Posted on 07/05/2002 3:53:09 PM PDT by hope
FONT face="Courier, Times New Roman"> Friday, July 5, 2002
Report Links LAX Shooter to Egyptian Jihad
Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, who killed two people Thursday at Los Angeles International Airport, was a radical Muslim extremist involved in terrorism, the respected Israeli intelligence Web site DEBKA.com reported today.
"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," DEBKA said.
U.S. authorities continue to maintain there is no evidence linking Hadayet to terrorism.
"Hadayat [sic] is also believed to have abetted a previous, contrived airline disaster: On October 31, 1999, an Egyptair Boeing 767 Flight 990, which also took off from Los Angeles airport for Kennedy, New York. After Kennedy, the plane bound for Cairo 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," DEBKA noted.
"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.
Clinton Again
"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," DEBKA reported.
"Hadayat's murderous attack on El Al flight 106 passengers points back to the Egyptair 990 disaster of 1999, 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."
The FBI said today that Hadayet, a limousine driver, went to LAX with murder on his mind on Independence Day, his 41st birthday.
"It appears he went there with the intention of killing. Why he did that is what we are still trying to determine," FBI agent Richard Garcia told Fox News.
The public interest law firm Judicial Watch today said that "the Bush administration is continuing a practice of providing the American public with false and misleading information concerning Islamist terror plans and attacks against the United States." It urged that Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller be fired.
Fly Your Flag: Anger a Terrorist
Meanwhile, Hadayet's neighbors in Irvine, Calif., said today that he became incensed when an upstairs apartment dweller put up large American and Marine Corps flags after Sept. 11.
"He complained about it to the apartment manager. He thought it was being thrown in his face," said one neighbor, Steve Thompson. The upstairs neighbor would not comment to the Associated Press.
A bumper sticker on Hadayet's front door said, "Read the Koran." It was later removed.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Clinton Scandals
Al-Qaeda
Bush Administration
EgyptAir Crash
Homeland/Civil Defense
Immigration/Borders
Middle East
War on Terrorism
A product that might interest you:
Revealed: The Terrorists Living Among Us
Note that, according to an earlier report, Hadayet's aunt is married to an Egyptian general.
Ok....who hid my tinfoil hat? C'mon fess up.
I still fail to see the motive for killing these Egyptian officers, unless it's because they were American trained. Any insights?
This fact was widely reported at the time.
Initial reports said that the flight from California also made a stop at Edwards Air Force Base to pick up Egyptian Air Force officers who had completed training in the US. This aspect of the report was later denied.
The backbone of a regime that, while dictatorial, is not dictatorial in an Islamic manner. I have long believed that the FBI was eager to not say that the earlier crash was "suicide" becuse that would be too close to saying that it was a "suicide attack". It would have embarrassed Mubarak too much. He only wants Egypt repressed in his own special way and is not willing to give up that role to the Islamists.
Yes, that's his name. Can you explain the significance of this -- I know I've seen the name before, but I don't recall where. Thanks.
Especially those who are Muslims.
Those who support any other course of action are simply blind to the reality of our current predicament - We are at war with radical Islam.
Do we have to wait and react after the car bombs start going off in US cities?
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