Resident Finds Backpack w/Arabic Notebook (short Title)

The Sierra Vista Herald | February 12, 2003 | Bill Hess

[HiJinx]

On his property, resident finds backpack
containing diary with Arabic writing

By Bill Hess
Herald/Review

Hereford, AZ -- It is not unusual to find backpacks near their home, but a local man and his wife were surprised to find one that contained a diary written in Arabic.

Click to see a (much) larger scan of this photo.

Walter Kolbe said he was chasing some javelinas away from his home Thursday when he stumbled upon the backpack. He said he brought it home and didn't think much about the find.

He and his wife, May, went away for the weekend. When they returned Sunday, his wife's curiosity led her to look into the backpack. That's when she discovered the diary.

A path used by illegal immigrants is on their property, which is on the east side of the San Pedro River, Walter said.

"I found it (the backpack) about a hundred yards from the house, near a barbed-wire fence," he said. "I was just going to throw it in the trash."

After his wife went through the backpack, which included dirty clothing, they decided not to discard the material because of the diary.

Most of the writing was in Arabic, though there was some Spanish writing in it as well, May Kolbe said.

Looking through the small book, she noticed two names and telephone numbers -- one listing in Canada and the other Iran -- and confirmed the beginning numbers were the international codes for those two countries.

Walter Kolbe called the FBI on Monday morning and agreed to bring the diary by the local office the next time he was in Sierra Vista. The FBI representative also told him that if the agent with responsibility for terrorism investigation thought the diary was important they would make arrangements to pick it up.

Such turned out to be the case. An agent called Tuesday and said they would show up to pick up the material, which they did that morning.

The Kolbes said they wonder how many Middle Eastern people are coming into the United States illegally.

Rob Daniels, a spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, said he is not allowed to talk about the number of non-Mexicans his agency detains.

"We can't get into specifics about the number," Daniels said.

Mario Villarreal, (sic) a spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol headquarters in Washington, D.C., said 99.4 percent of the 955,310 people apprehended by the agency from Oct. 1, 2001, through Sept. 30, 2002, were from the Americas, which includes Canada, Mexico and other Central and South American nations. The remainder comes from 140 countries, he said.

"Because of 9-11 (the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001) there has ben restrictions and guidelines when talking about special interest countries," he said.

The decision not to be specific about how many people come from the Middle East is a directive of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, he said.

However, the Border Patrol continues to seek information about illegal immigrants and individuals are encouraged to call (877) 872-7435.

[JackelopeBreeder]

I can give you a (very partial) answer. In FY 2002, there wer 156,950 aliens apprehended in Cochise County. Of those, 2811 were non-Mexican and I'm hunting for the break down by other nationality.

[JackelopeBreeder]

This is sucking big time. I'm a Korean linguist and if I remember right, HiJinx is a Russian linguist.

[JackelopeBreeder]

Actually I do have the figures somewhere on this mess I call a desk -- bootlegged from the INS database. Don't ask.

[JackelopeBreeder]

Can't find it. It may be in a folder at the office. If my memory isn't totally hosed, the official figure was about 130 from Middle Eastern/Southwest Asian countries.

My real worry is that most Middle Eastern types can pass for Hispanic if they speak enough Spanish. There have been too many reports of unfriendly Middle East types gathering in an area where the borders of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina meet. This is not good at all.

[kcvl]

nineteen (19) individuals who have been identified
as hijackers aboard the four airliners that crashed on September 11, 2001

[Robert_Paulson2]

Somebody wanna do the math on that and give us the # of illegal entries not from the Americas. I don't have a calculator handy.

---

Well on a nix box, using kde on redhat, go to the bottom left of your computer desktop screen select the little red hat, then accessories then "scientific calculator"... and do the math.

And on a windoze box... go to the start button on the lower left, select, programs, accessories and then calculator... and do the math.

On a mac I thinkOS 10 has a calculator in the same place as a nix box... but I am not sure about windows xp....

In either case it is 5731.86 people...
that is of the ones we caught...

I think they actually bag less than one out of every eight illegals. So our yearly illegal is somewhere MORE than 8 million souls... and our potential arab terrrorist state members would be around 45,855 or 8 x 5731.86.

sleep tight and make sure to stock up on visqueen and duct tape...
it'll help keep those nasty 45,855 biotoxin-toting arabs away... either that or some garlic cloves... and wooden stakes.

[Larry Lucido]

>And shred the Constitution.

Shred the constitution? Are you ok?

Since this is your first day on FR, off-ramp, I'll cut you some slack in your inability to recognize sarcasm.

No, Illbay doesn't think the Constitution should be shredded. He is against that. That was the point he was making.

[Allan]

Other languages written in Arabic include Kashmiri, Kurdish, Pashto, Persian/Farsi, Sindhi, Turkish, Uyghur, and Urdu.

The Turks haven't used the Arabic alphabet since 1928
and Arabic script is as meaningless to them
as it is to the average resident of Arizona.

[Vic3O3]

ping

[vannrox]

Thanks for taking the time to transcibe this. It is appreciated.

[BJungNan]

Thanks for taking the time to post this. Very disturbing confirmation of what I think everyone except the heads of Homeland Security already know.

But then, why station the tanks at the borders when we can post them on every street corner instead.

[DLfromthedesert]

If we depend on El Napo, we're SOL!!! Thank you, pro-abort "Repuican" women for this travesty.

[Allan]

The only thing I can make out is the number 19.

There is no 19 in the document.
Arabic numerals are totally different from western numerals.
What you think is a "9" is the Arabic "W",
and the "1" is the letter "A"