Posted on 11/04/2006 7:45:02 AM PST by Valin
SHE has been depicted as the home-grown den mother for jihadists and judged a security risk by ASIO, but Rabiah Hutchison says she is neither.
Try devout mother, proud Muslim and health worker to some of the world's most dispossessed people. The former wife of Jemaah Islamiah's Australian boss, Abdul Rahim Ayub, and the mother of two sons picked up as suspected terrorists in Yemen last month, Ms Hutchison broke her silence to the Herald yesterday.
"I am saddened by what I have seen and heard in the media … it's all lies," Ms Hutchison said. She labelled the notion that she and her sons were terrorists as "just ridiculous".
Holed up in her home in Sydney's Islamic heartland in the south-western suburbs, distressed and under siege from the media, she agreed to respond to written questions and put her side of the story through her lawyer, Peter Erman.
There was no disputing that she was married to Abdul Rahim Ayub, that they had several children before divorcing in the mid-1990s, and that two of their sons - Mohammed Ayub and Abdullah Ayub - are now in detention in Yemen. Various accounts have suggested that she had wanted to travel to Afghanistan to wage jihad, as a young Islamic convert and follower of JI founder Abdullah Sungkar. Ms Hutchison confirmed she went to Taliban-era Afghanistan with her family, but says it was only to dispense medicines. She had stayed for two years but worked mostly in the refugee camps in and around Kabul.
"I was in Kabul, Osama bin Laden was in Kandahar. I never met with him or anyone [from the terror network]. There are stories about my children training [with terrorists] in Afghanistan … do the mathematics. They would have been too young." Mohammed Ayub is 19 and Abdullah Ayub 21.
In the refugee camps, Ms Hutchison often had been with people displaced by the Taliban, some of whom were eventually accepted as refugees here. Her children, then in their early teens, went to the local schools, not to terrorist camps, she says.
She confirmed the family was in Afghanistan when the September 11 terrorist attacks occurred but promptly left, first fleeing to Iran, and then back to Australia. Not long after she returned, she had sent Abdullah and Mohammed to Yemen to study. Three years later - almost three weeks ago - they were arrested, accused of being al-Qaeda members and plotting to run arms to Somalia.
Ms Hutchison said she - and especially her sons - remained in contact with Abdul Rahim Ayub, who fled Australia in the aftermath of the Bali bombings and is believed to be living in Jakarta's sprawling slums with his second, Indonesian wife. She rejected a report in The Australian, quoting Abdul Rahim's brother, that the split occurred because of her extremism and that Ayub blamed her for "poisoning" their sons. Ms Hutchison said relations with her ex-husband were civil. She had spoken to him two days after their sons were arrested.
"My [former] husband expressed grief and horror at what has happened," she said. "He expressed his sympathies. He said, 'Be patient and trust in God.' "
Ms Hutchison, who wears the burqa in front of strangers, has built a network of female Muslims who practise the fundamentalist Wahabi brand of the faith. They include the wives of several men arrested last year for an alleged plot to let off bombs in Sydney and Melbourne.
One of the men detained, Khaled Chiekho, is married to her daughter, Rahmah. It was around the time of their arrests that ASIO confiscated Ms Hutchison's passport, for reasons not disclosed to her. As she "celebrated" Mohammed's 19th birthday yesterday, she was angered that her sons have had neither consular assistance nor access to a lawyer.
"I don't know if my sons are alive or dead. Our Government can send warships and helicopters when there's a suggestion of a crisis in Fiji, but they can't get consular officials to Yemen. I don't believe they are trying."
Australian officials expect to get access to the men today. There are unconfirmed reports that Marat Sumolsky, the other Australian detained, will be freed and that a German man has already been released.
Maggots arent fly's either. Not yet.
For more on this story click Keyword Yemen
She's a Wahabi? Nuff said.
From what I've read about her, she's a REAL PIECE OF WORK.
"I am saddened by what I have seen and heard in the media … it's all lies," Ms Hutchison said. She labelled the notion that she and her sons were terrorists as "just ridiculous"
Well Ms Hutchison do you deny the following statements are terroristic?
Sura 9:5 of the “Koranus,” “wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush.”
" upon such of those to whom the Scriptures have been given as believe not in God." Sura 9:29
"Strike off their heads then, and strike off from them every finger tip." - Sura 8:12
You should carry your devoute terrorist religion arse back to satans sand box ASAP!!
Antipodean ping!
She is one piece of work DAMN WHOA
I think she is First lady of islamic terrorisim
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.