has suffered.
"Imagine a single mother who keeps hearing day and night that her son is wanted dead or alive," he says. "She still doesn't know whether her grandchildren are dead or not, even though the news spread that Ayman's wife and children were killed in the bombing of Tora Bora. Amid all this, she reads that Mohammed has been sentenced to death!
"Has he been executed or not? Some say yes, others say no. Then they tell her he's still alive, so she rushes to see him but they won't allow her to visit, telling her to come back later. Do you know how old this woman is? She's a woman with sons in their 50s!
"Omayma is a psychological wreck. Her tears never dry up she's been crying day and night since 1981, when this never-ending nightmare started. The worst part of it is that she's a gracious lady who doesn't deserve any of this."
Azzam says he's coping better than most in the family even though "you have to know that all of our calls and movements are monitored. The authorities are deluded into believing that Ayman might call or send us a message or letter. How naive! Many in the family have become paranoid.
"Don't compare me with them, though! I've been politically active since I was a student. The British jailed me in 1942, so I'm not afraid. Unlike some of his closest family members [uncles and cousins] I've no interest in changing my name."
With that, Azzam heaves himself out of his chair and trudges over to open the window and let some fresh air into a room gone stale.
"Nice view," he says, looking out from the 20th floor.
You can't disagree, but you wonder: How is it that even people with the best views in the world can't seem to get the whole picture?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1403431/posts
"Doctor: 500 bodies laid out in Uzbek town school"
The Jerusalem Post ^ | May. 15th, 2005 | ASSOCIATED PRESS
Posted on 05/14/2005 11:40:09 PM PDT by M. Espinola
ON THE NET...
http://www.alm2sda.net/
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http://www.alm2sda.net/vb/
http://www.alm2sda.net/vb/img/hed.jpg
http://www.metacrawler.com/info.metac/search/web/alm2sda
Note: The following text snippet is an exact quote from infovlad.net:
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http://www.infovlad.net
Jihad Movie Update
May 15th, 2005
Posted on May 15
http://hackjaponaise.cosm.co.jp/terror/0515200501.wmv
Submitted from 195.229.241.187 (Emirates Telecommunications Corporation, Dubai, UAE) at 04:17(JST) on May 15, 2005.
Posted on May 14
These are not movies but a couple of odd stuff I got stumbled upon.
http://hackjaponaise.cosm.co.jp/terror/0514200501.pdf
The original filename is “Hasad Alansar 19?. According to logfile, it is submitted at 00:47(EET) on May 14, from 62.103.67.68 (athedsla-0830.otenet.gr), resident in Athens, using DSL line offered by OTENET.
http://hackjaponaise.cosm.co.jp/terror/0514200502.jpg
Operation map or something?
New trial date has not yet been set.
Amazing articles you have there, Mamdearest. Thank you.
How a Fire Broke Out (NEWSWEEK source is now unsure)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1403464/posts
On Friday night, Pentagon spokesman DiRita called NEWSWEEK to complain about the original periscope item. He said, "We pursue all credible allegations" of prisoner abuse, but insisted that the investigators had found none involving Qur'an desecration. DiRita sent NEWSWEEK a copy of rules issued to the guards (after the incidents mentioned by General Myers) to guarantee respect for Islamic worship. On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur'an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report. Told of what the NEWSWEEK source said, DiRita exploded, "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?"
Stop Apologizing to Islam
http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=14576
Jury selection in Al-Arian terror trial starts Monday
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/11649460.htm
Imam to associate: Money would come 'forever'
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/11648347.htm
Hi MD!
Thanks for the links. Good info.
http://www.internet-haganah.us/harchives/004125.html
May 14, 2005
"English Hamas site now in Malaysia"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1403462/posts
"Daily Terrorist Round-up 5/15/05 (al-Libbi was turned in by the Uzbeks)"
5/15/05
Posted on 05/15/2005 2:43:54 AM PDT by Straight Vermonter
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