Posted on 03/28/2002 10:50:43 PM PST by sarcasm
Note that the UN Peter Hansen appears to have been working in the U.S. government's Department of Humanitarian Affairs in 1994. I.e., he owes his UN appointment to the Clinton State Department.
If this guy got a part-time teaching gig at the City University of New York or one of its branches after that 1995 conference appearance, I guess he could be described as "employed by New York City." But I wonder how likely it is that a civil engineer would have gotten into humanitarian diplomacy.
I found a Peter Hansen with a Staten Island address. Thanks for the source, switchboard.com.
My apologies, guys; I read right over that, and it just didn't register. Sorry to have sent you on a wild goose chase...
Of course, we still don't know if the Peter Hansen in the story is the same as the UN guy.
I agree.
I also agree that information here falls short of connecting the Under Secretary-General, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Peter Hansen to the father of Hammad, Peter Hansen.
However, there is enough to get my attention.
First, the ultimate politically correct move would be for the head of the UN Agencey for Palestinian refugees to adopt a Palestinian orphan or marry a Palestinian widow with a child. That could possibly explain the different names, Hammad/Hansen.
Considering the crimes Hammad was implicated in, including murder, his release suggests the possibility of someonone with political influence was involved.
All of the UN Hansen's writings indicate he is very supportive of the Palestinian cause and very critical of Israel.
The bottom line is if the UN Commissioner General Hansen is the father of the Hammad that worked on the WTC sprinkler system 6 days before 9-11 and father of the Hammad involved in the driver's license fraud/ murder scandal, then that is news and a story that would need telling.
UNRWA Headquarters (Amman, Jordan) Bayader Wadi Seer, P.O. Box 140157 Amman 11814, Jordan
Hammad cried as his father testified Thursday that he came to the United States from Jordan 15 years ago and later brought over other family members, including his son.
Then the agents searched a fifth man, Sakhera Hammad of New York, whom the men identified as their second contact, and found an alarming piece of paper. Mr. Hammad had a worker's pass to the World Trade Center dated Sept. 5. Suddenly, the case became a possible terrorist plot.
In a telephone interview on Saturday, Mr. Hammad's father, Peter Hansen, said his son was a plumber, and he provided a letter he said he had obtained from his son's employer attesting to his work at the trade center. In the letter, dated Feb. 13, Sergei Denko, president of Denko Mechanical, said Mr. Hammad had been working for his company in the basement garage area of 1 World Trade Center.
"He was there for a couple of days," Mr. Denko said in an interview.
Mr. Hansen, 56, said he immigrated to the United States 15 years ago. He said he was not in frequent contact with his son, who was born in Jordan, but he said it was inconceivable that his son was involved in any terrorist activity.
Federal prosecutors indicated in court records that a second man in the scheme had ties to the World Trade Center, but did not elaborate.
F.B.I. officials said this weekend that they had begun to corroborate some of Mr. Hammad's statements regarding his work, but that they were continuing to investigate whether the men had any terrorist links. The five men, including Mr. Hammad, are being held in Memphis without bail.
In Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where Mr. Hammad lives and is known as Rocky, friends and neighbors said they were shocked by the reports of his arrest.
___________________________________________________
The UN Commissioner General Peter Hansen is 60 years old , according to his UN bio.
Current Entity Name: DENKO MECHANICAL, INC.
Initial DOS Filing Date: 02/08/2000
County: NEW YORK
Jurisdiction:
Entity Type: DOMESTIC BUSINESS CORPORATION
Current Entity Status: ACTIVE
DOS Process (Address to which DOS will mail process if accepted on behalf of the entity)
DENKO MECHANICAL, INC.
232 E 26TH ST
STE 21
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10010
Chairman or Chief Executive Officer
SERGEI DENKO
232 E 26TH ST
STE 21
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10010
Registered Agent
NONE
NOTE: New York State does not issue organizational identification numbers.
Hammad worked for Denko Mechanical but I can't find a phone number in NY for Denko Mechanical on switchboard.com or Yahoo yellow pages.
Hammad worked on the sprinklers days before 9-11.Hammad travels from New York to obtain a false drivers license from Katherine Smith. Later, Smith is burned alive.
Did anyone ask the question why Hammad the New York plumbing technician needed a phony TN license before he was released on bail?
It surprises me that there is not more information on a plumbing contractor like Denko Mechanical. How do you attract business if make it difficult for anyone to find your phone number?
MEMPHIS, Tennessee (AP) -- Shortly before 1 a.m. last Sunday, witnesses saw flames erupt from the back seat of a 1992 Acura Legend as it crawled along a two-lane road skirting farm fields in the little Tennessee town of Piperton.
The driver breathed in the flames, her lungs searing, as the car veered off the road and came to rest against a utility pole near the Mississippi state line. There were no skid marks or furrows in the grass to indicate the driver had hit the brakes.
A witness rushed up and pulled open the car door, but the driver was not moving. She appeared to be already dead. When the first volunteer firefighters arrived, the car was engulfed in flames.
From the very beginning, it didn't look right, said Steve Kellett, chief of the Piperton Volunteer Fire Department.
The car had been moving too slowly for the accident to cause much damage. The wooden pole was barely dented. The radiator was pushed in a few inches, but the engine block was undamaged. Most important, the gas tank had not ruptured. The cardboard packaging for a replacement headlamp in the trunk was barely scorched.
What could have caused a fire so severe that it cooked the passenger compartment of the sedan down to the frame, burned the driver's arms and legs off, and left her charred beyond recognition? If someone had been trying to make this death look like an accident, they had done a lousy job.
Police began investigating the death as a homicide, though they have not ruled out suicide. The mystery deepened the next day when dental records identified the victim as Katherine Smith, 49, a state driver's license examiner.
Smith had been scheduled to be arraigned last Monday on federal charges of helping five Middle Eastern men from New York obtain fraudulent Tennessee driver's licenses.
One of the men, authorities say, drove from New York to Memphis on September 11 -- the day of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. And one of them, at the time of his arrest, was carrying in his wallet a pass to the trade center dated September 5.
Was this a series of bizarre coincidences?
"The possibility of a really interesting story exists here," FBI Agent George W. Bolds said last week, brushing soot from his hands as he walked away from the charred vehicle impounded in a garage. Then again, he said, "it could turn out to be a whole lot less than people expect."
Woman of modest means
On the morning of February 5, authorities say, a gray Dodge Durango and a white Toyota Avalon arrived in Memphis from New York and parked outside the motor vehicles office. Inside the cars sat six Middle Eastern men.
Tennessee is one of four states not requiring a Social Security number to get a license, and many people carry utility bills as proof of residence.
Perhaps the men saw Smith as she arrived in her blue blazer and gray slacks. Shortly after she showed up for work, a man from the Toyota, Khaled Odtllah, a native of Jerusalem, joined the morning rush into the building. According to an FBI affidavit, he was clutching four signed driver's license applications.
Katherine Smith was a woman of modest means. She had a couple hundred dollars in a credit union account, a couple hundred more than that in checking, according to court records. She had a 1999 Ford Escort with a $10,000 lien and the Acura.
She and her daughter shared a one-story home in a rough-and-tumble neighborhood in the shadow of Memphis' Liberty Bowl stadium -- a place where police warn outsiders not to be after dark. The neat little house is worth $65,000; Smith owed $55,000 on it.
She had worked for mental health agencies before joining the motor vehicle division in 1992. She was earning just over $23,000.
Neighbors say they hardly saw the woman because she was working all the time. After hours, she worked taking care of an elderly woman.
"She worked day and night," says Peola Wright, who lives two doors down. She called Smith a nice lady who sang in the church choir and tried to get neighbors to attend services.
The neighborhood is a few miles from where Khaled Odtllah lived, but it seems a world away.
According to records, Odtllah's last address was The Grove, a gated community in the Memphis suburb of Cordova, with swimming pools, tennis courts and spas. A sign out front boasts a first place award in 2000 for beautification.
Police say Odtllah came to the United States about 13 years ago from Jerusalem and had been in Tennessee for about 21/2 years.
Smith later told officials she met Odtllah at his gas station. He sold her the Acura, which was still in Odtllah's name when Smith died.
FBI was waiting
Somewhere along the line, police say, Smith and Odtllah became business partners.
As an examiner in an office processing 300 to 400 driver's license applicants each day, Smith screened applicants at a front counter and gave written and road tests.
On the applications Odtllah was carrying on February 5, each man listed as his address 2840 Morning Lake Drive, in another gated community just outside Memphis. None of the men had checked the application's organ donor box.
At motor vehicles, the applications were approved and entered into the computer system. When Odtllah walked outside, the FBI was waiting for him.
Agents in New York had received a tip that the men would be traveling to Memphis that day, and the bureau's agents in Tennessee had staked out Smith's home and the motor vehicle office. When Odtllah and the others pulled out of the parking lot, agents flashed blue lights and pulled them over.
With Odtllah, police found Mostafa Said Abou-Shahi, Mohammed Fares, Sakher Hammad and his cousin Abdelmuhsen Mahmid Hammad. An unnamed juvenile was also taken into custody.
A few months ago, the contents of Sakher Hammad's wallet would have seemed innocuous: Two video rental cards; two major credit cards; a card designating him a "charter member" of Team Ford Racing; a New York plumber's business card. And a pass, dated 09/05/01 that gave him access to the lower basement of One World Trade Center.
Shown a photocopy, New York City Port Authority officials said the pass looked authentic, but they couldn't be certain without seeing the original.
Authorities say Sakher Hammad told them he is plumber, and that he and his cousin were in the tower to work on the sprinkler system. New York authorities have no record of a plumber's license for either cousin.
A business card in Sakher Hammad's wallet was for a Magic Plumbing & Heating Inc. in Brooklyn. It advertises "custom kitchens, bathrooms, water heaters, boilers, repiping" -- generally residential in nature.
A call to the business produced only a full voice-mailbox for someone named "Rocky." Using a reverse telephone directory, the AP found a list of phone numbers at the company's street address, all of them for individuals, among them Sakher Hammad.
Hammad's wallet also held courtesy cards from the New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association and the Detectives' Endowment Association of New York. The latter bears the inscription, "In memory of those who lost their lives on 9-11-01."
It is adorned with a fluttering American flag, a police badge and a picture of the twin towers.
When Smith was arrested, authorities say she admitted helping Odtllah obtain licenses for "cousins" on a half-dozen occasions in the past year. An FBI agent later testified that Odtllah was charging up to $1,200 each to help people get their new identities.
Authorities say the men arrested with Odtllah admitted being in the country illegally.
Fire intentionally set
The day Smith was to appear in court, her car sat in an FBI garage in Memphis, the champagne finish bubbled and streaked with trails of melted rubber window stripping. The upholstery was burned away. Police couldn't even tell if Smith had been wearing a seat belt.
However, they had found a residue of gasoline on her body. The fire, the FBI determined, was intentionally set.
Bolds, the FBI agent, wondered how someone who was conscious could have stayed in the burning car. "If the car is on fire, you're going to stop in the middle of the highway if you have to, to get out," he said.
On Wednesday, Abou-Shahi, Fares and Abdelmuhsen Hammad appeared in court wearing blue windbreakers provided by the court. They face charges of conspiring to obtain licenses with false information. Odtllah and Sakher Hammad had appeared in court Monday.
Court records indicate that another man, Omar Khayata, 20, had also applied for a license February 5, using the same address. But he was not charged, and officials would not say whether he was the juvenile mentioned in the affidavit.
Lawyers for the defendants argued that their clients were being held only because of their ethnicity. "They seem to be trying to tie this to September 11," said Clifton Harviel Jr., who represented Abou-Shahin.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim DiScenza replied that each man had participated in a conspiracy intended to acquire a "completely false and untraceable identity." Their motivation, he said, could be "further criminal activity."
In the wake of September 11, there have been crackdowns on illegally obtained driver's licenses elsewhere. Several of the September 11 hijackers had illegally obtained licenses in Virginia.
In denying bond for the five, federal magistrates cited the men's tenuous connections to the community and strong ties to other countries.
Court papers show Odtllah has a wife, a 2-year-old son, a mother and 10 siblings, all living in Jerusalem. Officials say he has "traveled extensively across the U.S. in the last few years."
A magistrate noted Sakher Hammad, "has no ties whatsoever to this community. He has substantial ties to Jordan or Gaza, where his mother lives. He has had less than stable employment ... and a cooperating witness has disappeared under suspicious circumstances."
Of the local telephone numbers listed on the license applications, three were out of service, and one was a fax.
When bond was denied, Fares put his head in his hands and wiped his eyes. The others showed no reaction.
Current Entity Name: MAGIC PLUMBING & HEATING, INC.
Initial DOS Filing Date: 09/28/2001
County: KINGS
Jurisdiction:
Entity Type: DOMESTIC BUSINESS CORPORATION
Current Entity Status: ACTIVE
DOS Process (Address to which DOS will mail process if accepted on behalf of the entity)
MAGIC PLUMBING & HEATING, INC.
275 93RD STREET
STE. C3
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK 11209
Registered Agent
NONE
My directory is from 1997. It appears Denko started in 2000.
This smells funny. Suppose the reporting is exact - there is nothing else in the wallet. Unless it was tucked away in a hiding place, this is the last item you would keep if you didn't want to get caught. Even if there was other stuff in the wallet, it's still pretty lame to keep this evidence around.
I'll try to look up these phone numbers.
Never underestimate the arrogance of these people and the utter contempt they have for the American people.
Manhattan - 8/1/01 Business, 8/1 Residential, 8/1 Super under Plumbing, Sprinklers - Automatic Fire, Fire Alarm Systems, Heating
9/1 - Business to Business - Plumbing, Fire Alarm, Sprinkler
Also tried the 11/1 Super for Brooklyn, the 5/1 Super for the Bronx, the 11/1 Super for Queens, ? for Staten Island and Jersey City.
There was a Raheem Hammad in Brooklyn.
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