Who's Protecting America's Children?
by Laura Mansfield
When the story broke earlier this week about the two Saudi Arabian men arrested for hitching a ride on a Florida school bus, America cringed. Many of us remembered watching as Islamic terrorists in Russia massacred the children of Breslan. And as we watched, many of us pulled our kids closer to us and wondered if the same thing could happen here.
At first glance, you would think that our children are safe in their schools in America. After all, life is not a Bruce Willis movie. Everyone knows that schools do extensive background checks on the people who work there and who are around our children.
Or do they?
As frightening as the incident in Florida may be to parents, it's just the tip of the iceburg. Believe it or not, Afghanistan-trained terrorists have been driving US school busses; teachers convicted of terrorism in Israel have been teaching in US schools.
Mohamed SALAH: Teaching the Children of Chicago
Take the case of Mohamed SALAH. SALAH, currently under federal indictment in Chicago. US Attorney General John Ashcroft said the following about SALAH and the others named in the indictment: ""This cell allegedly financed the activities of a terrorist organization that was murdering innocent victims abroad, including American citizens."
Ashcroft said the plans go back as far as 1998.
"The indictment ... alleges that the affairs of the enterprise were committed through multiple acts of conspiracy to commit and solicitation of first degree murder, conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure persons in a foreign country, money laundering ... providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations" and other crimes. In addition to racketeering, SALAH, 51, was charged with providing material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization and obstruction of justice.
SALAH was arrested by Israeli intelligence in 1993 on a visit to Israel, and confessed to recruiting Islamic militants and then helping to instruct them in the use of poisons, chemical weapons and explosives. The training supposedly occurred in the late 1980s. In 1991, SALAH allegedly served as a financial agent for Hamas, opening accounts at a number of Chicago-area banks. He spent several years in prison in Israel, and upon his release he returned to the US.
What job did the man, who had formerly worked in Arab grocery stores, as a used car salesman, and with the Quranic Literacy Institute, get?
SALAH also worked for a time as a substitute teacher for the Chicago Public Schools. He also applied for a job as a part-time lecturer on computer systems at City Colleges of Chicago's Olive-Harvey College. He was fired in 2003 for failing to disclose the Israel conviction, and was removed from the list of approved substitutes for the Chicago Public Schools at the same time he was fired by Olive-Harvey College.
Mohamed Kamal ELZAHABI: Driving the Children of Minneapolis
Consider the case of Mohamed Kamal ELZAHABI. ELZAHABI was indicted this year on two counts of lying to agents with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force in connection with an international terrorism investigation.
According to a criminal complaint filed earlier in the case, ELZAHABI allegedly attended a jihad military training camp and fought in Afghanistan in 1988 and 1989. Later, he acted as a sniper in combat and also served as an instructor in small arms and sniper skills for other jihadists attending the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan.
Records show he passed the school bus driver portion of his CDL on Oct. 17, 2001, a date Pearson said was around the time First Student hired him and he began driving routes.
On September 11, 2001, ELZAHABI applied with First Student of Minneapolis, to become a school bus driver. ELZAHABI spent four months as a First Student school bus driver in late 2001, transporting students for the Minneapolis Public Schools. The company fired him in January of 2002 after he failed to report to work, said Jeff Pearson, region vice president with First Student, Inc. First Student is based in Cincinnati, OH, and employs 19,000 drivers on 15,000 school buses nationwide.
ELZAHABI also held Commercial Driver's Licenses in Massachusetts, Colorado, and Minnesota, and also had a HAZMAT certification.
Shaping the Minds of Our Children Sets the Future Course
Article 15 of the charter of Hamas states as follows: It is necessary that scientists, educators and teachers, information and media people, as well as the educated masses, especially the youth and sheikhs of the Islamic movements, should take part in the operation of awakening (the masses).
Rafiq JABER agrees, saying: "Formerly most Muslims were doctors and engineers. Now more are getting into political science, law, teaching and journalism."
Jaber was an award-winning salesman with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company until his retirement in 1997.
But Jaber also served as president for two years of the Bridgeview Mosque. He also is a founder of the Chicago chapter of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) and a past IAP national president and national chairman.
The IAP was founded by Mousa Abu MARZOOK, the head of the political wing of Hamas, who is currently under federal indictment on terrorism charges (According to the US Justice Department, Abu MARZOOK is a senior commander of the Islamic terrorist group HAMAS. From his current residence in Syria, Abu MARZOOK openly advocates and celebrates suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.) . The Islamic Association for Palestine openly sends out Hamas communiqués, and in filings in federal court cases, federal agents have described IAP as the propaganda arm for Hamas in this country. . IAP has reproduced and distributed Hamas's charter (which calls for the total destruction of the State of Israel) across the United States, has produced training material for terrorists on how to interrogate suspected "collaborators," and has even sponsored a Hamas-affiliated music troupe whose theme song includes the lyrics "We Buy Paradise with the Blood of the Jews."
Jaber's other credentials include co-founder of the Chicago chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC); a co-founder with Omar Ahmad of San Jose, CA and Nihad Awad of Washington, DC of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR); and a member of the American Muslim Alliance (AMA) and the Arab American Institute (AAI).
In an interview with the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs magazine, Jaber is quite open about how he expects change to occur:
"The problem is that we've been looking to start from the roof instead of the foundation," he explains. "If we start from the grassroots, senators and presidents will come to us. When you go to visit a member of Congress, he'll listen to you if he knows you can bring him votes or donations."
"Politicians don't get elected to Congress because they're dummies. They're practical and they're realistic. You can see that the IAP is one of the most effective organizations. We don't compromise our principles."
Preventing a Tragedy
In a letter to the editor in today's New York Post, Robert Lewis says the following:
Anyone who thinks that a massacre like the one in Russia couldn't happen here is living in a fool's paradise.
All of our schools are gun-free zones.
If just one radical Islamist with an automatic rifle walked into one of our schools, what would the teachers do? To borrow from Zell Miller, would they throw spitballs at the terrorists?
Are any schools ramping up any training programs, providing instruction to teachers and administrators on how to handle a terrorist attack? Or do they respond as the administrator I spoke with, who said: "Come on, we're in a small town, hours from a major city. The terrorists don't even know where we are. This is not New York or Washington, DC."The people of Breslan, a small rural farming village probably felt the same way two weeks ago.
Teachers certainly know how to handle a fire drill; domestic events like Columbine show us that that they need to be equally prepared for a terror threat, whether it comes from within or from foreign groups.
The training is available. Groups like Operation Shiloh offer extensive counter terror training for civilians. According to OpShiloh.com: After September 11, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft called on Americans to establish "anti-terrorism neighborhood watches." In that vein, the OpShiloh team has been urging you to form a Volunteer Security Committee (VSC) in your church, synagogue, school or organization. Every church, synagogue, school and community center should have a security committee, and those people should take the OpShiloh course. If your organization does not have a security committee, we will show you how to start one. While the Department of Homeland Security is doing a great job, it must be understood that they are focused on protecting hard targets and critical infrastructure such as nuclear power plants, bridges & tunnels, and the transportation, electrical and communications grids. There literally hundreds of thousands of unprotected, high-value soft targets in the US - places like churches, synagogues and schools. Your VSC can help fill this security.
We need to start by making sure that those who are with our kids for 1/3 of their day have the best interests of the children at heart.
Now with all fairness, most of the Muslims teaching and working with our children are equally horrified at what happened in Breslan. But can we afford to have those with ties to violent terrorist groups working with our kids?
I don't think so.
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Who's Protecting America's Children: Part 2
by Laura Mansfield
If you find it concerning that convicted terrorists and Al Qaeda-trained agents could get jobs teaching in America's schools, and driving school busses carrying America's greatest treasures, our children, then you will probably be concerned with the case of school official Kifah Jayyousi, who was charged alongside accused dirty bomb plotter Jose Padilla of conspiracy to murder US nationals.
Jayyousi has had an excellent career in the schools and universities of America. According to the Detroit Free Press:
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 served an adjunct engineering professor at WayneStateUniversity.
From 1999 to 2001, he was chief facilities director for public schools in Washington from 1999 to 2001.
But Jayyousi was arrested in March 2005 on charges of fundraising and recruiting fighters for violent jihad. In November 2005, Jayyousi, along with Jose Padilla and three other men, were charged with conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals and providing material support to terrorists as part of a North American terrorist support cell.
On March 31, 2005, CNN ran an article, excerpted below, about a former top official in the WashingtonDC schools being held on charges of conspiracy to raise money and recruit fighters for jihad.
The story goes on to describe the charges against Kifah Wael Jayyousi:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/03/31/terror.suspect.arrest/
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A former top official for the District of Columbia's public schools is being held on charges of conspiring to raise money and recruit fighters for Muslim extremists.
Kifah Wael Jayyousi, arrested Sunday at an airport in Detroit, Michigan, was chief facilities director for public schools in Washington from 1999 to 2001. But in the years running up to that high-profile position, he supported "violent jihad" in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya and Somalia, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Monday.
Jayyousi's arrest is connected to the investigation of The Global Relief Foundation and what federal authorities allege was a network providing material support to terrorists, mostly through supposed charities.
Jayyousi, a U.S. citizen originally from Jordan, is accused of conspiring with Adham Amin Hassoun, who has been in U.S. custody since 2002. Also charged in the criminal complaint is Kassem Daher, described in an FBI affidavit as living in Lebanon.
Jayyousi was arrested by FBI agents at DetroitMetroAirport after a computer check by customs officials showed an outstanding arrest warrant for him. He was arriving from Doha, Qatar.
His attorney, William Swor, said Jayyousi was working in a contract engineering job in Doha and was traveling to Detroit to visit his father, who was scheduled to undergo open-heart surgery.
Swor said Jayyousi had been interviewed by the FBI eight times in the past. Before he left for the job in Doha, Jayyousi contacted the U.S. government, reported his plans and offered to meet with government representatives, Swor said. Federal officials then searched Jayyousi's home before returning his passport to him.
The criminal complaint against Jayyousi, 43, was filed in Miami, Florida, in December, and cites an investigation that began in 1993. It alleges that Jayyousi and his two co-conspirators set up nonprofit charities through which they raised money and recruited fighters for jihadi groups affiliated with al Qaeda.
The charities include American Islamic Group and American Worldwide Relief. In one instance, Jayyousi is described as having recruited a person to provide satellite phones to Chechen mujahedeen commanders.
It was in 1993 that the Omar Abdel Rahman was arrested and charged with plotting to blow up several New York landmarks. Abdel Rahman, now serving a life sentence, was a spiritual leader of Egypt's largest Islamic militant group, al-Gama'a al-Islamiya.
An FBI agent's affidavit describes Jayyousi as a "supporter and follower" of Abdel Rahman and says that in 1994 and 1995, investigators intercepted phone conversations between the two men.
"Jayyousi would update [Abdel Rahman] with jihad news, many times reading accounts and statements issued directly by terrorist organizations," the affidavit says.
Jayyousi's lawyer said his client lived in Detroit before he lived in Washington and returned to Detroit after his public schools job. There, he was teaching at WayneStateUniversity, but went on sabbatical leave in September 2003 to take the contract job in Doha. His wife and three daughters accompanied him, while his two sons remained in Detroit attending college.
In an apparent contradiction, the criminal complaint says Jayyousi moved to Egypt in 2003.
Jayyousi was ordered held in custody at a court hearing in Detroit on Monday. He will face trial in U.S. District Court in Miami where, his lawyer said, he plans to plead not guilty.
On November 17, a Federal Grand Jury in Miami brought back an 11-count superseding indictment charging five men, including accused dirty bomb plotter Jose Padilla with conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals and providing material support to terrorists as part of a North American terrorist support cell. The following is an excerpt from a report I published on LauraMansfield.com about the incident in November 2005:
November 22, 2005: Accused "dirty-bomb plotter" Jose Padilla, 3 others Charged with Conspiracy to Murder U.S. Nationals Overseas, Providing Material Support to Terrorists
A federal grand jury in Miami has returned an 11-count superseding indictment that charges Jose Padilla and four additional defendants with conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals and providing material support to terrorists as part of a North American terrorist support cell.
The indictment, returned by the grand jury on Nov. 17, 2005 and unsealed today, charges Padilla with conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals, conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, and providing material support to terrorists. The indictment also charges for the first time a Canadian national named Kassem Daher, who is believed to be overseas. The three other defendants named in the indictment - Adham Hassoun, Mohamed Youssef and Kifah Jayyousi - had been previously charged with terrorism-related crimes. "The indictment of Jose Padilla and his associates in an alleged North American terrorist support cell demonstrates that we will use every tool at our disposal in vigorously fighting the war on terrorism," said Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. "Through the use of such tools, including vital provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, we are able to bring criminal prosecutions that strike at the heart of terrorist activities."
The indictment alleges that Padilla traveled overseas to receive violent jihad training and to fight violent jihad, which would include acts of murder, kidnapping and maiming, from October 1993 to November 2001. On July 24, 2000, Padilla allegedly filled out a "Mujahideen Data Form" in preparation for violent jihad training in Afghanistan. Mohamed Youssef, one of the co-defendants in the case, allegedly reported in September 2000 that Padilla is "supposed to be at Usama's," and then reported that he had "entered into the area of Usama." Other co-conspirators reported Padilla being in Afghanistan in October 2000, according to the indictment.
The indictment alleges that the named defendants were part of a North American support cell designed to send money, physical assets and mujahideen recruits to overseas jihad conflicts. The cell allegedly operated from many cities in the United States and Canada, and supported and coordinated with other support networks and mujahideen groups waging violent jihad. If convicted of the offenses in the indictment, Padilla and his co-defendants face maximum sentences of life in prison.
By the way, Jayyousi has requested that charges against him be dismissed.
Why?
Because his jailers "disrespectfully tossed Hassoun's Quran on his bunk and left 8,000 pages of trial papers in disarray".
From the Associated Press:
MIAMI -- Attorneys for two terrorism suspects tied to an alleged al-Qaida dirty bomb suspect are asking for the dismissal of a federal indictment against them based on a jailer's mishandling of a Quran and intimidating jail cell searches that removed handwritten papers in Arabic.
The defense claims the seizures from the cells of Adhan Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi in May and June amount to government misconduct and an unconstitutional intrusion on trial preparation.
Jailers also disrespectfully tossed Hassoun's Quran on his bunk and left 8,000 pages of trial papers in disarray, his attorney Kenneth Swartz said in motions filed Friday.
Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Palestinian, and Jayyousi, a Jordanian national and U.S. citizen, face possible life prison sentences on charges of plotting to fund and support Islamic jihad through murder and kidnappings abroad, including Bosnia, Chechnya and Somalia.
``By depriving the defendants of the confidentiality of their own case-related notes, the government has destroyed any possible confidence that their case can be prepared with privacy,'' the men's attorneys wrote.
The defense also is asking for an order to either release the men from solitary confinement or on house arrest. Alicia Valle, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office, said Monday that prosecutors would respond in writing, but both motions said the federal trial attorney opposed them.
Messages left at the downtown jail where the men are detained by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons were not immediately returned. The defense said the warden responded to a March request by Hassoun for a change in jail conditions by saying he was a ``security threat.''
The FederalDetentionCenter has held other inmates deemed administrative risks, notably drug kingpins, in solitary for years despite defense protests.
On the Quran, a jail officer took a piece of paper with Arabic writing, but Hassoun explained that he had copied an excerpt from the holy book and showed him the matching text. The officer returned the paper and tossed the Quran on the bed.
``Even the U.S. military has said that's not the kind of treatment you give a holy book, so I guess FDC hasn't come to that conclusion,'' Swartz said Monday.
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