Posted on 07/08/2002 9:47:41 AM PDT by Fithal the Wise
Hesham Mohamed Hadayat was no stranger to El Als Los Angeles airport office.
According to DEBKAfiles counter-terror sources, the man who murdered two Israelis on the El Al ticket line at Los Angeles airport on July 4th worked for the American Mercury ground service company from 1993 (one year after he arrived in the US) until 1998, when he left to set up his own limousine service for air passengers. Exactly what he did at Mercury is vague, but during his five years in their employ, this former bank clerk from Cairo was free to move around Los Angeles international airport. Our sources reveal that during that time, he aroused the suspicions of El Al security personnel who warned airport security. When no action was taken, they put him under surveillance. El Al asked Mercury to rearrange Hadayats shifts for periods when none of its planes were scheduled, which Mercury agreed to do After the 4th of July attack, in order not to clash directly with the US authorities which refused to identify it as a terrorist assault, El Al and Israeli security spokesmen said that even if the Egyptian gunman was not a proven member of a terrorist group, his crime ranked as an act of terror.
However, Sunday, July 7 the influential Arabic London-based Al Hayat followed the original DEBKAfile disclosure of July 5 - that Hadayat was a member of the Egyptian Jihad Islami - and took it a step further. According to the Arabic paper, the Egyptian gunman met Dr. Ayman Zuwahri, the Jihad Islami chief who is Osama bin Ladens deputy, twice in California once in 1995 and again in 1998.
According to DEBKAfiles sources, it was at that second encounter that Hadayat was told to leave his job with Mercury and given capital to set up his small limousine firm, so as to take advantage of his access to airport facilities and airline personnel contacts, while at the same time shaking off any watchers.
The Al Hayat report places Dr. Zuwahri in California unobserved less than three years before the 9/11 hijacking attacks in America and a year and a half before the Egyptair disaster.
The Hadayat family lives in Cairo. His father, a retired Egyptian army general, and his uncle, a former minister of science, admit that Hesham was a fervent Muslim who did what he could to encourage everyone to read the Koran. They say he was happy in Irvine, California. His neighbors in that Los Angeles suburb tell a different story, that he hated Israelis and Jews and asked one of them to take down the American and US Marine flags put up after 9/11.
From all the foregoing, our counter-terror experts cite Hesham Hadayat as a classical a Qaeda plant. He was positioned at Los Angeles airport in the early 1990s to bide his time for the right moment to carry out a terrorist attack against an El Al flight. When Hayats handlers saw he was under observation, they made him lower profile. His assignment was revised to fit his role as a limousine driver familiar to the Tom Bradley terminal staff and free to move around - namely to shoot down a line of passengers waiting to board an El Al flight.
Although from 1994 or 1995 at the latest, Hadayat was brought to the notice of American security, was under the eye of El Al security, and the Egyptian authorities must have known about him, he was never investigated - even after 9/11. The FBI has admitted he figured on no watch list for terrorists. This left him perfectly free to carry out his mission on behalf of the extremist Islamic organization all of which raises some hard questions about the way in which the war against terror is carried out in the United States.
They've been caught making it up one time too many for my taste.
Independent and reliable source.
Sorry, but Islamist propaganda does not count.
From the Ha'aretz story about the info in Al-Hayat:
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.
I think it's becoming clearer...
Description
Egyptian Islamic extremist group active since the late 1970s. Close partner of Bin Ladin's al-Qaida organization. Suffered setbacks as a result of numerous arrests of operatives worldwide, most recently in Lebanon and Yemen. Primary goals are to overthrow the Egyptian Government and replace it with an Islamic state and attack US and Israeli interests in Egypt and abroad.
Activities
Specializes in armed attacks against high-level Egyptian Government personnel, including cabinet ministers, and car-bombings against official US and Egyptian facilities. The original Jihad was responsible for the assassination in 1981 of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Claimed responsibility for the attempted assassinations of Interior Minister Hassan al-Alfi in August 1993 and Prime Minister Atef Sedky in November 1993. Has not conducted an attack inside Egypt since 1993 and has never targeted foreign tourists there. Responsible for Egyptian Embassy bombing in Islamabad in 1995; in 1998, planned attack against US Embassy in Albania was thwarted.
Strength
Not known but probably has several hundred hard-core members.
Location/Area of Operation
Operates in the Cairo area. Has a network outside Egypt, including Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Lebanon, and the United Kingdom.
External Aid
Not known. The Egyptian Government claims that both Iran and Bin Ladin support the Jihad. Also may obtain some funding through various Islamic nongovernmental organizations, cover businesses, and criminal acts.
The Egyptian government, whose insistence for many years that Islamic terrorism had become global fell on deaf ears, informed Western intelligence services several years ago that al-Zawahiri travelled with French and Swiss passports in the name of Amin Othman. He is also understood to have a Dutch passport in the name of Sami Mahmoud el-Hifnawi in the early 1990s when he apparently travelled extensively in Western Europe, living at various times in Switzerland and Denmark. Al- Jihad members testified during the 1999 trial in Egypt that he had entered the USA in 1995 using the alias Dr Abdel Moez and while there raised funds used to finance the attack on the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad. According to Londons Guardian newspaper, the US House of Representatives judiciary subcommittee on immigration was told by a counterterrorism expert in January 2000 that al-Zawahiri was one of several Islamic militants who had been granted green card status by the US Immigration Service. Al-Zawahiri seems to have had vastly more experience in clandestine operations than Bin Laden
This good enough??
Fine. Zawahiri came to America. That doesn't prove a meeting between these guys. And Janes' overall value has gone in an inverse direction from its price.
DEBKA has made stuff up one time too many for my taste.
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Now we place in Zawahiri in the US in 1995....next we flesh out what cities he visited....
When the connection is found I will ping you..
"In the early 1900's al-Zawahiri made two visits to the United States, and he came to United States (sic) to help raise funds for the Egyptian Islamic Jihad."
Cited in "American Jihad" by Steven Emerson.
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