Posted on 07/05/2002 10:51:40 AM PDT by knak
CAIRO: The father of Egyptian gunman Hisham Mohammed Hadayet who opened fire at a check-in counter of Israeli carrier El Al in Los Angeles was a general in Egypt's army, his neighbors said Friday.
The former general, Ahmad Ali Hadayet, lives in the family household in the central Abbassiya district in Cairo, an AFP reporter said.
The information was confirmed by security sources here, but the family refused to talk to reporters.
On Thursday, Hisham Hadayet opened fire at the check-in counter of Israel's national airline El Al killing a 20-year-old female clerk and a middle-aged man, before being shot dead himself by an El Al security agent.
"I have known Hisham for several years. He was a normal person, he was religious but did not go often to the mosque," one of his neighbors said, requesting anonymity.
Hadayet's wife and two children returned to Egypt in June, security sources said. They added that his wife has been questioned, without elaborating.
FBI officials said that Hadayet was on their watch list, without saying why. They added he had lived in the United States since 1992 and worked as a limousine driver.
Egyptian officials kept mum Friday after the FBI revealed one of their fellow nationals carried out the Los Angeles attack. Officials at the interior ministry refused to comment when questioned by reporters.
Lawyer Montasser al-Zayet, who defends Egyptian Islamists in court, said Hadayet was not known to be a member of any Islamist movement.
DEBKAfiles Counter-Terror Sources:
Hadayat Belonged to Egyptian Jihad, al Qaedas Operational Arm
5 July: 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 DEBKAfiles 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, 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 copilots 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 Egypts 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 boards 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. Hadayats 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 Qaedas 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. DEBKAfiles Middle East intelligence sources report that early Friday, Egyptian intelligence officers picked up Hadayats relatives and associates in Cairo, to try and trace the identities of his fellows in the American Jihad cell.
DEBKAfiles Counter-Terror Sources:
Hadayat Belonged to Egyptian Jihad,
al Qaedas Operational Arm
5 July: 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 DEBKAfiles 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, 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 copilots 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 Egypts 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 boards 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.
Hadayats 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 Qaedas 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.
DEBKAfiles Middle East intelligence sources report that early Friday, Egyptian intelligence officers picked up Hadayats relatives and associates in Cairo, to try and trace the identities of his fellows in the American Jihad cell.
__________________________________
This article from the Times of India states that the guy was on the FBI watch list. But the FBI, in a news conference today, denied it and our media is not reporting it. Of course, I find it highly suspicious that the news media witheld the identity of the gunman for over 8 hours.
It is still terrorism. There are undoubtedly many terrorist sympathizers or jihadists who would be what we consider "loners". The call went out and this guy responded, possibly acting alone.
How many more are out there awaiting a chance to strike? All the 4th of July terrorist hype possibly solidified in this guy's mind, and he went into action. Subliminal thing possibly.
I just watched an MSNBC live press conference with a Special Agent Garcia, head of the L.A. criminal investigations unit for the FBI and the FBI lead guy for the LAX terrorist attack. Special agent Garcia struck me as being illiterate and unable to think straight. He's in charge; we're in trouble.
The shooting at the El Al counter in Los Angeles International Airport's Bradley Terminal did not come as a surprise to the security establishment, even if it turns out that the background to the shooting was not terrorism. The scenario that unfolded yesterday at the airport - a gunman suddenly shooting at passengers boarding a flight to Israel - is one of the most practiced by the security forces specializing in airline security.
The high level of security was not necessarily based on pinpoint intelligence. It was enough to hear statements made by al-Qaida spokesmen in recent months and to add them to the date - July 4 - to understand that Israeli facilities overseas, particularly in the U.S., were being targeted.
( Attack on boarding passengers - El Al's most practiced scenario! )
There are some nuggets in this report though!
You poor thing, Shermy! I know how that is ... extremely taxing on the ol' patience sometimes, eh?
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An egyptian approaches the El Al counter on July 4 with two guns and a knife. (It is obvious that this guy is not there to buy a ticket)
It turns out he was friends with the Egyptair co-pilot who ditched an airliner with extreme prejudice into the Atlantic a few years ago. (A fellow jihadist)
The authorities delay identifying the perp. (What is going on here? Don't want to alarm the sheeple?)
There is some word that this guy was on an FBI watch list. (He should have been, in any case).
Sorry folks, this has terrorist suicide attack written all over it. Anyone who approaches an El-Al counter armed is basically committing suicide. Add up the other factors and you have another battle in the war on terrorism. Unfortunately we lost this one too, 3-1.
We must remember that the call went out by the jihadists. I think they have hopes that loner types will respond. That's what they are hoping for imo.
If he was hired and promoted during Jake Reno's deballing of the Former Bureau of Investigation and replacing good agents with PC pink silk panty wearing PC/Diversity agents/management, you saw the result of Jake and 8 years on the Former Bureau of Investigation.
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