Silly me!
I'll bet he/she's outraged by this...
Posted on 07/06/2002 8:34:50 AM PDT by kattracks
LOS ANGELES, Jul 06, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- The Egyptian immigrant who gunned down two people at Los Angeles International Airport drew little attention during the 10 years he lived in the United States. However, an INS spokesman said the man's first petition for permanent residency had been denied.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service rejected Hesham Mohamed Hadayet's request to remain in the country in February 1996, INS spokesman Ron Rogers said in Saturday's Orange County Register. It wasn't clear why.
The agency began deportation procedures, but in 1997, Hadayet was granted permanent residency through his wife, Hala, who received an immigration visa through the Department of States' Diversity Lottery Program, the Register and Los Angeles Times reported.
Hadayet's uncle, Hassan Mostaffa Mahfouz, told The Associated Press in Egypt that Hadayet had only about a year remaining before he qualified for citizenship and that he was happy in the United States.
"I don't believe what happened," Mahfouz said. "I felt that he could not do that."
Police files from Irvine, where Hadayet lived, show officers went to his apartment on a domestic dispute call six years ago, but he was not prosecuted. Nothing else in the files even hints at the violence he unleashed Thursday, on his 41st birthday.
The FBI said Hadayet went to the El Al counter intending to kill people, but his motive remained unclear Saturday.
Israeli officials said they would consider the attack an act of terror unless it was proven otherwise. But on Friday, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said, "There is no evidence, no indication at this time that this is terrorists."
FBI special agent Richard Garcia said it still wasn't known if Hadayet harbored anti-Israel feelings.
"Besides terrorism and such, we are also looking into the possibility of a hate crime. We're also looking into the possibility of the person being despondent," Garcia said.
Hadayet was the fourth person in line at the counter when he opened fire, authorities said. He fired 10 or 11 bullets before he was shot dead by an airline security guard.
Three other people were wounded, including a guard who was stabbed by Hadayet as he fought with the wounded gunman. FBI spokesman Matt McLaughlin said the guard will recover. A fourth bystander suffered heart trouble after the attack.
Hadayet was armed with a .45-caliber semiautomatic Glock pistol, a 9 mm handgun and a 6-inch knife. A law enforcement source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Hadayet had owned one of the guns "for years" and purchased the other a couple of months ago.
Abdul Zahav, a man who said he worked for Hadayet until he was fired two years ago, said Hadayet once told him he hated all Israelis.
"He kept all his anger inside him. So he can't hold it anymore, he can't hold it anymore," Zahav said.
Others painted a far different picture of Hadayet.
"He was never hateful or belligerent," said Dan Danilewicz, whose 17-year-old son was a friend of the Hadayet family. "I can't see him carrying a knife or gun into the airport. Nothing anti-American or anti-Semitic ever came out of their mouths."
Hadayet's wife and sons, Adam, 8, and Omar, 14, had left California for Egypt about a week before the shootings.
Relatives said Hadayet was a Cairo-born accountant who ran a limousine company out of his apartment. Mahfouz said Hadayet studied commerce at Ain Shams University in Cairo and worked as an accountant in a bank before leaving for the United States in 1992.
"He is a very, very tender person and close to his family," Mahfouz said.
Irvine police Lt. Dave Freedland said Hadayet had three contacts with the department since 1996 - all of them "unremarkable."
Police records show officers were called to the apartment on May 19, 1996, over a domestic dispute. They found Hadayet and his wife "had been involved in a physical confrontation." Police referred the case to the district attorney for potential assault-and-battery charges against both parties, but the office declined to prosecute.
The only other Irvine police files on Hadayet were when he was robbed in January 1997 while driving a cab at Orange County's John Wayne Airport, and when he was listed as a witness and victim in a fraud case reported last November.
Neighbors said Hadayet was quiet, but once became angry when an upstairs neighbor hung large American and Marine Corps flags from a balcony above his front door after the Sept. 11 attacks.
"He complained about it to the apartment manager. He thought it was being thrown in his face," neighbor Steve Thompson said.
There was no record of such a complaint, said Rich Elbaum, a spokesman for The Irvine Co., which owns the complex where Hadayet lived.
The flags were there the day of the shooting. A bumper sticker on Hadayet's front door that read "Read the Koran" was removed by authorities.
The FBI searched the apartment Thursday night, impounding a Toyota Camry, a computer, books, binders and other material.
Los Angeles officials, meanwhile, sought to assure the public that the city was safe.
"We have no information of any credible threats anywhere in the city of Los Angeles," Mayor James Hahn told reporters outside police headquarters.
By ANDREW BRIDGES Associated Press Writer
Copyright 2002 Associated Press, All rights reserved
Nothing to see hear folks. Just a little misunderstanding about ticket reservations. It's all squared away now. Move along. Let's keep keep moving.
She likely had a travel permit, and she'll probably come back. If she happens to have a new Jihadi husband, the INS can piggy-back him on her permanent residency and give him legal status, too.
Obviously, family reunification outweighed any possible threat Hayadet may have posed.
One of Hadayet's relatives tried to blame the shooting on an unpaid fare.
Where does this insanity stop? I wonder how the families of the casualties feel upon reading this?
Silly me!
I'll bet he/she's outraged by this...
The quote of the day, month, and year, Jeff. We should all have bumper stickers that say this.
Now it's very clear.
The agency began deportation procedures, but...
There are thousands of illegals here who have been officially deported, "but".....The INS better clean out this nest of hornets NOW or lose their jobs NOW.
the Department of States look out for the U.N not America!!!!!
Diversity! Sacred Diversity!
Now they have a lottery for it? You have to admit, terrorists do add "diversity" to our culture. So, I guess it's worth it.
Come to think of it, headhunters seem under-represented here. I hope the INS includes them in the Diversity Lottery Program too.
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 DEBKAfile’s 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 copilot’s 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 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.
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. 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.
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.
DEBKAfile’s Middle East intelligence sources report that early Friday, Egyptian intelligence officers picked up Hadayat’s relatives and associates in Cairo, to try and trace the identities of his fellows in the American Jihad cell.
It is always amazing to see the liberal policy of diversity bring forth the only results we can logically expect.
Stay well - stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown
"Wait... that's our policy now!"
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