Breaking: A Utah link to terrorism?

Salt Lake Tribune ^ | 04/26/2006 | Matthew D. LaPlante and Matt Canham

[jmc1969]

Counterterrorist agents pounced on five men, one in Utah and four in California, Wednesday as part of an investigation into the U.S. connections of a suspected senior al-Qaida operative imprisoned in Iraq.

The Omar family has extensive ties in Jordan, where Shawqi Omar moved his family in 1995 and where he now stands accused of helping terrorist mastermind Abu Masab al-Zarqawi plot a chemical attack.

Federal investigators believe Shawqi Omar acted as al-Zarqawi's "personal emissary" in several Iraqi cities.

But back in Utah, Omar's brother Gus says there is no connection. "If you're a Sunni and from Jordan and in Iraq, then you're bound to meet somebody who has met Zarqawi, but Shawqi doesn't know him," said Gus Omar, who has not been implicated in the case against his brothers.

A document filed by Omar's lawyers this week, in which they have again requested access to their client, alleged that U.S. troops tortured Omar with electric shocks and beatings.

According to documents filed Friday in a Washington, D.C. federal court, Omar's attorney Susan Burke claims he is being tortured. She said she received an unexpected phone call from Omar on April 13, in which her Sunni client told her that, "Americans, claiming to be Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, beat him severely and applied electric shocks to his body."

"The agents claimed they could kill him if they wanted to," Burke wrote. "The American agents threatened to rape his son if Mr. Omar failed to provide information. A translator believed by Mr. Omar to be Moroccan threatened to rape Mr. Omar's wife, who was also in United States military custody at the time."

[TheClintons-STILLAnti-American]

"I remember the deafening silence by the media when this Jordanian chemical plot was first announced. I doubt this story will change anything."

It doesn't fit with the liberal cause of destroying the President and the United States, so it is a non-event.

I recently attended a conference on democracy in the Middle East, and one presenter who recently returned from Iraq said that reporters sit in their armed hotels and pay "stringers", who are locals, to bring them back stories. He said the stringers learned quickly that the money is in the bad news, as that was all the "reporters" were willing to pay them for.

Columnist Robert Novak, also there as a presenter, noted that had Clinton done the same thing President Bush has done in Iraq he would be receiving praise as the greatest liberator and humanitarian of our age.

[razorback-bert]

[Calpernia]

ping

[Cindy]

Yep and thanks for the ping Calpernia.

[nw_arizona_granny]

Bump