Posted on 06/04/2009 5:01:39 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The man accused of fatally shooting a soldier outside a recruiting center begged for FBI agents to free him from a Yemeni jail where he was "radicalized" by Islamic terrorists, his lawyer told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Lawyer Jim Hensley described Abdulhakim Muhammad as an impressionable youth driven to public service in an impoverished Middle Eastern country. But teachings by "hardened" terrorists in Yemen and experiences with Afghan child refugees who were missing limbs drove him to become someone his parents didn't recognize, Hensley said.
"Here comes the FBI, who may be able to help this guy or save his life, and then they leave and then he's got to go back in with these hardened terrorists. He's got to survive, how do you live with that?" Hensley said. "He absolutely feels that the FBI and anyone else associated with the United States government left him to the wolves, that's for certain."
The FBI referred calls to a spokesman who was not in his office Thursday. Pulaski County Prosecutor Larry Jegley did not immediately respond to a call for comment.
~~snip~~
Hensley said Muhammad was a college student in Tennessee and left early to pursue volunteer work teaching English to children in Yemen. The lawless and impoverished country on the tip of the Arabian peninsula — also the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden's family — was the scene of one of al-Qaida's most dramatic pre-9/11 attacks, the 2000 suicide bombing of the destroyer USS Cole off the Aden coast that killed 17 American sailors.
While in Yemen, Hensley said Muhammad married and converted to Islam...
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
All this had to happen during the last administration. It’s Bush’s fault.
These guys are always victims, no matter what they’ve done wrong. I guess the old “He was just turning his life around” is all used up by now.
So what?
McCain(not that I’m a big fan or anything like that)was tortured and he didn’t go shooting up a VA Hospital or anything like that.
It’s not the first successful terrorist attack since 9/11.
You're exactly right. The FBI can't just magically spring you from a foreign jail. You commit a crime in an extremist country like Yemen, you're going to be f@%@$#$g savagely treated in a barbaric prison.
So, he blamed the FBI for leaving him in prison? Why was he in prison? Why was he in Yemen? None of those things had anything to do with the FBI. This is the flimsiest of defenses. He was in Yemen for a reason, and it wasn't sightseeing. He started the path of jihad himself, and followed it to it's natural conclusion.
Oh, look what Mr. Cohen's previous claim to fame is:
STEVE COHEN {D-TN}: Compared Alaska Governor and GOP VP candidate SARAH PALIN to PONTIUS PILATE
For possession of a bogus Somali passport...I suppose his lawyer will tell us he needed a bogus passport to teach English.
We need to start calling them state run media.
Let me break it down further.
No non-Arabic speaking American gringo rolls into Yemen, gets married, gets a fake Somali passport, and gets religiously radicalized in prison (4 months?!) without solid extremist connections.
Does. Not. Happen.
He's one-man May Day parade of terrorism red flags. I shudder to think who his associates are. Even if he is just a loose cannon wacko terrorist wanna-be that woke up one day and started shooting, whoever set up his lifestyle for him in Yemen is a real-deal terrorist. And I'm not yet convinced he's the fluke he seems to be.
2006 & 2007 : (OHIO : FUTURE ARK SHOOTER A M MOHAMMED aka BLEDSOE ATTENDS OMAR IBN EL KHATTAB MOSQUE IN COLUMBUS) ABC News reported Thursday Muhammad appears in 2006 and 2007 to have attended the Omar Ibn el-Khattab mosque in Columbus, Ohio, also frequented by three men later convicted of anti-U.S. terrorism. The other men are Nuradin Abdi, convicted in 2007 of planning to blow up an Ohio shopping mall; Iyman Faris, convicted in 2008 of planning to blow up New York's Brooklyn Bridge, and Christopher Paul, convicted in 2008 of conspiring to use explosives against targets in the United States and Europe.--------FBI: Alleged killer may have eyed Atlanta UPI ^ | June 4, 2009 Posted on Thursday, June 04, 2009 8:53:43 PM by Jim Robinson
Well, this is getting even more interesting.
Thank you piasa.
His lawyer is probably claiming the guy was radicalized in Yemen because he knows this joker may have more potential charges coming down the pike relating to his time and associates in Ohio.
I’m just sick of all the victim cr8p.
See above...
Thanks for the ping.
The old victim defense.
*driven to public service in an impoverished Middle Eastern country*
What, no areas left in his state or elsewhere in U.S.
to help to get them going and back on their feet.
His Atty. is so busy spinning, he will run out of thread.
I would like to know more about why Rep. Cohen intervened on his behalf! Maybe we should start claiming that he was also responsible for the killing of a military man just like the leftist kooks have been saying about conservatives in the murder of Tiller the baby killer.
Yes, I agree. Thanks.
Sounds like a load to me.
Anybody who’s not a moron would be kissing American soil as soon as he landed after such experiences as he describes.
Looks like his defense is going to be to blame America. Somehow, we Americans willed him to seek out a soldier and pull that trigger.
It’s hard for me to imagine or believe that four months in a prison, even the horrors of a middle east prison, would change somebody’s basic character from good to evil. Maybe it was the other way around - maybe they sensed or saw that this guy is a dumbass lowlife or weak of character and would be easy to convert to terrorist.
They’ll probably drag this dem congressman into court to testify in Abdul’s behalf. I hope that works out good for the congressman come next election.
A creative diversion, but a crock nonetheless. Yemen is one of the most lawless places on earth. Who wants to go there to do volunteer work?
STEVE COHEN {D-TN}: Compared Alaska Governor and GOP VP candidate SARAH PALIN to PONTIUS PILATE
Thanks for th einfo, piasa. It's always nice to have background on all the parties involved. Mr. Cohen is obviously a sterling judge of character.
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