Posted on 01/16/2005 5:22:26 AM PST by dead
Islamic extremists may have murdered four members of a Coptic Orthodox family found bound, gagged and with their throats slit on Friday in their Jersey City home, a law-enforcement official familiar with the case said.
The official confirmed that Hudson County investigators, as well the FBI, were "knee-deep" in pulling computer records and were coming to terms with the possibility that the family may have been targeted for death because of exchanges about religion in an Internet chat room.
The official cautioned, though, that investigators have not ruled out other possibilities, such as a robbery gone awry.
Hossam Armanious, 47, Amal Garas, 37, and their daughters Sylvia, 15, and Monica, 8, were found dead in their Oakland Avenue home early Friday after family members alerted police that nobody had heard from them in days.
First Assistant Hudson County Prosecutor Guy Gregory declined to discuss any details of the case, other than to confirm that police have ruled out a dispute the family had with a former tenant as a possible motive. He cautioned against speculating about the motive behind the murders.
"This is a very delicate investigation and one where we have spent hours at the scene collecting evidence and with the evidence collection complete, we're moving to bring in people that we feel need to be interviewed," Gregory said. "It's unfortunate that people are speculating."
But as the theory spread that revenge and religion were the driving forces behind one of the most heinous murders in the county's long history, fear enveloped the city's Coptic community.
Friends, relatives and co-worshippers of the devout family spent much of Saturday wondering how the seemingly upstanding Armanious family could fall victim to such a shockingly brutal crime. Several spoke of Hossam Armanious' participation in heated discussions about the Islamic faith on the Paltalk.com messenger service and threats he received for expressing his views about the religion.
Milad Garas, an uncle of Amal Garas, said Saturday that he was told investigators are probing whether the killings could have been prompted in part by the chat sessions. He also pointed to a passage in the Muslim holy book, the Quran, that details how enemies should be killed - bound and their throats slit, an assertion that drew a rebuttal from some Islamic scholars, but was supported by others.
A translation of passage 47:4 of the Quran reads in part: "Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers [in fight], smite at their necks; At length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly [on them]."
"There is a very wide range of interpretation of that, and it depends on where people are in the spectrum," said Frederick M. Denny, a professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado and author of more than a dozen books on Islam. "If they were going toward the extremist side, it could lead someone to believe it is justified. ... There are those that take that [passage] quite literally."
The close-knit Coptic community promised protests if the religious revenge theory proves accurate.
"If it turns out they were killed for religion, then we will [protest]," said Ayman Garas, Amal's younger brother. "We have to be patient, we can't do anything stupid. ... But it looks like it is religion, maybe."
The Armanious family moved to the United States from Egypt in part to escape religious persecution. Hossam Armanious had sensed a rise in anti-Christian extremism and wanted to make a better life for his family in America, Ayman Garas said.
"What I really want to know is: How?'' he said. "We just can't believe it at this point. Everything has passed like a dream."
The details of what may have been said in the chat sessions were not known Saturday night.
Fred Ayad, deacon of the couple's St. George Coptic Orthodox Church, said that the entire community was in a "panic" over the apparent targeting of the family, as well as the murders of a Coptic deacon in December and a Coptic cabdriver in late 2003.
Prosecutor Gregory said the conjecture about the murders is hampering his office's investigation, which he said has been exhaustive.
Copts are Egyptian Christians, a minority group of about 6 million in a nation of 60 million, and have been killed in religious rioting and during attacks on Christian churches by Islamic militants. Coptic leaders also say they lack representation in the Egyptian government and are treated like second-class citizens.
Over the past decade, Copts have increasingly immigrated to the United States. Currently, they number about 1 million in this country. Coptic Orthodox churches are scattered throughout the nation and, while there is no official count, Coptic Web sites list about 10 large congregations in New Jersey and about 20 in the tri-state area.
Islamic leaders said Saturday that the murders could not have been the work of someone inspired by the Quran.
"We are not a bloody people," said Ahmed Shedeed, director of the Islamic Center of Jersey City. "This is not from the Quran. This is not from Islam at all."
Shedeed, who is Egyptian, said his group recently co-founded a social service organization with local Coptic churches, called Egyptian Family.
"We are trying to get religious leaders from both communities to meet on a monthly basis to break the ice between the people," he said. "We meet as individuals, but as organizations we never have done such a thing. We are trying to show that Egyptians together can benefit."
Shedeed said that as part of that effort, he attended Christmas Eve services at St. George's this year.
Asked about passages in the Quran that may suggest murdering non-believers in a manner that resembles the family's deaths, he replied, "The Quran talks about people fighting in the battle of war. It's not talking about people who live next to you. ... This has nothing to do with our community at all."
"The Quran stands very firmly against taking human life," said noted Islamic author Zayn Kassam, chairwoman of the religious studies department of Pomona College in California. "If someone read a verse and used it to justify the killing of four people, I believe that person is unbalanced. ... There are very few Muslims who would support this sort of thing."
On Saturday, the family received mourners at the church, as friends left lighted candles and flowers in front of the home. Neighbors talked of an exhaustive police investigation, with a former Armanious tenant, Nelly Ramirez, saying police had questioned her, her son and her son's girlfriend.
Meanwhile, friends of Sylvia, a high school sophomore who would have turned 16 on Saturday, lingered in front of the house, alternately crying and laughing. They talked of an extremely gifted teen who recently won a trip to Italy from the National Honor Society for a series of essays she wrote on topics such as Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.
"She used to write all the time," said her friend Jankil Patel, 15. "She used to go to church all the time. ... She'd debate people in class and even had a religious tattoo on her [right wrist]."
"She had a lot of friends; she was very popular," said Jessica Cimino, 15, another friend. Cimino and the other girls said they plan to attend the family funeral on Monday and wear T-shirts bearing Sylvia's image to school on Tuesday.
Ayman and Milad Garad and other family members were allowed into the crime scene for the first time on Saturday morning to gather the needed paperwork for the cemetery. They left the home with a briefcase and several other items, including a tank with several small turtles inside.
Staff Writer Kathleen Carroll contributed to this story. E-mail: troncone@northjersey.com
Here is the latest 'PC spin'...(I don't believe this for one minute)
Robbery motive eyed in murder of family
http://www.nj.com/news/jjournal/index.ssf?/base/news-3/1105956700218052.xml
(snipet)
Refuting other media reports, investigators said yesterday that religious extremism may not have been the cause of last week's grisly slaying of a family of four in the Jersey City Heights.
The possibility remains that the slayings came during a robbery, Hudson County First Assistant Prosecutor Guy Gregory said yesterday.
He said reports that jewelry was not taken from the home were incorrect; in fact, there was no cash or jewelry found in the Oakland Avenue home, he said.
In addition, autopsies have revealed that the victims - Hossam Armanious, 47; his wife, Amal Garas, 37; and their two children, 15-year-old Sylvia Armanious, and 9-year-old Monica Armanious - bled to death from puncture wounds to their heads, necks and bodies, not from slit throats, as was previously reported.
"Their throats were not slashed. These were puncture wounds," Gregory said.
The bound and gagged bodies were found early Friday morning after frantic relatives, unable to contact them for several days, called police. Investigators believe the family, which immigrated to the United States from Luxor, Egypt, in 1997, may have been killed on Tuesday.
Officials were quick to dispel recent television and newspaper reports linking the slayings to Hossam Armanious' involvement in an online religious chat group. According to those reports, Armanious, a member of the St. George & St. Shenouda Coptic Orthodox Church, had been threatened by a Muslim for proselytizing in Internet chat groups frequented by Coptic Christians and Muslims.
Officials are also refuting a published report stating that the attackers made a gash through a tattoo of a cross on Sylvia Armanious' wrist.
"A lot of things are being reported (and) I think we have to be circumspect before assuming any motive in this case," said Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio, noting that they were working with the FBI on the case. "I don't think that anybody should jump to any conclusions as to motive. I don't think there has been anything definitive that has been established."
Not all muslims are terrorists.
Andrew Kramer is very confused. And his query for that chat room poster's address may be, in context, a death threat. Especially since it is followed by an oath.
=======================================
GLOBAL JIHAD
"If a kafir person (non-believer) goes in a Muslim country, he is like a cow," explains Hamza. "Anybody can take him. That is the Islamic law...I say the reality that's in the Muslim books anyway. Whether I say it or not, it's in the books." -Muslim cleric
| Posted: January 26, 2003 © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com In November, Sheik Abu Hamza, long affiliated with Finsbury Park, was caught on film urging his followers to kill non-Muslims – particularly Americans – and to commit other acts of terrorism As WorldNetDaily reported at the time, in a tape converted to digital files and smuggled onto the Internet, Hamza tells an audience that non-believers should be killed or sold into slavery. "If a kafir person (non-believer) goes in a Muslim country, he is like a cow," explains Hamza. "Anybody can take him. That is the Islamic law." "If a kafir is walking by and you catch him, he's booty," he says on one tape. "You can sell him in the market. Most of them are spies. And even if they don't do anything, if Muslims cannot take them and sell them in the market, you just kill them. It's OK." Praising the al-Qaida bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, Hamza adds: "If Muslims are having a war against these people, than yes, it is legitimate" to kill them. He also praised attacks against ships from non-Muslim countries: "If a ship which loses its way and comes to a Muslim land, they'll take it as booty."In fact, the 2000 terrorist attack on the USS Cole killed, which killed 17 American sailors, has been linked to Muslim militants in Britain. But Hamza has never been charged. When confronted with such charges, Hamza scoffs, saying he can't be accused of inciting people to commit violent acts because he's a cleric who only preaches Muslim law. "I say the reality that's in the Muslim books anyway. Whether I say it or not, it's in the books." Despite accusations he recruits for al-Qaida, Hamza's only punishment in Britain has been a High Court order banning him from preaching at the Finsbury Park mosque. However, when the Ottawa Citizen visited the mosque recently, worshippers had his phone number handy, the newspaper reported. Two of Hamza's devotees include failed suicide bombers Richard Reid - who tried to detonate a shoe bomb while flying from Paris to the US - and Zacharias Moussaoui, who the FBI claims was to have been the 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
|
"Pay no attention to our religious texts!" [And what's with the brackets crap?!] [Is the media trying to explain away Islam's "holy" writings?]
"There is a very wide range of interpretation of that, and it depends on where people are in the spectrum," said Frederick M. Denny, a professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado and author of more than a dozen books on Islam."
Yeah, right. We know where Mohammed stood on the spectrum. And the religion's named after him.
Time for the Copts to start carrying. I sure as hell would be, legally or otherwise.
ping
Here's another thread (article from the Daily News) on the "robbery" angle.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1322319/posts
It also mentions (which mewzilla noted) that a family member was working on the Lynne Stewart trial. She is being tried along with two others (one of them being her Egyptian translator, I believe) for smuggling messages for the crazy blind sheik.
Severed head story not terror related
http://www.app.com/app/story/0,21625,1177950,00.html
Hazlet man's death ruled a suicide
HAZLET: Authorities are investigating the apparent suicide of a 50-year-old Union Beach man, whose body was discovered behind the Hazlet Multiplex Cinemas theater on Saturday.
Wolfgang Persieck's body was found inside his car, which was parked in an isolated area behind the theater on Route 35 about 10 p.m. Saturday, authorities said.
While the official cause of death remained under investigation on Sunday, investigators found several notes at the scene indicated that Persieck intended to commit suicide, Monmouth County Prosecutor John A. Kaye said.
It appeared that Persieck decapitated himself by tying one end of a rope to a light post and the other end to his neck, before pressing the accelerator in his car, Kaye said.
Two juveniles who were walking in the parking lot a short time later found the body and the car. The two then stopped Holmdel Officer David D'Arcy, who was driving his patrol car through the theater lot, Kaye said.
After an investigation, which included interviews with his family and a review of the notes in the car, authorities determined the death a suicide.
Hazlet Detective Sgt. Howard Nuss, along with investigators from the prosecutor's office, conducted the investigation.
All I will say is, Anytime, Anyplace.
Does'nt even a muslimjew(is there such a creature?)know not to mess with Texas?
My aunt lives in Holmdel, has lived there all her life. It used to be a quiet little farming community . . .
Definitely one for the record books!
Not all muslims are terrorists.
Andrew Kramer is very confused. And his query for that chat room poster's address may be, in context, a death threat. Especially since it is followed by an oath."
No, Andrew Kramer is a false name.
His real e-mail address is chebkhaledfan1 at yahoo.com.
He sent the e-mail to his false name, then sent it to me as "noname".
I disagree that all Muslims are not terrorists.
As long as they believe in the Quran, and as long as they make no attempt to stop the terrorists acts from their fellow believers, they're terrorists.
This is not a chat line. I don't go to chat lines.
I do think the e-mail was a veiled threat, but he has no idea who he is threatening.
If you're reading this chebkhaled fan, bring it on.
ALL Muslims are terrorists.
Some of them pull the trigger, detonate the bomb belt, or slit the throats. The ones that do not, serve as a support system, cheer them on, and recieve them warmly.
ALL Muslims are terrorists.
The house was full of jewelry and it's now supposed to be a burglary? And now they were only bound, gagged and "punctured" to death, so that makes it much better?
Uh-huh. I think the police are hearing enough outrage from the community that they are struggling to stay on top of keeping order.
Here's a suggestion for their consideration. Lying to the public isn't going to help that effort.
On Fox just now for the first time I've heard all morning
Expect many hundred of mourners at funerals. Continuing to report about his debating Muslims on the chatroom, repeating about the chicken threats, Said the family reported a burglary last year. Supposedly now the fathers wallet and the daughters purse was taken.
Yes, now they are indicating that the cut on the daughter's wrist was defensive. The link to the Lynne Stewart trial is wierd though.
Perhaps I should say the wallet and purse are now missing.
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