Posted on 07/05/2002 9:53:22 AM PDT by Fithal the Wise
Hashem Mohamed Hadayat, 41, who gunned down Yakov Aminov, 46, and Vicky Hen, 25 – both from Los Angeles - on the 4th of July at the El Al terminal of Los Angeles, and wounded 7 others, is revealed by DEBKAfile’s intelligence and counter-terror sources as a Muslim extremist. During his ten years in the United States, he was a secret operative of the Egyptian Jihad who maintained undercover links to the same Jihad cell in Brooklyn, New York, as the “blind sheikh” Abdul Rahim Rahman and Ramzi Yousef. Both are doing time for perpetrating the first attack on the New York World Trade Center in 1993.
Hadayat is also believed to have abetted a previous, contrived airline disaster: On October 31, 1991, an Egyptair Boeing 767 Flight 990, which also took off from Los Angeles airport, never reached its destination of Kennedy, New York. The plane plunged into the Atlantic off the Nantucket Island, Mass. coast, killing all 217 passengers and crew. In a special probe, the US National Transportation Safety Board found that the copilot Gameel el-Batouty was at the controls when the plane went into its dive. His voice was recorded shouting, “I put my faith in Allah!”
The report held back from referring more directly to the Egyptian copilot’s responsibility for the crash. Our sources affirm that Hadayat, who lived in Irvine, California, 70 km south of Los Angeles, knew Batouty well. There are also indications that, in the years 1998 and 1999, Hadayat was in touch with a group of high Egyptian air force officers and helicopter pilots posted at the time at Edwards Base north of Los Angeles. They were there to learn how to install command and control centers in Egypt’s air defense systems, operate anti-air missile batteries and fly Apache gunships. Most of those officers were on the doomed Egyptian airliner after completing their courses.
Although the long-delayed US Transportation Board report never referred to the presence of this high-ranking Egyptian air force delegation on the flight, DEBKAfile ’s Washington sources reported at the time that most of the investigators were satisfied that Batouty could not have seized control of the Boeing 767 without the aid – certainly the compliance - of those officers.
Two years ago, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak exerted all his influence on President Clinton to keep the federal board’s findings out of its published report and, above all, the fact that a group of Egyptian air force officers was on the plane. He warned that citing the Egyptian copilot as deliberately causing the crash would have a negative effect on Egyptian-US relations. The report therefore fell short of clear conclusions. Hadayat’s murderous attack on El Al flight 106 passengers points back to the Egyptair 990 disaster of 1991, reviving the many questions left open by that earlier, half stifled inquiry, which carefully stepped round any suggestion of terrorism. It also raises the question of how many sleeper cells the Egyptian Jihad, al Qaeda’s primary operational arm, maintains in American cities.
Hadayat struck the El Al ticket line on his 42nd birthday. The initial FBI inquiry found through records of his fingerprints at the Department of Motor Vehicles, which issued him with a limousine license, that he was married with at least one child, and had lived in Irvine for the last two years, working on a green card. Since the attack, the possibility that he arrived in America as a sleeper terrorist must be seriously addressed. US investigators realize he was not a lone operative and are seeking his accomplices in such matters as setting up the hit, providing the guns he carried and intelligence on the security situation at the Tom Brady terminal.
DEBKAfile’s Middle East intelligence sources report that early Friday, Egyptian intelligence officers picked up Hadayat’s relatives and associates in Cairo, to try and trace the identities of his fellows in the American Jihad cell.
They are sort of OK for events occuring inside Israel, but not infallible. They are worthless for anything outside Israel.
One of the perp's weapons was a .40 Glock with extra magazines.
Reasonably good taste in shootin' iron...
My question: If the perp was a lone wolf how did he as an alien manage to get his hands on two handguns?
Believe it or not, aliens can and do legally own firearms. They don't check your citizenship when you go to the local gunshop.
So it would seem. A couple of thoughts...
Was this a botched job? Was there supposed to be an emergency vehicle or some other vehicle with a bomb planted to kill hundreds as they evacuated the airport?
Was this a mission to find flaws in LAX's security and response?
Medved said DEBKA has close ties to Israeli intelligence so I would expect that they might well have background info on the perp.
Believe it or not, aliens can and do legally own firearms. They don't check your citizenship when you go to the local gunshop.
I suppose it varies from state to state. Here in Illinois a firearms purchase requires a Firearms Owner's Identification Card issued by the state police. I don't think they issue these to aliens.
It's a guess. DEBKA extrapolates from there.
Then Mr. Medved is, IMNHO, full of fecal material. They don't even do especially well for events inside Israel, and if they do have close connections with Israeli intelligence, then Israel's knowledge of events outside of their own soil is extremely poor.
But right now it makes sense to me!
JIHAD IN AMERICA:
| To find all articles tagged or indexed using JIHAD IN AMERICA, click below: | ||||
| click here >>> | JIHAD IN AMERICA | <<< click here | ||
| (To view all FR Bump Lists, click here) | ||||
is revealed by DEBKAfile’s intelligence and counter-terror sources as a Muslim extremist. During his ten years in the United States, he was a secret operative of the Egyptian Jihad
He was clearly and obviously a Muslim extremist. Whether he was an operative of Egyptian Jihad or just a wannabe remains to be seen. I wonder about the identity of the other fellow he was seen talking to in the airport. He's still in custody? If there were two, a jihadi link is more probable. But why didn't the other guy shoot?
Quite difficult to say. But I think it's fairly obvious that they didn't count on meeting armed resistance at that ticket counter. Maybe they were counting on having real carnage first, by one shooter (he had two guns and extra magazines), and then when the place was swarming with ambulances set off a bomb. Instead everything went wrong, the shooter was dead quicky and the second was picked up on the basis of witnesses having seen him with the shooter.
And there was something about the police having in fact found explosives in the shooter's car....
Good point. Carrying a knife in his other hand was strange, however. Two guns would have done more damage before he was brought down. This guy wasn't very bright, thank goodness.
First report is by the man who worked for NASA and then worked as Walter Cronkite's primary source of information during the Apollo Mission. He does the physics and says the NTSB's report is bovine squat .... There is a huge cover up.
It might have to do with the flight's unscheduled stop at Edwards AFB to pick up those Egyptian Pilots.
This is a report on the 'death of an investigation.'
Very interesting reading.
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.