Friends and former teachers of Truman High School graduate Omer Choudhary, one of three Muslim medical students detained last week in Florida, have offered encouragement and support in recent days, his father says.
"Many teachers have called, many high school classmates," said Javed Choudhary of Independence. "The support has been very positive."
Even though authorities eventually released Omer Choudhary and his colleagues, the hospital where they planned to continue their studies said they were no longer welcome there. An administrator of Larkin Community Hospital in Miami said the decision was made after the hospital received scores of hostile e-mails.
An alternate placement has been found for the three, but Omer Choudhary's former teachers and friends at the University of Missouri-Columbia are drafting a letter to ask Larkin officials to reconsider their decision.
"These three students were barred from entry even though the hospital was fully aware at the time that they had done no wrong, with the flimsy excuse that they couldn't protect them, or that there might be harm done to the hospital," said Miriam Golumb, an associate professor of biological sciences.
"This is pretty unprecedented."
The student she remembers from a genetics course does not at all resemble any terrorist profile, Golumb added.
"Omer is very kind and considerate, a gentle person," she said.
Omer Choudhary graduated from Truman High in Independence in 1997. At Truman High he was a member of the science club, the men's choir and the school's American Field Service club.
"He was a nice young man, a gentleman," said Molly Clemons, a former assistant principal at Truman High.
"I never dealt with him for any discipline problems. He raised no waves whatsoever. When I saw him on TV, I said, `I cannot believe this.' What he was being accused of, that is not Omer at all."
Choudhary graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia in May 2001 with a bachelor's degree in biological sciences.
One of his former professors called Choudhary's father Monday night to offer support for his son, Javed Choudhary said.
"He said that he was very upset and that Omer had been a student of good character and had never caused any trouble," Choudhary said.
Javed Choudhary, who grew up in Pakistan, came to the United States in 1971 to attend radiology technological school. Almost 11 years ago, he left a job in Detroit to take a position as a radiological technologist at Truman Medical Center.
He is not surprised by the outpouring of support from friends and neighbors, Choudhary said.
"I love the community. That is why I have been here almost 11 years," he said.
Choudhary has two other children, who also graduated from Truman High. A daughter attends the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and a second son is enrolled in an area community college.
Though he has spoken to Omer often in the last few days, Javed Choudhary is unclear about his son's immediate academic future.
Omer Choudhary, with two other Muslim medical students, recently completed medical training at Ross University in Dominica, an island in the Caribbean.
They were on their way to Larkin Community Hospital for further training late last week when they were stopped by police on Interstate 75 in Florida. Authorities were acting on a tip from a woman who said she heard the men make alarming references to the Sept. 11 attacks while eating at a Calhoun, Ga., restaurant.
In an interview Monday on CNN's "Larry King Live," Omer Choudhary suggested that the woman misconstrued comments such as "bring it down" to mean the men planned to blow something up. In fact, Choudhary said, the discussion involved possibly transporting a car from Kansas City to Florida.
The Kansas City Star could not reach Omer Choudhary on Tuesday.
The three men were detained for 17 hours Friday. Authorities searched their cars for explosives but found none.
Ross University has placed the three students elsewhere, Javed Choudhary said.
"They were only supposed to be in Miami for three months," he said. "After that, they were going to go to another hospital. Now, with all this commotion, they will be going to a different place, a different hospital."
Choudhary doesn't know the precise location.
"We don't know. The school has said that they have made other arrangements, but I don't know myself."
I don't think I've ever read that Moussaoui was arrested in Missouri. I thought he was in Minnesota?
Why Al-Qa'ida fights America
Al-Qa'ida spokesman explains September 11 and declares intentions to kill 4 Million Americans with weapons of mass destruction.
By the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East, June 12, 2002
Al-Qa'ida spokesman Suleiman Abu Gheith, originally from Kuwait, recently posted a three-part article titled "In the Shadow of the Lances" on the website of the Center for Islamic Research and Studies, www.alneda.com. Following numerous hacking attempts after the international media reported that the site was linked to Al-Qa'ida, its address was changed to
http://66.34.191.223.
Recently, the site published an article by Ayman Al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy and leader of the Egyptian Jihad organization. However, the Saudi London-based Arabic-daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported that the article had already appeared in the Al-Mujahiddeen publication (Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), June 7, 2002). The following are excerpts from Abu Gheith's article:
Part I: Why We Fight the U.S.
"...Perhaps the [Islamic] nation is waiting for one Al-Qa'ida man to come out and clear up the many questions that accompany any communique, message, or picture [concerning September 11], to know the truth, the motives, and the goals behind the conflict with the Hubal [one of the pre-Islamic Ka'ba idols - referring to the U.S.] of our generation..."
"Why is the world surprised?! Why were millions of people astounded by what happened to America on September 11? Did the world think that anything else would happen? That something less than this would happen?!"
"What happened to America is something natural, an expected event for a country that uses terror, arrogant policy, and suppression against the nations and the peoples, and imposes a single method, thought, and way of life, as if the people of the entire world are clerks in its government offices and employed by its commercial companies and institutions."
"Anyone who was surprised, and did not expect [the events of September 11] did not [understand] the nature of man, and the effects of oppression and tyranny on man's emotions and feelings. They thought that oppression begets surrender, that repression begets silence, that tyranny only leaves humiliation. Perhaps they also thought that this [oppressive] atmosphere is sufficient to kill man's virility, shatter his will, and uproot his honor. These people erred twice: once when they ignored [the consequences of] treating man with contempt, and again when they were unaware of man's ability to triumph."
"This goes for every man - let alone when the man in question is of those who believe in Allah, in Islam as a religion, and in Muhammad as Prophet and Messenger, and anyone who knows that his religion is unwilling to allow him to be inferior and refuses to allow him to be humiliated."
The Entire Earth Must Be Subjected to Islam
"How can [he] possibly [accept humiliation and inferiority] when he knows that his nation was created to stand at the center of leadership, at the center of hegemony and rule, at the center of ability and sacrifice? How can [he] possibly [accept humiliation and inferiority] when he knows that the [divine] rule is that the entire earth must be subject to the religion of Allah - not to the East, not to the West - to no ideology and to no path except for the path of Allah?..."
"As long as this Muslim knows and believes in these facts, he will not - even for a single moment - stop striving to achieve it, even if it costs him his soul... his time, his property, and his son, as it is said, 'Say [to the believers]: If your fathers and your sons and your brethren and your wives and your kinsfolk and the worth you have acquired and the trade, the dullness of which you apprehend, and the dwellings that you fancy are dearer to you than Allah and His Messenger, and striving in His cause, then wait until Allah issues His judgment. Allah guides not the disobedient people...'" (Koran 9:24)
Part II: The Blow Against the U.S. Will Come from Where Least Expected
"...The [premises] on which we base ourselves as an organization, and on which we base our operations and our method of action, are practical and realistic... They are also scientific and [in accordance with] Islamic religious law, and they give us confidence and certainty... In writing them and in [publicly] revealing them, I do not intend to be apologetic for what was done; I lay [these arguments] before you so as to emphasize that we are continuing with our blows against the Americans and the Jews, and with attacking them, both people and installations [so as to stress] that what awaits the Americans will not, Allah willing, be less than what has already happened to them. America must prepare itself; it must go on maximum alert; ... because, Allah willing, the blow will come from where they least expect it..."
"America is the head of heresy in our modern world, and it leads an infidel democratic regime that is based upon separation of religion and state and on ruling the people by the people via legislating laws that contradict the way of Allah and permit what Allah has prohibited. This compels the other countries to act in accordance with the same laws in the same ways... and punishes any country [that rebels against these laws] by besieging it, and then by boycotting it. By so doing, [America] seeks to impose on the world a religion that is not Allah's..."
"America, with the collaboration of the Jews, is the leader of corruption and the breakdown [of values], whether moral, ideological, political, or economic corruption. It disseminates abomination and licentiousness among the people via the cheap media and the vile curricula."
"America is the reason for all oppression, injustice, licentiousness, or suppression that is the Muslims' lot. It stands behind all the disasters that were caused and are still being caused to the Muslims; it is immersed in the blood of Muslims and cannot hide this."
"For 50 years in Palestine, the Jews - with the blessing and support of the Americans - carried out abominations of murder, suppression, abuse, and exile... The Jews exiled nearly 5 million Palestinians and killed nearly 260,000. They wounded nearly 180,000, and crippled nearly 160,000."
"Due to the American bombings and siege of Iraq, more than 1,200,000 Muslims were killed in the past decade. Due to the siege, over a million children are killed [annually] - that is 83,333 children on average per month, 2,777 children on average per day. 5,000 Iraqis were killed in one day in the Al-'Amiriya shelter alone. Are these statistics of military installations???!!!!"
"In its war against the Taliban and Al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan, America has killed 12,000 Afghan civilians and 350 Arab Jihad fighters, among them women and children. It annihilated entire families from among the Arab Jihad fighters while they were in their cars, when the American Air Force bombed [them] with helicopters and anti-tank missiles, until nothing remained of some of them except scattered body parts."
"In Somalia, America killed 13,000 Somalis and [its soldiers] carried out acts of abomination on [Somali] boys and women."
Muslims Have Suffered from the U.S.'s Standing with Christians
"America's standing with the Christians of the world against the Muslims has stripped the camouflage from its face. Much can be said about this regarding the Sudan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Kashmir, Macedonia, Bosnia, and other tragedies. America's siege on the Islamic countries as punishment for their rebellion against its laws has transgressed all limits, and Muslims have suffered economic losses that outstrip the imagination."
"After all this, is it forbidden for a victim to escape when he is tied and brought to the slaughterhouse?!! Is he not entitled, while he is being slaughtered, to stamp his feet?!!..."
"After all this, some [Arab regimes] shed crocodile tears for what happened to the country of heresy [America], and tried to exonerate Islam from what happened to [America] and asked the country of heresy to treat the Muslims sensitively and gently, and sent messengers and broadcasters to the Jihad fighters with a request to stop fighting Hubal [i.e. meaning the U.S.]. Do they really think we would do this?!"
"No, by Allah. They [the Arab regimes] have turned their back on us and we have turned our back on them... We would have no honor if we did not avenge the blood of our brothers in Palestine, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and everywhere."
"... The banner is being waved openly, and now there is 'only a trench of belief' and 'a trench of heresy.'"
Part III: The Islamic Justification for Al-Qa'ida's Jihad Against the U.S.
"The religious arguments on which we base ourselves in our Jihad against the Americans - the explanations that inspire us with confidence in the triumph of our religion, our belief, and our faith - are many, and this is not the place to enumerate them, as they are included in the books of the sages."
"No one disagrees with these explanations, except he who lives [in] fear ... he who asks for shelter, thinking that he has distanced himself from evil ... or he who kneels as a doorman before the doors of the tyrants to gain a position, advancement, or a gift!!"
"These people have not, Allah be praised, dissuaded us, not even for a single day, from continuing in our path, from our Jihad, and from our mission. Allah willing, they will not prevent us [in the future]."
"In this article I will present one explanation that suffices [to wage] Jihad against the Americans, the Jews, and anyone who has gone in their path..."
"Allah said, 'He who attacked you, attack him as he attacked you,' and also, 'The reward of evil is a similar evil,' and also, 'When you are punished, punish as you have been punished.'"
"The words of the sages on these verses are clear: Ibn Taimiyya [in his book] Al Ikhtiyarat Wa-Al-Fatawi; Ibn Al-Qayim in I'lam Al-Muqi'in and in Al-Hashiya; Al-Qurtubi in his Tafsir, Al-Nawawi in Al-Muhazab; Al-Shukani in Nayl Al-Awtar; and others, may Allah's mercy be upon them."
"Anyone who peruses these sources reaches a single conclusion: The sages have agreed that the reciprocal punishment to which the verses referred is not limited to a specific instance. It is a valid rule for punishments for infidels, for the licentious Muslims, and for the oppressors."
Islamic Law Allows Reciprocation against the U.S. "If by religious law it is permitted to punish a Muslim [for the crime he committed] - it is all the more permitted to punish a Harbi infidel [i.e. he who belongs to Dar Al-Harb 'the domain of disbelief'] in the same way he treated the Muslim."
"According to the numbers I noted in the previous section of the lives lost from among the Muslims because of the Americans, directly or indirectly, we still are at the beginning of the way. The Americans have still not tasted from our hands what we have tasted from theirs. The [number of] killed in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were no more than fair exchange for the ones killed in the Al-'Amiriya shelter in Iraq, and are but a tiny part of the exchange for those killed in Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, the Philippines, Bosnia, Kashmir, Chechnya, and Afghanistan."
We Have the Right to Kill 4 Million Americans
"We have not reached parity with them. We have the right to kill 4 million Americans - 2 million of them children - and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons, so as to afflict them with the fatal maladies that have afflicted the Muslims because of the [Americans'] chemical and biological weapons."
"America knows only the language of force. This is the only way to stop it and make it take its hands off the Muslims and their affairs. America does not know the language of dialogue!! Or the language of peaceful coexistence!! America is kept at bay by blood alone..."
3301 S. Noland Road
Independence, MO 64055
(816)521-2710
Principal: Mike Jeffers
Assistant Principals: Kristel Barr, Renee Freers, Andy Kohl
Activities Director: Gary Bressman
Mission Statement
Truman High School is dedicated to providing a diverse educational experience which prepares lifelong learners to be responsible in a global community.
Moussaoui was arrested in Minnesota August 16 after officials of a flight school, the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, a suburb of Minneapolis, tipped off the FBI that he was seeking flight training on a Boeing 747 jumbo jet.