OU's Muslim Students Fearful After Explosion

OU's Muslim Students Fearful After Explosion Authorities: No Evidence Hinrichs Had Ticket, Tried To Buy Ticket To Game

NORMAN, Okla. -- Many Muslim students at the University of Oklahoma are laying low after rumors spread that a terrorist plot was behind a deadly explosion near a packed football stadium, Muslim leaders say.

"A lot of students are taking precautions, staying at home," said Houda Elyazgi, an officer with the Muslim Student Association. "I wear the scarf, so I fear for my security now because of all this speculation."

In an e-mail sent Thursday afternoon to students, faculty and staff members, OU President David Boren encouraged all not to "judge others or jump to conclusions about others on the basis of color, race, gender, economic status or freely exercised religious beliefs.

"To rush to judge others or make assumptions about them on that basis is nothing short of prejudice. It has no place in America and it certainly has no place at the University of Oklahoma."

Investigators believe the bomb blast that killed OU engineering student Joel Henry Hinrichs III, 21, was a suicide. Boren reiterated in the letter that there is "no evidence of a conspiracy involving others which creates an ongoing threat to our OU community."

Oklahoma Muslim leaders feared their community would be targeted after the explosion.

"When it first happened, we said, 'Oh, God. Here we go again,"' said Imad Enchassi, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City.

Enchassi remembered how suspicion fell on the Muslim community in the days after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, as did Boren, who noted that some speculated early on that the explosion that killed 168 people was the work of a Middle Eastern terrorist.

"As we all now know, the person responsible was not someone from the Middle East but was Timothy McVeigh and at least one other American who assisted him," the statement read. "We can only hope that all of us, including some media outlets, would have learned from that recent rush to incorrect conclusions."

At least four Muslim students were handcuffed and questioned after the OU explosion, and Muslim leaders fielded telephone calls from reporters.

Hinrichs' Pakistani roommate, Fazal M. Cheema, is Muslim, although not particularly religious, according to regulars at the Norman mosque.

Cheema worked at the football stadium, according to the OU student directory, and the men lived at Parkview Apartments, a university-owned property popular with Islamic students because it is adjacent to the local mosque.

Some media reported that Hinrichs spent time recently at the mosque, which was denied by the president of the mosque, who asked that his name not be used for fear of retaliation.

Hinrichs' father, Joel Hinrichs Jr., said this week his son was skeptical of ideology and was not Muslim.

Meanwhile, OU officials addressed allegations that Hinrichs had tried to enter the Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, which sits about 100 yards from the spot where the explosion happened.

University spokeswoman Catherine Bishop said OU officials reviewed their ticket records and determined that Hinrichs, of Colorado Springs, Colo., didn't purchase a football ticket from any university outlet.

Bishop also said university officials hadn't heard anything to indicate Hinrichs tried to buy a ticket from one of the fans selling them outside the stadium.

The FBI has reviewed video surveillance tapes and, so far, haven't uncovered anything that indicates Hinrichs tried to enter, Boren said.

Norman police, however, reported that an officer became suspicious when he overhead Hinrichs trying to purchase ammonium nitrate fertilizer from a local feed and seed store two days before he died.

The manager of Ellison Feed and Seed said the store no longer carried that kind of fertilizer, which was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

As for the Muslim community, Elyazgi said it has been particularly difficult because Wednesday marked the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when the faithful fast from dawn to dusk.

"I'd rather be focusing on my fast and this joyous month than having to worry about my back," Elyazgi said.

http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/marktapscott/2005/10/08/170668.html

There They Go Again
Justice Department Clamps Down on OU Suicide Bomber Facts

Oct 8, 2005
by Mark Tapscott

It was only hours after Joel Henry Hinrichs III blew himself up Oct. 1 near 84,000 football fans at the University of Oklahoma when federal officials claimed he was just a troubled young man with no links to terrorists.

But then yesterday the U.S. Department of Justice asked a federal court in Oklahoma City to seal the search warrant officials there used to get into the apartment Hinrichs’ shared with three or four students described by neighbors as “Arab-looking men.”

If Hinrichs acted alone and had no links to terrorists’ organizations or activities, why seal the search warrant? What did investigators find in Hinrichs’apartment that they don’t want the public to know?

That’s an especially important question considering what was already known when Justice sealed the warrant. For example, media reports confirmed by Oklahoma law enforcement sources said investigators found bomb-making materials in the 21-year-old University of Oklahoma engineering student’s apartment.

It was also known that the bomb that killed Hinrichs was made with “Mother of Satan,” the same extremely volatile chemical explosive used by Richard Reid, the “Shoe Bomber” who tried to blow up a commercial airliner a few years ago.

We knew as well that two days before he blew himself up, Hinrichs tried to buy ammonium nitrate from a local feed store. The store owner, who became suspicious when Hinrichs couldn’t give a satisfactory answer for why he wanted the fertilizer that was a main ingredient in the bomb that destroyed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City April 19, 1995, prevented him from doing so.

Finally, it was known that Al Qaeda has been talking since before May 2005 about launching an October offensive in the United States to coincide with the holiest of Muslim holidays, Ramadan. Oct. 5 was the first fast day of Ramadan.

So there is no surprise that the more officials with the FBI and the Joint Task Force on Terrorism deny Hinrichs had any terrorist ties, the more holes appear in the “lone bomber” scenario first hastily offered by OU President David Boren. Boren is a former U.S. senator who chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when he retired from government in 1994.

Start with the actual holes made in the bark of a tree near the bench where Hinrichs was sitting when he died. The holes appear to have been made by ball bearings or perhaps nails, the very objects typically used by Middle Eastern terrorists bombers to inflict the most widespread possible damage, injury and death.

Here’s another hole: Hinrichs registered his car in Oklahoma in June of this year, but only for nine months ending in February 2006. The June registration could be explained by his going to summer school, but the February expiration date would fall in the early weeks of what would have been his spring semester at OU. Did he know months ago that he would not be around by the time February rolled around next year?

Speaking of his car, federal investigators gave it the once-over but then left it in the parking lot of the apartment complex where Hinrichs lived with three or four Muslim students. By the way, the Muslim Students Association office is across the street from the apartment complex, as is the mosque attended by alleged 9/11 “20th hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui while he was attending a local flight school.

Not only did investigators not impound Hinrichs’ car, they also left out in plain sight on the vehicle’s front seat the Justice Department inventory of things they found in it, including 13 plastic bottles.

The bottles weren’t described, nor did the inventory indicate whether any of them had anything in them. However, plastic bottles are often associated with bomb makers who find the containers suitable for transporting volatile chemical explosives.

The most disturbing hole, though, is the letter intercepted by U.S. intelligence last May from Iraq terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Osama bin Laden describing a “Great Ramadan Offensive.” The offensive was described as a series of spectacular attacks in the U.S. and elsewhere during Ramadan, which is in October.
Was the OU stadium bombing intended as the first of those attacks?

The foregoing is only a sampling of the numerous facts turned up in the week since Hinrichs died by yours truly and other bloggers, including Generation Why, Zombietime, Flopping Aces and The Jawa Report.

Without these bloggers ignoring the accepted version of Joel Henry Hinrichs’ grisly death and forcing the mainstream media to take notice of an immensely important story, odds are good we would find out too late just how important a story it is.

"Further, the gate gaurds refused to answer when asked if Hinrichs tried to get in, and they are still refusing to talk.

If you did your job so well that you turned away a bomber nor once but three times (as has been reported elsewhere), wouldn't you be at least a LITTLE bit proud? You'd have to ORDER me not to tell someone, under penalty of losing my job."

You've answered a question I have been asking on a couple of threads. Is there any way for a source for this information? I found the video of the Channel 9 report of the interview with student Adam Smith who spoke with a gate guard after the game who said a young man got spooked when they asked to search his backpack and ran away. But your information is the first I have seen that there could be a squelching of the gate guards first hand reports by - who? University officials? Substantiate that Hinrichs tried to enter the stadium and everything else falls into place...and no amount of whining by the campus Muslims can stifle the real danger the people were in at that football game.

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