Posted on 07/07/2002 1:19:17 AM PDT by kattracks
Authorities are investigating whether Hesham Mohammed Hadayet, the Egyptian who gunned down two people at Los Angeles International Airport last Thursday, met in the United States with Osama bin Laden's deputy, an Arabic paper reported at the weekend.
The London-based Al-Hayat said that authorities were checking whether Hadayet had met with Ayman Al-Zawahiri in 1995 and again in 1998, while the latter was head of the Al-Jihad organization in Egypt.
Al-Zawahiri, who visited California in 1998, went on to become bin Laden's right-hand man. His current whereabouts are unknown.
Hadayet, 41, was shot dead by an El Al security official soon after opening fire on the crowd of people queuing at the ticket counter of Israel's national carrier.
The U.S. government had started deportation proceedings in 1996 against Hadayet but he gained U.S. residency the following year when his wife received a valid visa, officials said Saturday.
It wasn't clear what caused the Immigration and Naturalization Service to reject Hadayet's first petition for residency and begin the deportation process, INS spokesman Francisco Arcaute said.
A year later, in 1997, Hadayet was granted permanent resident status because his wife, Hala, had become a permanent resident, Arcaute said. The INS allows foreign nationals to work and live in the United States if they have a relative who is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.
Hadayet's uncle, Hassan Mostaffa Mahfouz, told The Associated Press in Egypt that Hadayet was happy in the United States and had only about a year remaining before he qualified for U.S. citizenship.
"I don't believe what happened," Mahfouz said.
The two people killed in the attack at El Al's ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport were identified as Ya'akov Aminov, 47, and El Al stewardess Vicky Chen, both of them residents of Los Angeles, Israel Radio reported Friday morning. (Click here for more on the victims.)
Egypt FM surprised at furor over El Al shooting
Egypt's foreign minister expressed surprise Saturday at the furor over a deadly attack by an Egyptian national at Los Angeles airport, saying the motives were still unclear and similar incidents occurred frequently.
Egypt's official Middle East News Agency (MENA) said Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher told reporters in Cairo that such incidents occur repeatedly in the United States and other countries and said he was surprised by the exaggeration of this event in particular.
"Until now, nobody knows the motives behind this incident. We have to await the outcome of the current investigations so that we can review them," MENA quoted Maher as saying.
Egypt's semi-official al-Ahram daily said Saturday that local security authorities had no information on record about Hadayet and there was no evidence he had any links to extremist activities when he lived in Egypt.
Ex-employee tells NY Times: Hadayet 'had hate for Israel'
In an interview to The New York Times published Saturday, a former employee of Hadayet that he "often heard his boss express virulent anti-Israeli sentiments."
Hadayet "had hate for Israel, for sure," Syrian-born Abdul Zahab told The New York Times. "He told me that the Israelis tried to destroy the Egyptian nation and the Egyptian population by sending prostitutes with AIDS to Egypt. He said that the two biggest drug dealers in New York are Israeli."
The FBI said Friday it had no indication suggesting that the attack was an act of terrorism, but said the gunman's motive was still unclear. (Click here for a look inside El Al security.)
"He was not on any FBI or FAA watch list," FBI agent Richard Garcia told a news conference. He added that authorities still had several days work to do "to determine whether this person acted in an act of terrorism."
"We have not determined whether he had any anti-Israeli views," Garcia said, adding that it was still "very difficult to determine the exact motive" for the shooting.
The FBI said earlier that Hadayet apparently was not connected to any terror organizations, and probably acted on his own.
And what of the non-distinctive distinction that maybe the killer was "depressed" rather than a terrorist? Do you think maybe those things aren't exactly mutually exclusive? That maybe well-adjusted clear-thinking people aren't going to throw their lives away for a fleeting moment of Pan-Arabic glory, but rather maybe the terrorist groups prey on the stupid, manipulatable, and depressed? For example, did Richard Reid strike anybody as a rocket-scientist type?
I could go on and on...
-Richard Garcia, FBI Special as-in-Olympics Agent
That speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what the FBI is saying at all.
A guy named Mooheab Kahn brought al-Zawahiri into the US under a false passport for a fud raiser for Bin Laden. The LA FBI has a huge file on this. The Orange County mosque is one of the largest in California and is very militant. BTW, Kahn kid Suhael used to work in the White House under Bush and was instrumental in organizing those Muslim photo ops in the rose garden with Bush after 911. When the USSS found out about Kahn’s family past it kind of when ballistic. So the kid now work at DOE as a PIO.
Yes just like the 1993 attack on the WTC was an isolated incident so the FBI was totally off-guard when it was attacked again in 2001.
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. It runs through Riyadh, too.
Hmmmm.....the tinfoil hatter in me is wondering if recent events indicate that it's now the turn of the Egyptian cells to take shot at the terrorism.
The all-too-real scenario is that this guy hoped to hijack the plane, etc.
It shouldn't be forgotten that 30 miles away at the exact same time Al-Hayat was shooting his way through LAX, a small plane was sending out three "Maydays" before it plowed into a crowd of picnickers.
Forty-eight hours later, the U.S. issues an alert, warning owners of small planes to be on the look-out for terrorists who would hijack or sabatoge their aircraft.
Vigilance.
So.... don't do drugs or visit prostitutes. It's probably easier to avoid drug dealers and pimps in Egypt than it is to avoid homicide bombers in Israel.
A livery service could be a great front for terrorism. Bosses and employees can come in contact with a certain (terrorist) segment of the public in a seemingly random pattern, which might sometimes be planned.
An item came over the radio yesterday and caught my attention: the gunman's wife and children were in Egypt at the time. They had left in June.
More circumstantial evidence that this was planned, if you ask me.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
