Missing Blast Suspect's Portrait Drawn in Shadows of Militancy
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March 20, 1993, Saturday
By ALISON MITCHELL (NYT); Metropolitan Desk
Late Edition - Final, Section 1, Page 1, Column 2, 1407 words
DISPLAYING ABSTRACT - Mahmud Abouhalima, a missing suspect in the World Trade Center bombing, was known at work as a taxi driver with an attitude. On one March day two years ago, he racked up six separate summonses for failing to post his identity in his cab, driving with suspended licenses and ...
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http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/misc/janes010928_1_n.shtml Thirty-two-year-old Hijazi, a former Boston taxi driver and a US citizen, is on trial in Jordan for plotting to blow up a fully booked, 400-room Jordanian hotel and two Christian tourist sites on the border with Israel on the eve of the millennium in December 1999. He faces the death penalty and prosecutors say the Jordanian militant cell Hijazi helped create worked in co-ordination with bin Laden. Hijazi and other members of the Jordan militant group have confessed to many of the prosecution's accusations, but Hijazi's lawyers say he gave information under torture.
Late 1980s: Afghan Training Camps Forge Future Boston al-Qaeda Cell
Four men, Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi, Nabil al-Marabh, Raed Hijazi, and Bassam Kanj, meet each other in an Afghanistan training camp. All four of them take part in fighting against the Soviets. This is according to testimony by Elzahabi in 2004 (see April 16, 2004-June 25, 2004). Elzahabi will claim that while there, he met Abu al-Zarqawi, later famous for allegedly attacking US soldiers in Iraq, and al-Qaeda leaders Abu Zubaida and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. This appears to be the genesis of a Boston al-Qaeda sleeper cell that will play vital roles in 9/11 and other al-Qaeda plots. The four men go their separate ways in subsequent years, but by 1998 all of them will be working as taxi drivers in Boston (see June 1995-Early 1999). [Boston Globe, 6/27/2004]
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&startpos=0#a89futureboston
Any media person who believes Burns' comments are inflammatory should be fired for being incompetent. Either incompetent in research, or incompetent as a partisan (Deomcrat0 hack. You can't go around making controversy out of whole cloth when the truth is readily available in the internet.