Posted on 10/17/2001 10:48:30 AM PDT by honway
Police: Student spoke of attacks before Sept. 11...
News/Current Events
Source: The Journal News
Published: 10-11-01 Author: JEFFREY SCOTT SHAPIRO
Posted on 10/11/01 10:37 AM Pacific by Demian
BROOKLYN — Authorities are tracking numerous leads that some people, including members of the Arab-American community, heard rumors of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in the days leading up to the hijackings, law enforcement sources say. "There have been leads where someone has alleged to have heard someone else boasting about how the attack was going to happen before it happened," said Jim Margolin, a spokesman for the FBI in Manhattan.
In Brooklyn, a high school freshman who recently immigrated from Pakistan was investigated by federal agents after his teacher reported that he had predicted the Trade Center's collapse a week before the towers were attacked.
The student pointed out a third-story window of New Utrecht High School toward the Trade Center and said, "Do you see those two buildings? They won't be standing there next week," according to three police sources and a city official familiar with the investigation. They said the comment came in the midst of a heated political discussion the student was having with his teacher in an English class for Arab-American students.
New York City Board of Education spokeswoman Catie Marshall confirmed that school officials reported the matter to police within minutes of the Sept. 11 attack.
The boy's teacher, Antoinette DeLorenzo, declined to comment, but students said that FBI agents and NYPD detectives descended on the school on Sept. 13 to interrogate the student and others in his class.
Brooke Lillman, a 15-year-old sophomore, said that when the news of the attack began circulating in the school, DeLorenzo locked her classroom door, fearing her students could be attacked by their peers.
A veteran city police detective familiar with the case said investigators have been learning that many people in New York's Arab-American community had heard rumors about the Sept. 11 attacks before they occurred.
The officer said the story "had been out on the street," and the number of leads turning up was so "overwhelming" that it was difficult to tell who had heard about the attacks from second-hand sources and who had heard it from someone who may have been a participant.
For example, since Sept. 11, various leads have been investigated regarding Middle Eastern employees who may not have shown up for work at the World Trade Center that morning.
One detective conducting such investigations in Brooklyn said they had become "a serious and major priority."
According to a recent report on the Sept. 11 attacks issued by the British government, intelligence sources have found that Osama bin Laden himself made comments before Sept. 11 that "he was preparing a major attack on America," and warned many of his associates to return to Afghanistan by Sept. 10. The report further states that known associates of bin Laden were naming Sept. 11 as a date of action.
Federal agents who visited the New Utrecht school questioned the student and his older brother, who also attends there, the sources said. Afterward, the agents tried to question their father, who chastised them for harassing his children, they said.
Police sources said that, after the interviews, the boy's father left for Pakistan. After his departure, investigators conducted a second interview with the boy and his mother, who told them that her son was having psychological problems.
The boy and his brother have returned to school, but police said the FBI discussed keeping them under surveillance.
School officials closed the school on Sept. 12, but FBI agents and city police combed the building the following day. They searched the backpacks and lockers of various students with Middle Eastern backgrounds, and spent several hours interviewing them in a locked room.
"There were cops all over the building," said Julian Sulaj, a 17-year old senior at the school. "It was security to the max."
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington, D.C., said Brooklyn has the largest population of Arab-Americans in New York City.
According to a federal indictment against bin Laden, FBI agents have linked the former Alkifah Refugee Center on Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue to the Saudi fugitive-exile's terrorist network, al-Qaida.
Isn't this just a coincidence?
Why? There was a Muslim cleric at the National Cathedral as I recall.
There are two possible explanations:
1. All the Muslims that missed work and school did so by coincidence.
2. Some missed work because there was a general warning sent through out the Muslim community that there would be an attack on 9-11.
The news accounts above support the latter. A statistical analysis of the unplanned absences of Muslims working around the World Trade Center would establish if all the absences were coincidence or not. I will never know one way or the other about my wife's co-worker.
Please see the link in reply#5 for OCT-DEC
It seems to me all these transactions are recorded somewhere. Anything that has to be reported to the IRS should have a paper trail.
You are absolutely 100% correct. Without the proper record keeping the entire system would collapse. They know exactly who made the short sell trades, but it has been decided that you and me do not need that information. I predict the Justice Department will not prosecute a single case related to the short selling.
Thanks for an informative post.
On September 11, school was canceled after the attack and again the following day. On Thursday September 13, a clearly agitated DiLorenzo, saying she had been afraid to come forward, reported the incident to the principal’s office. “It scared the hell out of everyone,” according to a source at the school.
The police and FBI were alerted and twelve NYPD officers entered the school and secured DiLorenzo’s classroom for three hours, locking the doors with the students inside. While the students were brought lunch and a movie and told to be calm, the youth in question and his older brother, a sophomore, were taken to be interrogated by the FBI, stationed at the police precinct nearby.
DiLorenzo, the key to the believability of this story, was also questioned. She was described by school officials as having a superb and unblemished record in the New York school system. A police source described her as “100 percent credible.”
Moreover, according to police, the youth confirmed having made the September 6 statement about the towers. At the moment he did so, his older brother elbowed him, said he had been “kidding,” and the youth in question agreed. The younger brother seemed upset and said he was “having a bad day.” When asked why, he said that his father was supposed to come back from Pakistan that day. Further details of the interrogation are unclear, in part because the FBI is not discussing it.
Because of the suspension of air travel, it took the father a few days to return. About a week after September 11, the father visited the school and angrily asked why his sons had been interrogated by the authorities. He said that his family’s constitutional rights had been violated.
FROM LINK IN #54
Our company had a memorial service 9/24/01. Two reverends, a rabbi, a cardinal, an imam and a bishop were scheduled to participate. When the imam's turn came up in the program, one of the reverends told us he had been called away to perform his duties for the NY police.
I wanted to hear what the imam had to say. It seems to me that the imam should have had someone else available as a substitute. I think he insulted us.
Btw, the cardinal was excellent.
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