Florida "Terror Scare" Detainees to Refute Charges (CAIR announcing press conference)

One year, and a day late.

Do they expect cudos?

I don't mind doing it, I just don't want to take the time and then have it be duplicated and deleted! lol

The bad news for Eunice: she should never have done any interviews with the media

Not to mention the fact that she initially refused to talk to anyone but FoxNews (in fact granted them an exclusive interview). This kind of tips everyone off to her bias going in.

So far it is: he said, he said, he said, she said. Since the son hasn't said anything yet.

Here's the latest from the Miami Herald.

Trio stopped after Georgia woman's tip

BY DAVID KIDWELL, WANDA DEMARZO AND DAVID GREEN dkidwell@herald.com

What began Friday morning as a potential terrorism attack on Miami that fixed South Floridians to their televisions, tied up hundreds of police officers and shut down one of the state's busiest highways for nearly 16 hours ended Friday evening with a colossal thud.

Apparently it was all a hoax.

Three medical students on their way to a South Miami hospital told investigators they were angered by what they thought was a suspicious look from a nurse having breakfast in a Calhoun, Ga., restaurant, say law enforcement sources.

The medical students now deny allegations they made up threatening remarks about making ``America cry on 9/13.''

But authorities say the frustrated students, responding to the perceived ethnic slight, did make some off-color remarks designed to inflame the suspicions.

It worked. The nurse called the cops.

Fifteen hours later -- at about 1 a.m. on Friday morning -- a Collier County sheriff's deputy who had read the statewide alerts for the two cars spotted them going through the Interstate 75 toll booth that begins Alligator Alley near Naples. As he followed, he saw one of the cars blow through without paying the $1.50 toll.

Said one federal investigator: ``This is the most expensive traffic violation in Florida law enforcement history.''

Ayman Gheith, Omer Chaudhry and Muhammed Kambiz Butt -- all U.S. citizens and students at a Dominica-based medical school -- were finally released at about 6 p.m. Friday after local, state and federal authorities satisfied themselves that their tale checked out.

In the meantime, several things escalated the scare.

The three men initially refused to consent to a search. ''It was probably not the right time for them to be copping an attitude with police,'' said one federal law enforcement source who was up all night monitoring the investigation. ``But that's exactly what happened.''

Then, two police dogs signaled the presence of explosives in the cars. Authorities were also suspicious because at first they thought one of the license tags on the car didn't belong. It turned out to be confusion over a temporary tag.

STANDING DOWN

All this threw an initial scare into law enforcement, which kicked into action an all fronts -- the FBI, the U.S. Attorney's Office, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Miami-Dade's bomb squad, Collier County Sheriff's Office, Miami police and Florida Highway Patrol. Ports were alerted, potential terrorism targets were identified, and authorities searched for any links to radical organizations.

By lunchtime, authorities say, they began to stand down. The three had no ties to terrorist organizations. All had long-standing ties to the U.S. All turned out to be who they claimed. And there were no explosives in the cars.

By the end of the day, law enforcement officials were describing the entire ordeal as a successful drill, the families of the three men described it as a miscarriage of justice, and the three students themselves were just happy to be free.

''The police were courteous and I understand that they had to do their job, I just wished they had finished quicker,'' Gheith, 27, told reporters. ``I did cooperate but I didn't want them going through my car and destroying things.''

The three, who were being pursued by a caravan of reporters following their release, stopped at a rest area on Alligator Alley for an impromptu news conference.

''We never made any threatening remarks in that restaurant,'' said Gheith, who claimed the nurse exaggerated. ``Maybe she added a little salt and pepper to her story.''

His family was less forgiving.

''Just because of the way we look, the way we choose to live our lives, we're persecuted,'' said Hana Gheith, his sister. Ayman Gheith was born in Jordan. The other two men are of Iranian and Lebanese descent.

''I don't think it's fair. It's very sad in this time, in this day and age, there is still this kind of discrimination,'' Hana Gheith said.

EFFORTS PRAISED

FDLE Commissioner Tim Moore praised the efforts of everyone involved, from the Georgia nurse -- Eunice Stone -- who reported the alleged restaurant comments to local police, to the alert Collier County deputy who spotted the car, to the swarm of agents that quickly descended on a scene everyone suspected could end in an explosion.

''I'm proud of that,'' Moore said. The incident began Thursday morning when Stone telephoned Georgia authorities to report comments she overheard in the restaurant. According to an FDLE alert, a ''Be On The Lookout'' or BOLO went out Thursday evening. Stone reported that the three made the following comments in the booth next to her:

``They mourned on 9/11 and they are going to mourn again on 9/13.''

``We do not have enough to bring it down.''

Also according to the BOLO, obtained by The Herald, the three men used a credit card issued to a man of Pakistani descent with the same last name as Butt.

Stone took down the tag numbers, and noted the direction the two cars went -- I-75 southbound. She told authorities she overheard them saying they were five hours behind schedule for Miami. In an interview on Fox News Channel on Friday, Stone said she thought at the time they might be playing a hoax.

''We hesitated to call anyone because we thought, they're just playing us,'' Stone said. ``But then I thought what's the right thing to do? If it turns out it's nothing, then it's nothing.''

Hana Gheith said she does not believe her brother would joke about being a terrorist.

''I know for a fact that he would not do anything like that,'' she said from Palos Hills, Ill. ``He's a good man.''

The sister said she's enrolled in the same medical program as her brother and was scheduled to start the 9-week rotation with him on Monday at Larkin Community Hospital in South Miami.

E.J. Picolo, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said the case would be referred back to Georgia, where the tip originated, for possible prosecution.

One federal source said although there is a federal statute against making terrorist threats, any criminal prosecution against the three will boil down to what exactly was said in the restaurant and what Georgia prosecutors can prove.

WORK VISIT CANCELED

Jack Michel, chief executive officer of Larkin, where the three students were expected to work, said he canceled their tour for ``safety reasons.''

The hospital -- which is affiliated with the Dominica medical school, Ross University School of Medicine -- began receiving what he called ''hate e-mail'' after news reports surfaced that the threats might have been made in jest.

``I don't even know that they said these things, so it might be unfair. . . . My number one reason is their safety and that of our employees. This is not a political issue or a point-of-view issue. This is a safety issue.''

Michel said Ross officials said they understood and agreed to reassign the students outside of South Florida.

Chaudhry's aunt, in a Washington news conference, blamed the debacle on a frenzied media.

''The news media is grossly exaggerating this entire issue,'' she said. ''We all came to this country for freedom,'' the aunt said. ``And apparently this freedom is now being taken away.''

And by night's end, even the threat of a traffic citation disappeared.

''At first the driver of the Acura was going to receive a citation for not paying the toll,'' said Tina Osceola, a spokeswoman for the Collier County Sheriff's Office. ``But then we learned that the car following had paid his toll.''

Herald staff writers Lisa Arthur, Tim Johnson, Curtis Morgan, Joni James, Tina Cummings, Herald Research Editor Elisabeth Donovan and the Chicago Sun-Times contributed to this report.

Ok, why don't you go ahead and do it... I won't post a duplicate! Thanks... :-)

(The following came from another Sikh activist, following several telephone conversations)

BNP

Kindly see below a quick write up on Islam. There will be some interesting/useful points to take on.

Today I sent, FIRST CLASS post, two titles as follows:

1. Genocide in Bangladesh; and
2. KORAN AND THE INFIDEL.

In the latter you will find many relevant verses from Koran. These will extend the range in your own article.

The books should be with you on Monday. Kindly place them in your library.

Best regards.

UNDERSTANDING ISLAM is our birth right.

The curse of Islam is that once someone is in, he or she can never get out. It is like a prison that you enter for the rest of your life. The free world can only lose, never gain or recover what it once lost.

This constantly depletes the stock of free men on earth. More and more of them keep degenerating into unquestioning submissive morons.

Submitting to the Will of Allah is to kill an infidel, plan an assassination, throw a bomb, hijack a lorry or plane and make mincemeat of the ordinary decent innocent citizens of world.

In Islam there is NO fine distinction between one Infidel and another. They are all the same- learned professors, conscientious doctors and hardworking honest civil servants, young mothers, those dying in hospitals and the newly born. They may be housewives, cleaners, office workers, taxi drivers, young and old.

If they are not Muslim, they are all infidels, legitimate target of attack or assassination.

Hence there were NO qualms in crashing the planes carrying women and children. They were all legitimate targets of hijackers and their dastardly deed had the tacit approval of all the Muslims around the world.

They were nourished, indoctrinated and motivated by MUSLIM congregations, friends, parents and relatives in this country and abroad. Finally what they did, meant great deal to the others, much thrill and joy to some and great satisfaction to the others.

Where they felt safe, they came out in large numbers, celebrating. Where they felt unsafe or vulnerable, they condemned those terroracts vehemently, posing to be perfect believers in secularism, universal love and tolerance.

Murderous Islam is expert at the game of survival and saving its own skin. Just see them in Afghanistan where they can, and in the United States where they cannot. Same Islam, two DIFFERENT faces. In one they celebrated and in the other they denied any knowledge and condemned the hijackers with one voice.

It is the SAME Islam where Muslim countries from Indonesia to Libya are calling for "Death to Israel".

Muslim intolerance has another face: of conversion to Islam in all mixed marriages. The non Muslim spouse must embrace Islam to save her or his skin. There is always an assassin around, someone willing to die for Islam.

More...

All they have to do now is scream BIGOT and everybody will back off.

I dont think so. Poll on CNN today asked whether the police had over reacted in this case. 80% said they had not. Citizens are with Eunice and the police. As long as there is the threat, people of middle eastern descent are going to have to learn to be of reproach.

Unless CAIR can find evidence that Eunice is a member of the Klan or has left a paper trail of hate toward arabs as some do here, I dont see how the three students could win their case. Its a she said / he said. She reported what she had heard immediately after the incident. She had no reason to fabricate it. Her son told her they could be pulling her chain and she agreed and even mentioned this to the police. The government asks us to be alert and to report just this kind of thing. I cant imagine a jury that's going to find against Eunice if the case should go to court.

Call me Miss Cleo ping.

"We've seen it all before!"

Some views on Islam and the present crisis from Sikhs and Hindus

Since September 11th, we have opened a number of contacts with Sikhs and Hindus, living both in Britain and in India, who regard the British National Party as the only political party with the guts to tackle the Islamic question honestly and openly.

A number of these individuals have played an important role in helping us to understand the true nature of Islam, and to research our analysis of the mortal danger this uniquely aggressive religion poses to our traditional way of life and freedoms. On this page we reproduce several articles which Sikhs or Hindus have supplied to us. Although all of them have approached us independently, they all have the same warning for Britain and the British:

"We’ve had to live alongside, or under, Islam for hundreds of years. We know its true nature, and it worries and grieves us that the trusting, naïve British are sleepwalking to disaster. Unlike India, your population and country aren’t big enough to withstand mass Islamic immigration and fast breeding for more than a few decades. Don’t be fooled by talk of ‘extreme’ Muslims and ‘moderate’ ones, the difference is only tactical. If you keep letting their numbers grow, you’ll find out too late that the whole religion is extreme. Wherever Islam goes, civil war and communal slaughter follow. Don’t let it happen to Britain."

About the only thing left that I still don't understand is the car tag.

Fox said that was an administrative screw up by the state of Illinois. The plate was not stolen. But that doesnt mean the students arent lying to save their butts.

''I don't think it's fair. It's very sad in this time, in this day and age, there is still this kind of discrimination,'' Hana Gheith said.

Down the rabbit hole we go.

But authorities say the frustrated students, responding to the perceived ethnic slight, did make some off-color remarks designed to inflame the suspicions.

Okay! So they DID say things to make Eunice suspicious. Thus, in my book, she is vindicated and these guys brought this all onto themselve. And this means that they were NOT profiled, and that the sister needs to apologize. IMO

By the end of the day, law enforcement officials were describing the entire ordeal as a successful drill, the families of the three men described it as a miscarriage of justice, and the three students themselves were just happy to be free.

What miscarriage of justice? They caused this! The only miscarriage is that they haven't been charged yet. Can a civilian be charged with entrapment of another civilian? joking. sort of. They guys caused a lot of problems and wasted a lot of tax payer monies yesterday. And they're griping!!

''The police were courteous and I understand that they had to do their job, I just wished they had finished quicker,'' Gheith, 27, told reporters. ``I did cooperate but I didn't want them going through my car and destroying things.''

Since the whole thing was a hoax, perhaps he should have consented to the search, then maybe his backpack wouldn't have been blown up! lol

Now, I'm mad. They called her a liar, a bigot... and yet they CAUSED this.

Lesson one: Don't mess with women in Georgia.

Lesson Two: Don't make a crack about 9/11 and 9/13 and brining it down ..

I don't give a hoot if the whole dang place was staring at them .. making a flip joke/comment about 9/11 was not funny and I am NOT ammused ..

EDITORIAL: "CAPE AND SWORD"

By Mark Helprin, The Wall Street Journal, 12/17/1999, Page A14

"There is a word in Arabic, taqiyah, that Madeleine Albright might well look up. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, a source with no known links to Ariel Sharon, describes it as 'the practice of concealing one's belief,' in which 'the Qur'an allows Muslims to profess friendship with the unbelievers...on the condition that their hearts contradict their tongues.' This is not merely a religious dispensation but a cultural pattern that debases the value of assurances and treaties...

Press Here

CAIR and their jihadists are testing our responses. They are a fifth column.

The bear definately shi'ite in the woods!

Busted link...?

Bump

Below is an excerpt from Steven Emerson's book, "AMERICAN JIHAD" regarding CAIR.

Appendix C
THE TERRORISTS' SUPPORT NETWORKS
The Sea in Which the Fish Swim

THE COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS (CAIR)

CAIR is the most prominent of the Muslim organizations concerned with "civil rights." In its charter, CAIR stated it would "promote interest and understanding among the general public with regards to Islam and Muslims in North America and conduct educational services in the fields of religion, culture, education, society and history concerning Islamic issues both in the United States and abroad." The organization generally purports to represent the Muslim viewpoint in America. Founded in 1994, CAIR is an outgrowth of the Islamic Association of Palestine. In 1994, then-IAP president Omar Ahmad approached Nihad Awad, IAP's public relations director, and “suggested that they leave the IAP and concentrate on combating anti-Muslim discrimination nationwide.” When the organization was incorporated, the three individuals involved were Awad, Ahmad, and Rafiq Jaber who served as Ahmad's successor to the position of president of the IAP CAIR takes the public position that it condemns terror. Shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, the organization took out a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post stating: “We at the Council on American Islamic Relations, along with the entire American Muslim Community, are deeply saddened by the massive loss of life resulting from the tragic events of September 11th. American Muslims unequivocally condemn these vicious and cowardly acts of terrorism.... We join all Americans in calling for the swift apprehension and punishment of the perpetrators of these crimes.”

On its Web site, the statement appears as an adjunct to a section labeled "Passenger Profiling," in which American Muslims are invited to submit complaints “if you or someone you know has been a victim.” Another subsection titled "Help for Victims" asks, "What you can do for the victims of the WTC and Pentagon attacks" and allows contributions through both the Red Cross and the Holy Land Foundation.

In fact CAIR has often served as an ideological support group for militants. On May 24,1998, for example, CAIR cosponsored an incendiary rally at Brooklyn College that featured speakers spouting anti-Jewish rhetoric. One speaker was Wagdy Ghuneim, a radical cleric from Egypt. He told listeners, "Allah says he who equips a warrior of jihad is like the one makes jihad himself." He led the audience in a song with the lyrics: “No to the Jews, descendants of the apes.” On October 28, 1998, CAIR's Southern California branch issued a press release to protest the existence of billboards in the Los Angeles area that depicted the visage of Osama bin Laden with the headline "the sworn enemy." The billboards had been sponsored by the Los Angeles-based KCOP Television, Inc., and were intended "to take recognizable characters and situations that affect people's lives because they are in the news" (as CAIR put it). The CAIR statement claimed that the billboard was “an insult to the hundreds of thousands of Muslims who live in Southern California.”35 CAIR has even refused to condemn the Taliban. A conference in Columbus, Ohio, entitled "Leadership Ambassadors, Making a Difference," featured a seminar led by CAIR's Director of Communications, Ibrahim Hooper. There, Hooper explained how he preferred to contextualize the regime: [O]ften I'm dealing with very sensitive controversial issues, and I don't want to be quoted about the Taliban, you know, but I want to put the Taliban into context for a reporter. So I'll say well, you know, CAIR doesn't comment on international issues where there is not an American component so we just don't have any comment. But, can we go off the record, and then I'll go off the record in trying to explain what is going on so that they don't just go away with a stereotypical, one dimensional portrayal ....

CAIR's executive director, Nihad Awad, explained his views regarding the Palestinian situation in a speech delivered in 1994 at Barry University in Florida: "After I researched the situation inside and outside Palestine, I am in support of the Hamas movement. . . ." In 2000 Awad appeared at a rally in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., and rejected any peaceful settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians: "they [the Jews] have been saying 'Next year in Jerusalem’—we say 'Next year to all Palestine' ” He also stated that Hollywood had distorted its treatment of groups engaged in violence in the Middle East by referring to them as terrorists: “Hollywood is not our friend. Hollywood has distorted the facts. Hollywood has shown freedom fighters as terrorists. Hollywood has done the work that Zionists cannot done [sic].”

CAIR officials have defended the action of suicide bombers. On the one hand, Awad told CNN's "Crossfire" that “Suicide is an act of disbelief, because we Muslims believe that God is only in charge of life and death. And to take one's life or other people's life is an act of disbelief and it goes in sharp contradiction with Islamic teachings.” On the other hand, at a conference of the Islamic Association for Palestine held a week later, Omar Ahmad, chairman of CAIR's board of directors, told a youth session: “Someone in Islam is allowed to fight.... Fighting for freedom, fighting for Islam—that is not suicide. They kill themselves for Islam.”

Much of CAIR’s time is spent trying to persuade the press not to "overreact" to acts of Muslim terror and trying to prove that Muslims themselves are victims of discrimination and prejudice. A year after the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 that killed 224 people, Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe wrote: "On that occasion, prominent Islamic voices in the United States did speak out. But their chief message was not one of horrified sympathy for the victims and their families or of shame that anyone calling himself a Muslim could perpetrate such an atrocity. No—what [these] Muslim leaders were eager to communicate was a warning to the media not to speculate about a possible Islamic connection to the slaughter.

Exercise Restraint in Reporting on Embassy Bombings,’ ran the headline. At the time, despite the ferocity of those bombings, America's major Islamic groups made no move to distance themselves from bin Laden—or even to label him a terrorist.” “A release issued by the Council on American-Islamic Rela tions was typical: 'American Muslims Ask Journalists to CAIR has several ties to the Hamas-connected organizations and individuals discussed in Chapter 5. At its founding, CAIR received funding of $5,000 from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. According to annual reports filed in the state of Illinois, Mohammad Nimer, the director of CAIR’s Research Center, was on the Board of Directors of the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR). After September 11, 2001, and up until the U.S. government froze the assets of the Holy Land Foundation in December, CAIR’s Web site included a feature, "What you can do for the victims of the WTC and Pentagon attacks" with a link to the Web site of HLF ("Donate through the Holy Land Foundation").

When Federal Judge Kevin Duffy ordered the extradition of Hamas leader Mousa abu Marzook in 1996, CAIR coordinated a press conference on May 10 to protest the decision. CAIR also signed a letter, printed in a June 1996 "Newsletter of the Marzuk [sic] Legal Fund," arguing that the extradition order was “anti-Islamic” and “anti-American.” Steve Pomerantz, former chief of the Counterterrorism Section of the FBI and former assistant director of the FBI, says: “CAIR has defended individuals involved in terrorist violence, including Hamas leader Musa abu Marzook.... The modus operandi has been to falsely tar as 'anti-Muslim' the U.S. government, counter-terrorist officials, writers, journalists and others who have investigated or exposed the threat of Middle East-based terrorism.... Unfortunately, CAIR is but one of the new generation of new groups in the United States that hide under a veneer of 'civil rights' or 'academic' status but in fact are tethered to a platform that supports terrorism.”

Seif Ashmawy, former publisher of Voice of Peace, wrote: “It is a known fact that both the AMC and CAIR have defended, apologized for and rationalized the actions of extremist groups and leaders such as convicted World Trade Center conspirator Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, Egyptian extremists, Hassan al-Turabi, the Sudanese National Islamic Front, and extremist parliamentarians from the Jordanian Islamic Action Front and others who called for the overthrow of the Egyptian government. . . . As a proud American Muslim . . . I bow to no one on my defense of Muslim civil rights, but CAIR . . . champion[s] extremists whose views do not represent Islam.”

When she first appeared on Fox yesterday, she said her yard was full of reporters and she sought escape by contacting Fox and, I think, literally being taken to the affiliate station. She thanked the newsperson for Fox "saving her" or something to that effect. As the day progressed and there was reference to her appearance, the newspersons repeatedly stated on air that she had contacted Fox.

Can you give me links that don't have the google stuff at the top?