From the Investigative Project on Terrorism:
FBI Replaces Brotherhood-Tainted Liaison with Brotherhood-Tainted Liaison
IPT News
June 25, 2009
A top FBI official met Wednesday with the vice president of the Islamic Society of North America, a move which followed the Bureau's decision "to use ISNA as their official point of contact with the American Muslim community," an email from an intelligence community veteran that was widely distributed Wednesday said.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) has previously reported on the depth of ISNA's Muslim Brotherhood ties.
The FBI has not yet commented on the claim. But the IPT has confirmed that the meeting did take place at FBI headquarters. The decision to make ISNA the FBI's contact point came over the objections of case agents and supervisors investigating Muslim Brotherhood activity in the U.S.
Last year, the FBI cut off outreach communication with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), after evidence in the Hamas-support trial against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) raised questions "whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS." The FBI's case agent testified that CAIR was a Hamas front.
Like CAIR, ISNA was an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF trial. It is listed among "who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood." Jamal Badawi, an ISNA board member, also was named as an unindicted co-conspirator, listed among people who raised money for HLF.
The evidence involving ISNA, however, was not as deep as it was with CAIR. In CAIR's case, its founders are included on a telephone list for members of a secret Hamas support network in the U.S. created by the Muslim Brotherhood. And they participated in a 1993 meeting of Hamas members and supporters called to discuss ways to thwart U.S.-led peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians.
In that weekend-long meeting, CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad discussed ways to mislead Americans about their goals and ideology. Executive Director Nihad Awad discussed media strategies to help the cause.
In the evidence admitted by the court, ISNA officials were not named among members of the Hamas support network, called the Palestine Committee. But FBI investigative records show it held a significant role in the Brotherhood's U.S. activities. According to an FBI memorandum from the 1980s obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, past "ISNA conferences provided opportunities for the extreme fundamentalist Muslims to meet with their supporters ... The annual conferences are used for both religious and political purposes. The political purpose is to further the Islamic Revolution, which includes providing anti-U.S. and Israel publications and publications that support the war effort of Iran in the Iran-Iraq war."
The Brotherhood is an 80-year-old Egyptian movement which seeks to spread the rule of Shariah, or Islamic law, throughout the world. But some top FBI officials are not convinced the Brotherhood is a problem, a law enforcement source said Thursday. This, despite the fact that FBI investigation has uncovered documents showing the U.S. Brotherhood's goal is "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
The problem, the source said, is too many FBI officials have developed friendly individual relationships with the leadership of groups like ISNA. "As an FBI agent, we use facts and evidence and truth to base our decisions and not because we went to dinner with someone."
ISNA's roots in the Brotherhood are clearly established. Internal Muslim Brotherhood records in evidence the HLF trial show ISNA was created by Muslim Brotherhood members in the U.S. who had been leaders of the Muslim Students Association. In addition, the Chicago Tribune and federal prosecutors in Dallas have documented the link.
"Numerous exhibits were entered into evidence establishing both ISNA's and NAIT's [the North American Islamic Trust, an ISNA subsidiary] intimate relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestine Committee, and the defendants in this case," prosecutors wrote in July 2008.
Sami Al-Arian, an admitted Palestinian Islamic Jihad supporter, acknowledged in an affidavit that he was directly involved with the Brotherhood in 1981, the year he claims to have been among ISNA's founders.
ISNA has never come clean on its Brotherhood connection. In a statement issued in the fall of 2007, it ignored the documents in evidence and claimed it "never was, and is not now, affiliated with or influenced by any international organizations including the Muslim Brotherhood."
In its service, ISNA rallied to the defense of Hamas political leader Mousa Abu Marzook following his arrest by U.S. authorities pending an Israeli warrant. After he was deported to Jordan, Marzook included ISNA among those he thanked for supporting him through his "ordeal." Marzook wrote that ISNA's efforts had "consoled" him.
Meanwhile, ISNA's annual convention is scheduled to begin July 2 in Washington, D.C. This year's conference could have the largest representation of government agencies in the group's history. The FBI and the departments of Justice, State and Homeland Security all are sponsoring information booths and may have speakers in formal programs.
The conference also will feature speakers from other groups rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood. Among them, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, spokesman Ibrahim Hooper and former Muslim American Society (MAS) President Esam Omeish and MAS-Freedom Director Mahdi Bray.
The depth of this outreach, especially the FBI's decision to make ISNA its contact to American Muslims, raises a host of troubling questions. ISNA's denials of its Brotherhood roots ring hollow in the face of the public record.
In light of these documented connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and recent controversial statements, the FBI should explain publicly why it is embracing ISNA.
Showing posts with label Hezbollah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hezbollah. Show all posts
Friday, July 31, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
From Tehran with Love
Iranian expert Michael Ledeen has a current article, ("Caving to Iran"), about how the British government has been giving in to Iranian blackmail lately. In it Ledeen paints a picture of a high-level doomsday summit of global bad guys in Tehran that could have come out of an old James Bond movie:After the humiliation of Hamas by Israel earlier this year, the Iranian leaders summoned more than a dozen terrorist groups to Tehran for meetings with Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad. The meetings went on for several weeks, from mid-February to mid-March. According to usually reliable sources, the terrorists were informed that Iran had committed a billion dollars for the “liberation of Palestine,” and that actions would be coordinated by an umbrella organization to be called “Hezbollah of Palestine.” Participants included Egyptian and Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood leaders and top officials from Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Reportedly, representatives of the Turkish government were also present. The Iranian regime was represented by officers from the Revolutionary Guards and the Quds Forces, and by Khamenei himself, a clear demonstration of the urgency with which the Iranians viewed the matter.Check out the complete article.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Canada Tells Dhimmi Useful Idiot He's Not Welcome
Speaking of Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi’s little snit: (the one about how Senator John Kyl abused America's First Amendment by letting Geert Wilders tell the truth about Islam in Congress), we see where the British Parliament’s most obnoxious member, MP George Galloway, has been denied entry into Canada because of his terrorist sympathies.
We tease Canada, but they're our allies fighting in Afghanistan, and every now and then, just like in Europe now and then, someone stands up and does right.
OTTAWA -- An outspoken British MP who's opposed to the war in Afghanistan says he intends to take legal action against the federal government over its decision to refuse him entry to Canada.Earlier this month, Galloway, a committed enemy of Israel, made a huge public show of handing cash to Hamas in Gaza.
George Galloway, an MP for the U.K.'s Respect party, says he learned Friday he would not be allowed into this country for a speaking tour that's scheduled to bring him to Toronto and Ottawa later this month.
A former Labour MP, Mr. Galloway is a contentious figure whose public support for Hamas and Hezbollah has led to accusations he is a terrorist sympathizer. (“British MP denied entry to Canada threatens to sue government”).
"We are giving you now 100 vehicles and all of their contents, and we make no apology for what I am about to say. We are giving them to the elected
government of Palestine," Galloway said at a press conference in Gaza City.
Galloway said he personally would be donating three cars and 25,000 pounds (35,000 dollars) to Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya as he dared the West to try to prosecute him for aiding what it considers a terror group.
"I say now to the British and European governments, if you want to take me to court I promise you there is no jury in all of Britain who will convict me. They will convict you."
Galloway made the announcement at an outdoor conference in the presence of several senior Hamas officials, and his words were greeted by shouts of "Allahu Akbar!" (God is Great).
We tease Canada, but they're our allies fighting in Afghanistan, and every now and then, just like in Europe now and then, someone stands up and does right.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Facts Worth Repeating
From Islam in Action:
Hezbollah Expected To Be A Major Threat By 2014
By David Bedein, Middle East Correspondent
Published:
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Jerusalem — Hezbollah could be one of the first security challenges faced by the new Obama administration.
An official government report concludes the Iranian-backed Islamic terror group has been forming sleeper cells throughout the United States that could become operational.
The report estimates Hezbollah could become a much more potent national security threat by 2014.
The group was responsible for the 1983 Beirut Marine Barracks bombing, which killed 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French servicemen.
“The Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah does not have a known history of fomenting attacks inside the U.S., but that could change if there is some kind of ‘triggering’ event, the homeland assessment cautions,” the report said.
The report, obtained by the Middle East Newsline and marked “for official use only,” did not define a “triggering event.”
Most of the threats cited in the report had been raised by the Homeland Security Department.
The 38-page report, titled 2008 Interagency Intelligence Committee on Terrorism, said Hezbollah was being directed by the leadership in Lebanon as well as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
The assessment said the Hezbollah network in the United States was engaged in money laundering, drug trafficking, weapons smuggling and extortion.
The terror group has also established fundraising connections with mainstream American Muslim organizations, among the most notable being the case of Abdurahman Alamoudi, the former head of the American Muslim Council.
Mr. Alamoudi, prior to his having pleaded guilty in 2004 for having tried to launder Libyan money for various terror groups, actively worked to raise money for Hezbollah among others. He also formerly helped oversee the appointment of Islamic chaplains in the U.S. military.
Hezbollah is one of several terrorist threats to the United States over the next five years, the report said. The report also cited al-Qaida as a leading threat, saying the Islamic network was focusing on striking strategic U.S. facilities.
“The threat of terrorism and the threat of extremist ideologies has not abated,” former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said prior to leaving office yesterday. “This threat has not evaporated, and we can’t turn the page on it.”
#
Hezbollah Expected To Be A Major Threat By 2014
By David Bedein, Middle East Correspondent
Published:
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Jerusalem — Hezbollah could be one of the first security challenges faced by the new Obama administration.
An official government report concludes the Iranian-backed Islamic terror group has been forming sleeper cells throughout the United States that could become operational.
The report estimates Hezbollah could become a much more potent national security threat by 2014.
The group was responsible for the 1983 Beirut Marine Barracks bombing, which killed 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French servicemen.
“The Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah does not have a known history of fomenting attacks inside the U.S., but that could change if there is some kind of ‘triggering’ event, the homeland assessment cautions,” the report said.
The report, obtained by the Middle East Newsline and marked “for official use only,” did not define a “triggering event.”
Most of the threats cited in the report had been raised by the Homeland Security Department.
The 38-page report, titled 2008 Interagency Intelligence Committee on Terrorism, said Hezbollah was being directed by the leadership in Lebanon as well as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
The assessment said the Hezbollah network in the United States was engaged in money laundering, drug trafficking, weapons smuggling and extortion.
The terror group has also established fundraising connections with mainstream American Muslim organizations, among the most notable being the case of Abdurahman Alamoudi, the former head of the American Muslim Council.
Mr. Alamoudi, prior to his having pleaded guilty in 2004 for having tried to launder Libyan money for various terror groups, actively worked to raise money for Hezbollah among others. He also formerly helped oversee the appointment of Islamic chaplains in the U.S. military.
Hezbollah is one of several terrorist threats to the United States over the next five years, the report said. The report also cited al-Qaida as a leading threat, saying the Islamic network was focusing on striking strategic U.S. facilities.
“The threat of terrorism and the threat of extremist ideologies has not abated,” former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said prior to leaving office yesterday. “This threat has not evaporated, and we can’t turn the page on it.”
#
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
'Welcome Fordson Class of 2012! Have You Embraced Islam?'
The report on how to improve Dearborn’s schools released last week by the Michigan Leadership Institute (MLI) focused its most serious criticisms on Fordson High School, specifically, its bad-tempered Principal, Imad Fadlallah.
To deflect attention from the troubled institution known locally as “Hezbollah High” and its spiritual leader, the Detroit News and the Dearborn Press & Guide both portrayed the report in a false light as nothing but a demand to banish Arabic from Dearborn schools.
As I wrote yesterday, none of the local coverage on the MLI report even mentions Fadlallah. But we did get to read comments from Imad Hamad explaining that the First Amendment protects the inalienable right of an immigrant from hearing anything at his local public school but his native language.
Unfortunately, anyone reading the MLI report for himself has to contend with its back-asswards style combining descriptions of serious problems with chipper language meant to say, “everybody’s doing their best!” and “we’re all winners here!”
For example, see how long it takes this writer to say “Imad Fadlallah has created a hellish workplace for his staff”:
--Fadlallah has created a culture of “fear and uncertainty,” and a “hostile” and “intimidating” work environment, for staff, students, and parents;
--There is distrust between various groups and individual staff members, divided along lines of their relationship with Fadlallah, so serious that “meaningful progress” will be “difficult at best”;
--Many Fordson support staff and administrators believe they’ve been treated by Fadlallah and his people “unfairly and/or unprofessionally”;
--If Fadlallah remains on as Principal, there are sure to be “additional complaints from staff” and, necessarily, “corresponding investigations of fact to be conducted”; [note use of plural];
--Fadlallah needs to be made to understand that his “former methods of ‘motivating’ staff” are unacceptable;
--Fadlallah needs a set of expectations imposed on him by the Superintendent—in writing—that he must follow; he also needs a coach—one not accountable to him;
--While everyone has seen improvements in Fadlallah’s behavior this year, credit for that goes solely to the presence of MSI monitors— everyone surveyed believes as soon as the monitors are gone, “the Principal will revert to prior behavioral approaches”;
--Fadlallah “needs to be seen in the hallways and classrooms more often” [except when he’s on Hezbollah missions in Southern Lebanon], and “[h]is appearance must be viewed as being supportive as opposed to being a threat” [exactly, just like when he’s on Hezbollah missions in Southern Lebanon].
--The “administration” (Fadlallah and his pets) also are seen by staff and students as employing blatant favoritism (“There is no room for special favors or exceptions!”);
--Fordson students routinely roam the halls during classtime, and security is so lax there’s no control over who comes into the building or leaves. This may be due, the report placidly suggests, to a “buddy” system between some students and security staff, a problem that "should be considered” because it “diminishes the possibility that the security staff can effectively assist with the control of the student population.” (Oh?).
Fadlallah was already in trouble last year for allegedly slapping a student, then applying "community" pressure to cover it up. Then there was the matter of his unlawful firing of wrestling coach Trey Hancock because of his Christianity ("Fordson Principal Pile Drives First Amendment"). Shortly after the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006 Fadlallah abandoned his post to go help out his cousin in south Lebanon inventory Hezbollah's remaining rocket supply. In July 2008 the anti-religious outfit Americans United of Michigan documented how:
What are the chances that Fadlallah, no matter how bad a principal he is and how many civil rights and other laws he violates, remains on the job because the Dearborn School Board is terrified of crossing the Muslim community? And that Fadlallah sees his mission as ridding Fordson High School from the filthy influence of the infidels? (The report notes the "many of the traditions of the past have been discontinued (i.e. pep assemblies, honors recognitions programs, etc.)" ). And that the Muslim community already considers Fordson High an inalienable part of the Ummah?
As a case in point, consider the Victim Triumphant tone that the Arab American News used last summer reporting how Fadlallah was supposedly "found innocent" at a school board meeting of the charge that he'd slapped that student:
What is it exacty Fordson's 90% Muslim population needs to be "freed" from? And isn't someone attacking Islam all it takes to justify jihad?
To deflect attention from the troubled institution known locally as “Hezbollah High” and its spiritual leader, the Detroit News and the Dearborn Press & Guide both portrayed the report in a false light as nothing but a demand to banish Arabic from Dearborn schools.
As I wrote yesterday, none of the local coverage on the MLI report even mentions Fadlallah. But we did get to read comments from Imad Hamad explaining that the First Amendment protects the inalienable right of an immigrant from hearing anything at his local public school but his native language.
Unfortunately, anyone reading the MLI report for himself has to contend with its back-asswards style combining descriptions of serious problems with chipper language meant to say, “everybody’s doing their best!” and “we’re all winners here!”
For example, see how long it takes this writer to say “Imad Fadlallah has created a hellish workplace for his staff”:
The dynamics of Fordson are complicated at best. A significant number of the teaching staff, parents and students indicate a belief that the current Principal has the best interest of students at heart. Without question, he has many supporters who believe in and support the direction in which he has been taking the school. However, many of those staff who support the current Principal also point to areas where he needs to improve if he is to gain the support of the entire staff.How's that for burying the lead? Rather than quote more of this unhelpful prose, I’ve tried to excavate the main problems the MLI report identifies:
[BUT] For many staff, a culture of fear and uncertainty exists, and for them, we believe the work environment at Fordson has been in the recent past, and remains now, very hostile. . . .We believe that some staff has [sic] interpreted the Principal’s passion as anger—others do see this as a problem area or even a concern. [Emphasis added].
--Fadlallah has created a culture of “fear and uncertainty,” and a “hostile” and “intimidating” work environment, for staff, students, and parents;
--There is distrust between various groups and individual staff members, divided along lines of their relationship with Fadlallah, so serious that “meaningful progress” will be “difficult at best”;
--Many Fordson support staff and administrators believe they’ve been treated by Fadlallah and his people “unfairly and/or unprofessionally”;
--If Fadlallah remains on as Principal, there are sure to be “additional complaints from staff” and, necessarily, “corresponding investigations of fact to be conducted”; [note use of plural];
--Fadlallah needs to be made to understand that his “former methods of ‘motivating’ staff” are unacceptable;
--Fadlallah needs a set of expectations imposed on him by the Superintendent—in writing—that he must follow; he also needs a coach—one not accountable to him;
--While everyone has seen improvements in Fadlallah’s behavior this year, credit for that goes solely to the presence of MSI monitors— everyone surveyed believes as soon as the monitors are gone, “the Principal will revert to prior behavioral approaches”;
--Fadlallah “needs to be seen in the hallways and classrooms more often” [except when he’s on Hezbollah missions in Southern Lebanon], and “[h]is appearance must be viewed as being supportive as opposed to being a threat” [exactly, just like when he’s on Hezbollah missions in Southern Lebanon].
--The “administration” (Fadlallah and his pets) also are seen by staff and students as employing blatant favoritism (“There is no room for special favors or exceptions!”);
--Fordson students routinely roam the halls during classtime, and security is so lax there’s no control over who comes into the building or leaves. This may be due, the report placidly suggests, to a “buddy” system between some students and security staff, a problem that "should be considered” because it “diminishes the possibility that the security staff can effectively assist with the control of the student population.” (Oh?).
Fadlallah was already in trouble last year for allegedly slapping a student, then applying "community" pressure to cover it up. Then there was the matter of his unlawful firing of wrestling coach Trey Hancock because of his Christianity ("Fordson Principal Pile Drives First Amendment"). Shortly after the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006 Fadlallah abandoned his post to go help out his cousin in south Lebanon inventory Hezbollah's remaining rocket supply. In July 2008 the anti-religious outfit Americans United of Michigan documented how:
Numerous church and state allegations against Fordson’s principal, Imad Fadlallah, came pouring into AU-Michigan’s office in May and June. The allegations: a sign placed in the school library reading “Have You Embraced Islam?”; the school’s policy of serving exclusively halal food in the cafeteria; allegations of unreasonable religious accommodations granted to Muslim students and staff; discrimination against non-Muslim staff and students; discrimination against non-Shia Muslims; and the questionable termination of Fordson’s long-time wrestling coach.[NOTE: The "Have You Embraced Islam?" poster was reportedly displayed prominently in the media center in Dearborn High as well.]
What are the chances that Fadlallah, no matter how bad a principal he is and how many civil rights and other laws he violates, remains on the job because the Dearborn School Board is terrified of crossing the Muslim community? And that Fadlallah sees his mission as ridding Fordson High School from the filthy influence of the infidels? (The report notes the "many of the traditions of the past have been discontinued (i.e. pep assemblies, honors recognitions programs, etc.)" ). And that the Muslim community already considers Fordson High an inalienable part of the Ummah?
As a case in point, consider the Victim Triumphant tone that the Arab American News used last summer reporting how Fadlallah was supposedly "found innocent" at a school board meeting of the charge that he'd slapped that student:
But there is a larger issue involved here and that is no less than the future of Fordson. The student who was the focus of the allegation never stated that he was slapped but did say that he was pressured by staff members to make the claim. And from the passionate testimonies of parents and students who showed up at the meeting in the hundreds to support Fadlallah, it became clear that an evangelistic effort is underway at Fordson, pitting a few of the staff and an outside group against the 90% Arab and Muslim student population.
("The fight for freedom at Fordson").
What is it exacty Fordson's 90% Muslim population needs to be "freed" from? And isn't someone attacking Islam all it takes to justify jihad?
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Elahi Fights With Only Weapon He Has--Lies
The Detroit News’s resident jihadist crank, Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi, has weighed in this morning on the Israeli offensive in Gaza, with the kind of illogic and misstatements we’ve come to expect. (“Israel perpetrates slaughter in name of self-defense”).
This time his turban is in a particular twist, limiting himself mostly to denunciations of just about everybody, (except Hamas, of course), and the odd misstatement of fact. In what must be the most breathtaking hypocrisy I’ve seen in my life, Elahi criticizes non-Muslim religious leaders for what’s going on now in Gaza:
Nor did Elahi have any reaction to the jihadist massacre in Mumbai, in spite of his sensitivity to the plight of "Abraham's children."
Elahi denies Israel’s right to defend herself, as good as saying that any action Israel takes to protect her citizens is a war crime. On the other hand, he doesn’t bat an eye implying that the endless rocket and mortar attacks by Hamas that have brought this offensive on are legitimate self-defense, quoting a London Guardian columnist, "Like any occupied people, the Palestinians have the right to resist. But there is no right of defense for an illegal occupation."
As stated over and over, Israel withdrew completely from Gaza in 2005, and was not occupying Gaza, and Elahi knows this.
He is lying about this.
The way he tells it, (he even quotes Patrick Henry!) if Hamas kills Jews, it's the American War of Independence all over again. If Israel responds, it's "slaughter."
This time his turban is in a particular twist, limiting himself mostly to denunciations of just about everybody, (except Hamas, of course), and the odd misstatement of fact. In what must be the most breathtaking hypocrisy I’ve seen in my life, Elahi criticizes non-Muslim religious leaders for what’s going on now in Gaza:
Where are religious leaders to promote peace and love among Abraham's children? Where is the pope and the rabbis? Silence may protect them from the Israeli lobby and media, but it won't save them from God's justice and the consequences of this barbaric blood bath.That’s right. Elahi, that unapologetic agent of the Iranian regime (the one that wants to wipe all of “Abraham’s children” associated with Israel off the map), and who is a defender of Hezbollah, (best known for promoting peace and love among Abraham’s Christian and Jewish children with high explosives, rocket attacks, and terror) blames nonMuslims for all this, and can't think of one word to say against Hamas.
Nor did Elahi have any reaction to the jihadist massacre in Mumbai, in spite of his sensitivity to the plight of "Abraham's children."
Elahi denies Israel’s right to defend herself, as good as saying that any action Israel takes to protect her citizens is a war crime. On the other hand, he doesn’t bat an eye implying that the endless rocket and mortar attacks by Hamas that have brought this offensive on are legitimate self-defense, quoting a London Guardian columnist, "Like any occupied people, the Palestinians have the right to resist. But there is no right of defense for an illegal occupation."
As stated over and over, Israel withdrew completely from Gaza in 2005, and was not occupying Gaza, and Elahi knows this.
He is lying about this.
The way he tells it, (he even quotes Patrick Henry!) if Hamas kills Jews, it's the American War of Independence all over again. If Israel responds, it's "slaughter."
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Dearborn Hezbo Supporter Get Jail, Stern Talking To
Here’s another lesson on how not to fight terrorism.
A Ford Motor Company engineer who was caught trying to smuggle $120,000 worth of high-tech equipment to Hezbollah was sentenced Friday to 10 years by a federal judge in Detroit.
According to the Department of Justice, Fawzi Mustapha Assi was the first person ever charged under the 1996 federal antiterrorism law that makes it illegal to provide material support to terrorist organizations.
Assi was first arrested at Metro Airport as he was headed for Lebanon on a one-way ticket on July 13, 1998, with luggage packed with high-tech military-use equipment.
Yes, that was 1998. More than ten years ago. He admitted to agents he was smuggling, described his Hezbollah contacts, and was indicted and headed for trial soon after when a federal judge, (Denise Page Hood), decided to release him on bond, with an electronic tether.
According to Debbie Schlussel, Judge Hood made this decision over objections from federal prosecutors.
Assi, who is after all an engineer, slipped his tether. And, reportedly, (he is after all a Hezbollah supporter) dressed up in a niqab, and made it to Canada and escaped to Lebanon.
In 2004, under extremely suspicious circumstances, Assi “voluntarily” decided to return to the U.S. to face trial. Still, he didn’t plead guilty until November 2007, at which time he admitted he was trying to supply Hezbollah.
For reasons unclear to us at DU, Assi was not charged with violating his bond, fleeing U.S jurisdiction, or with any other crime related to his absconding. Detroit News reporter Paul Egan steps gingerly around all this in his article, saying Assi “was charged with providing support to terrorists in 1998 and pleaded guilty last year, [and] has been in custody since May 2004 and will receive credit for the time he has served.”
Under his original charge, Assi faced up to 30 years in prison and a $750,000 fine.
Instead, U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen sentenced him to only ten years, including time served, and, apparently, no fine.
But, for the admitted terror supporter, smuggler, and fugitive, who as recently as June was telling Rosen he couldn’t give him a fair sentence because the judge (who is Jewish) is a “Zionist,” Rosen made this blistering statement (warning to delicate sensibilities: “You allowed the depth of your feeling for what was happening in your homeland to overcome your judgment. These were serious misjudgments.”
I’ve had traffic cops speak to me more harshly than that.
“Serious misjudgments”? How about, “these were serious crimes”??
Anyway, the fact that Assi was the first person charged under our antiterror statute, we let him run off, and then after all this time he only gets the minimum sentence--and practically an apology from the court--says something about some serious misjudgments about terrorism.
A Ford Motor Company engineer who was caught trying to smuggle $120,000 worth of high-tech equipment to Hezbollah was sentenced Friday to 10 years by a federal judge in Detroit.
According to the Department of Justice, Fawzi Mustapha Assi was the first person ever charged under the 1996 federal antiterrorism law that makes it illegal to provide material support to terrorist organizations.
Assi was first arrested at Metro Airport as he was headed for Lebanon on a one-way ticket on July 13, 1998, with luggage packed with high-tech military-use equipment.
Yes, that was 1998. More than ten years ago. He admitted to agents he was smuggling, described his Hezbollah contacts, and was indicted and headed for trial soon after when a federal judge, (Denise Page Hood), decided to release him on bond, with an electronic tether.
According to Debbie Schlussel, Judge Hood made this decision over objections from federal prosecutors.
Assi, who is after all an engineer, slipped his tether. And, reportedly, (he is after all a Hezbollah supporter) dressed up in a niqab, and made it to Canada and escaped to Lebanon.
In 2004, under extremely suspicious circumstances, Assi “voluntarily” decided to return to the U.S. to face trial. Still, he didn’t plead guilty until November 2007, at which time he admitted he was trying to supply Hezbollah.
For reasons unclear to us at DU, Assi was not charged with violating his bond, fleeing U.S jurisdiction, or with any other crime related to his absconding. Detroit News reporter Paul Egan steps gingerly around all this in his article, saying Assi “was charged with providing support to terrorists in 1998 and pleaded guilty last year, [and] has been in custody since May 2004 and will receive credit for the time he has served.”
Under his original charge, Assi faced up to 30 years in prison and a $750,000 fine.
Instead, U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen sentenced him to only ten years, including time served, and, apparently, no fine.
But, for the admitted terror supporter, smuggler, and fugitive, who as recently as June was telling Rosen he couldn’t give him a fair sentence because the judge (who is Jewish) is a “Zionist,” Rosen made this blistering statement (warning to delicate sensibilities: “You allowed the depth of your feeling for what was happening in your homeland to overcome your judgment. These were serious misjudgments.”
I’ve had traffic cops speak to me more harshly than that.
“Serious misjudgments”? How about, “these were serious crimes”??
Anyway, the fact that Assi was the first person charged under our antiterror statute, we let him run off, and then after all this time he only gets the minimum sentence--and practically an apology from the court--says something about some serious misjudgments about terrorism.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Hezbo Supporter Gets Jail for Threatening Debbie Schlussel
From Thursday's Detroit Free Press:
Dearborn man gets prison for threats against commentator Debbie Schlussel
BY DAVID ASHENFELTER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
A federal judge today sentenced a Dearborn restaurant cook to 8 months in prison for e-mailing death threats to conservative TV commentator and blogger Debbie Schlussel.
“I find it abhorrent,” U.S. District Judge Marianne Battani told Mohamad Fouad Abdallah, 40, of two e-mails he sent to Schlussel one minute apart in August 2006.
Schlussel, who lives in Oakland County, is an outspoken critic of what she calls government tolerance of Islamic extremists in the United States. She told Battani that the e-mails, in which Abdallah used sexist and Anti-Semitic remarks against her and threatened to rape and blow her up, had caused her to fear for her safety and become somewhat of a hermit.
The e-mails were prompted by views she expressed on her Web site, http://www.debbieschlussel.com/, about prominent members of Metro Detroit’s Islamic community.
She urged Battani to sentence Abdallah to the maximum 12 months in prison on the misdemeanor charge — interfering with Schlussel’s federally-protected activities. He pleaded guilty in June.
One of the e-mails said Hizballah, a Lebanese group that the U.S. State Department has designated a terrorist group, “is awesome.”
Abdallah, breathing from an oxygen tank, told Battani he was ashamed of what he had done and that he has suffered health problems ever since. Schlussel called the oxygen tank a prop and accused him of trying to gain sympathy from the judge.
Battani ordered Abdallah to undergo mental health and diversity training after getting out of prison. She lectured him about teaching fear, murder and intolerance to his 9-year-old daughter.
Take a look at Debbie's more detailed account of this story here.
Dearborn man gets prison for threats against commentator Debbie Schlussel
BY DAVID ASHENFELTER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
A federal judge today sentenced a Dearborn restaurant cook to 8 months in prison for e-mailing death threats to conservative TV commentator and blogger Debbie Schlussel.
“I find it abhorrent,” U.S. District Judge Marianne Battani told Mohamad Fouad Abdallah, 40, of two e-mails he sent to Schlussel one minute apart in August 2006.
Schlussel, who lives in Oakland County, is an outspoken critic of what she calls government tolerance of Islamic extremists in the United States. She told Battani that the e-mails, in which Abdallah used sexist and Anti-Semitic remarks against her and threatened to rape and blow her up, had caused her to fear for her safety and become somewhat of a hermit.
The e-mails were prompted by views she expressed on her Web site, http://www.debbieschlussel.com/, about prominent members of Metro Detroit’s Islamic community.
She urged Battani to sentence Abdallah to the maximum 12 months in prison on the misdemeanor charge — interfering with Schlussel’s federally-protected activities. He pleaded guilty in June.
One of the e-mails said Hizballah, a Lebanese group that the U.S. State Department has designated a terrorist group, “is awesome.”
Abdallah, breathing from an oxygen tank, told Battani he was ashamed of what he had done and that he has suffered health problems ever since. Schlussel called the oxygen tank a prop and accused him of trying to gain sympathy from the judge.
Battani ordered Abdallah to undergo mental health and diversity training after getting out of prison. She lectured him about teaching fear, murder and intolerance to his 9-year-old daughter.
Take a look at Debbie's more detailed account of this story here.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Hemlock Park Hezbollah Supporter Closer to Trial
There’s going to be a pretrial conference on Monday between Houssein Zorkot and Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Diane Hathaway. (“Conference between Zorkot, judge could determine if case goes to trial”).
You recall that Zorkot, a third-year medical student at Wayne State University at the time of his arrest last September 8th at Dearborn’s Hemlock Park, was charged with carrying a concealed weapon, possession of a dangerous weapon, and felony firearm after being detained by police for dressing in camouflage and deploying at Hemlock Park with a loaded AK-47. (“How the Press & Guide Does ‘Fair and Balanced’").
At issue between Zorkot’s defense attorney and the Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor, according to Sean Delaney at the Dearborn Press & Guide is whether or not Zorkot had the intent to harm someone, an element required to stand trial on the felony firearm charge.
Mayor Jack O’Reilly defended the decision to hide the information about Zorkot’s arrest for three days, out of fear that "the public. . .make a connection between this case and the anniversary of September 11.” ("Dearborn Police Profile Area Man Just for Being a Medical Student"). (Zorkot was arrested on September 8).
Our interest in this is seeing brought to light whatever facts there are about Zorkot’s local connections with Hezbollah, which he openly supports, and which no one denies.
As is repeated in every Press & Guide story about Zorkot, “While the Dearborn resident openly supports Hezbollah — a group designated as a terrorist organization by the United States — he has not been identified as a terrorist or linked to any terrorist group, according to police.”
While Zorkot may in fact not have been found with a plastic card in his wallet that identifies him as a member of the "Dearborn Chapter of the Party of God", I think there's room for further inquiry.
You recall that Zorkot, a third-year medical student at Wayne State University at the time of his arrest last September 8th at Dearborn’s Hemlock Park, was charged with carrying a concealed weapon, possession of a dangerous weapon, and felony firearm after being detained by police for dressing in camouflage and deploying at Hemlock Park with a loaded AK-47. (“How the Press & Guide Does ‘Fair and Balanced’").
At issue between Zorkot’s defense attorney and the Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor, according to Sean Delaney at the Dearborn Press & Guide is whether or not Zorkot had the intent to harm someone, an element required to stand trial on the felony firearm charge.
Mayor Jack O’Reilly defended the decision to hide the information about Zorkot’s arrest for three days, out of fear that "the public. . .make a connection between this case and the anniversary of September 11.” ("Dearborn Police Profile Area Man Just for Being a Medical Student"). (Zorkot was arrested on September 8).
Our interest in this is seeing brought to light whatever facts there are about Zorkot’s local connections with Hezbollah, which he openly supports, and which no one denies.
As is repeated in every Press & Guide story about Zorkot, “While the Dearborn resident openly supports Hezbollah — a group designated as a terrorist organization by the United States — he has not been identified as a terrorist or linked to any terrorist group, according to police.”
While Zorkot may in fact not have been found with a plastic card in his wallet that identifies him as a member of the "Dearborn Chapter of the Party of God", I think there's room for further inquiry.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Our American Imam Wants You to Know, 'I Am Not an Iranian Agent'
Detroit-area residents who can’t find copies of the Arab American News, or who’ve had their satellite link to Al Jazeera cut off, need go no further than the Op Ed page of the Detroit News to get a view of current affairs from the pro-Iranian side of the street.
That’s where editorial page editor Nolan Finley has given the Islamic House of Wisdom’s Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi a regular column, under the title, “Faith and Policy.”
The Imam’s faith happens to be Shia Islam, of the Hezbollah-are-freedom-fighters strain. Being a Muslim, of course, should not foreclose the Imam having a voice in a free press. And Finley explains his decision to give Elahi a megaphone by noting
that Elahi is considered a moderate in Dearborn's Muslim community.
"Extreme from our point of view and extreme from mainstream America's point of view? Perhaps." Finley said. "Extreme for that community? I'm not sure. I think he has a very large following--in fact, I know he has a very large following in that community, and speaks for a very large segment of that community.”
I’ll say. All the more reason to pay close attention, eh?
As to his policies, Imam Elahi is a big believer that while everything about the American foreign policy of George W. Bush since 9/11 is “a moral tragedy, ”the recent Iranian- and Syrian-backed sacking of the Lebanese parliament is a success story, as he described it in June 3rd column. (“Bush's Middle East foreign policy creates moral tragedies”).
He’s also stated in his column that,
Regarding Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent call to wipe Israel off the map . . .:
--"It is very clear that Mr. Ahmadinejad was not making an anti-Semitic statement."
--"The Iranian president's quip can best be understood in the context of the Declaration of Independence.”
--and, “Israel must stop instigating violent conflicts in the Muslim world."
Another Elahi column described Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin as a ‘Palestinian spiritual leader, (who) had a heart full of love for humanity.’ Yet another compared the Iranian constitution to that of the United States.
Imam Elahi, was at one time the spiritual leader of the Iranian navy. The self-evident benefits of an armed force having a spiritual leader can be seen in recent news about the Iranian navy, featuring stories about the navy threatening to attack and “explode” U.S. warships, (“Video of Iran ‘attack’ on three US warships released by Pentagon”), unlawfully taking British sailors hostage, (“Iranian Vessels Seize 15 British Navy Personnel in Iraqi Waters”), and how its Basiji Islamic Revolutionary Guard members brag that they’ve taken a suicide pledge. (“Iran navy in suicide attack pledge”):
“If necessary, we will use the element of martyrdom-seeking and we will become people of Ashura," Fars quoted Gen. Ali Fadavi as saying. Ashura refers to the day marking the death of Imam Hussein, Prophet Mohammed's grandson, who is revered by Shiite Muslims.
Whether or not all this misdirected belligerence is made wors or better by having “spiritual leaders” of the stripe of Imam Elahi, I’ll leave for the Imam Elahis of the world to explain.
After bucking up the Iranian sea dogs Imam Elahi came to the USA around 1991 on a 4-month visa. According to one source, that visa “enabled him to inspect American branches of Hizbullah (Tehran's network of agents) and to reinforce Tehran's influence on Shi'ite communities (in Dearborn)."
Now he’s an American citizen, which, if nothing else, grants him the right to use first-person pronouns when attacking the United States. Such as when he said in his Tuesday column,
“Our country, once a beacon of hope and freedom for the world, has squandered our prosperity to create conflicts and instigate civil wars among other nations by funding one group against another”; or, “Our nation deserves truthful and trustworthy leaders who have enough courage and commitment to turn the anti-American resentment around the world into respect and love.”
I guess I shouldn’t knock him for it. Most Democrats are born here and still reflexively refer to most Americans as “them.”
Anyway, Elahi’s nostalgia for a period of respect and love for America that he’s never been around for is truly inspiring. I get dewy-eyed thinking back on those carefree days when it was Jimmy Carter that Ahmadinejad and his scruffy cohorts were burning in effigy as they brutalized our embassy staff.
But although he denies being an Iranian agent, Imam Elahi seems to have a one-track mind when it comes to the policies he preaches. They always seem to be pointed at benefits to Iran--or Iran’s creature, Hezbollah.
For example, to undo the “moral tragedy” of the Bush foreign policy, Elahi thinks we need “to stop these wars, fix the mess in Iraq and Afghanistan and don't start yet another war in the Persian Gulf.”
But who’s to benefit from us “stopping” the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? In other words, who's to benefit from our withdrawing and leaving both newly liberated nations to the depredations of their strongest neighbor--Iran. And who’s the only Persian Gulf nation in the region there’s even the remotest chance of us going to war with? Iran.
Elahi continues: “There is no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons.” For this, Elahi cites the much-maligned National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007, which he says “confirmed that Iran's nuclear program has no military aspect -- it is not pursuing nuclear weapons.”
Except the NIE didn’t. Instead, all 16 American spy agencies that contributed to the report stated “that Tehran is likely keeping its options open with respect to building a weapon, but that intelligence agencies do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.’” (“U.S. Says Iran Ended Atomic Arms Work”).
But Elahi is particularly adamant that Iran is not nuke-bound, and he wishes Bush would quit taking the cautious route, (as if world peace depended on it, or something), pointing out how “United Nations atomic watchdog chief, Mohamed El-Baradei, accused the Bush administration of adding ‘fuel to the fire’ with bellicose rhetoric.”
But if there’s no fire, how can you add fuel to it? Besides, “watchdog” El-Baredei, even as he faces daily lies and obfuscation from Iranian authorities, has never been willing to admit there’s an Iranian bomb program, and probably won’t until he’s falling through space onto Tel Aviv straddling one Slim-Pickens style.
Imam Elahi does spare some concern for the nation he has adopted, instead of the one he's not an agent for. He cares deeply that America “deserves truthful and trustworthy leaders who have enough courage and commitment to turn the anti-American resentment around the world into respect and love.”
His advice is that the “United States should get on the right side of the struggle and be part of the triumph of peace.” He’s short on specifics, but I think this translates this way: “Dump Israel, and let Iran have the bomb.”
Imam Elahi does think there’s a way we can still be friends with Israel, but we should imitate Jimmy Carter in showing how true friendship really works. “Honestly, the best friends of Israel are those who say it like it is. Former President Jimmy Carter called the Israeli policy toward Gaza ‘one of the greatest human rights crimes on earth.’”
(What do you bet it's been a while since Rosalynn asked Jimmy, "Does this dress make me look fat?")
Now we're all waiting for Jimmy to give Hamas some of the same depth of constructive criticism, and show them some true friendship.
That’s where editorial page editor Nolan Finley has given the Islamic House of Wisdom’s Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi a regular column, under the title, “Faith and Policy.”
The Imam’s faith happens to be Shia Islam, of the Hezbollah-are-freedom-fighters strain. Being a Muslim, of course, should not foreclose the Imam having a voice in a free press. And Finley explains his decision to give Elahi a megaphone by notingthat Elahi is considered a moderate in Dearborn's Muslim community.
"Extreme from our point of view and extreme from mainstream America's point of view? Perhaps." Finley said. "Extreme for that community? I'm not sure. I think he has a very large following--in fact, I know he has a very large following in that community, and speaks for a very large segment of that community.”
I’ll say. All the more reason to pay close attention, eh?
As to his policies, Imam Elahi is a big believer that while everything about the American foreign policy of George W. Bush since 9/11 is “a moral tragedy, ”the recent Iranian- and Syrian-backed sacking of the Lebanese parliament is a success story, as he described it in June 3rd column. (“Bush's Middle East foreign policy creates moral tragedies”).
He’s also stated in his column that,
Regarding Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent call to wipe Israel off the map . . .:
--"It is very clear that Mr. Ahmadinejad was not making an anti-Semitic statement."
--"The Iranian president's quip can best be understood in the context of the Declaration of Independence.”
--and, “Israel must stop instigating violent conflicts in the Muslim world."
Another Elahi column described Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin as a ‘Palestinian spiritual leader, (who) had a heart full of love for humanity.’ Yet another compared the Iranian constitution to that of the United States.
Imam Elahi, was at one time the spiritual leader of the Iranian navy. The self-evident benefits of an armed force having a spiritual leader can be seen in recent news about the Iranian navy, featuring stories about the navy threatening to attack and “explode” U.S. warships, (“Video of Iran ‘attack’ on three US warships released by Pentagon”), unlawfully taking British sailors hostage, (“Iranian Vessels Seize 15 British Navy Personnel in Iraqi Waters”), and how its Basiji Islamic Revolutionary Guard members brag that they’ve taken a suicide pledge. (“Iran navy in suicide attack pledge”):
“If necessary, we will use the element of martyrdom-seeking and we will become people of Ashura," Fars quoted Gen. Ali Fadavi as saying. Ashura refers to the day marking the death of Imam Hussein, Prophet Mohammed's grandson, who is revered by Shiite Muslims.
Whether or not all this misdirected belligerence is made wors or better by having “spiritual leaders” of the stripe of Imam Elahi, I’ll leave for the Imam Elahis of the world to explain.
After bucking up the Iranian sea dogs Imam Elahi came to the USA around 1991 on a 4-month visa. According to one source, that visa “enabled him to inspect American branches of Hizbullah (Tehran's network of agents) and to reinforce Tehran's influence on Shi'ite communities (in Dearborn)."
Now he’s an American citizen, which, if nothing else, grants him the right to use first-person pronouns when attacking the United States. Such as when he said in his Tuesday column,
“Our country, once a beacon of hope and freedom for the world, has squandered our prosperity to create conflicts and instigate civil wars among other nations by funding one group against another”; or, “Our nation deserves truthful and trustworthy leaders who have enough courage and commitment to turn the anti-American resentment around the world into respect and love.”
I guess I shouldn’t knock him for it. Most Democrats are born here and still reflexively refer to most Americans as “them.”
Anyway, Elahi’s nostalgia for a period of respect and love for America that he’s never been around for is truly inspiring. I get dewy-eyed thinking back on those carefree days when it was Jimmy Carter that Ahmadinejad and his scruffy cohorts were burning in effigy as they brutalized our embassy staff.
But although he denies being an Iranian agent, Imam Elahi seems to have a one-track mind when it comes to the policies he preaches. They always seem to be pointed at benefits to Iran--or Iran’s creature, Hezbollah.
For example, to undo the “moral tragedy” of the Bush foreign policy, Elahi thinks we need “to stop these wars, fix the mess in Iraq and Afghanistan and don't start yet another war in the Persian Gulf.”
But who’s to benefit from us “stopping” the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? In other words, who's to benefit from our withdrawing and leaving both newly liberated nations to the depredations of their strongest neighbor--Iran. And who’s the only Persian Gulf nation in the region there’s even the remotest chance of us going to war with? Iran.
Elahi continues: “There is no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons.” For this, Elahi cites the much-maligned National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007, which he says “confirmed that Iran's nuclear program has no military aspect -- it is not pursuing nuclear weapons.”
Except the NIE didn’t. Instead, all 16 American spy agencies that contributed to the report stated “that Tehran is likely keeping its options open with respect to building a weapon, but that intelligence agencies do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.’” (“U.S. Says Iran Ended Atomic Arms Work”).
But Elahi is particularly adamant that Iran is not nuke-bound, and he wishes Bush would quit taking the cautious route, (as if world peace depended on it, or something), pointing out how “United Nations atomic watchdog chief, Mohamed El-Baradei, accused the Bush administration of adding ‘fuel to the fire’ with bellicose rhetoric.”
But if there’s no fire, how can you add fuel to it? Besides, “watchdog” El-Baredei, even as he faces daily lies and obfuscation from Iranian authorities, has never been willing to admit there’s an Iranian bomb program, and probably won’t until he’s falling through space onto Tel Aviv straddling one Slim-Pickens style.
Imam Elahi does spare some concern for the nation he has adopted, instead of the one he's not an agent for. He cares deeply that America “deserves truthful and trustworthy leaders who have enough courage and commitment to turn the anti-American resentment around the world into respect and love.”
His advice is that the “United States should get on the right side of the struggle and be part of the triumph of peace.” He’s short on specifics, but I think this translates this way: “Dump Israel, and let Iran have the bomb.”
Imam Elahi does think there’s a way we can still be friends with Israel, but we should imitate Jimmy Carter in showing how true friendship really works. “Honestly, the best friends of Israel are those who say it like it is. Former President Jimmy Carter called the Israeli policy toward Gaza ‘one of the greatest human rights crimes on earth.’”
(What do you bet it's been a while since Rosalynn asked Jimmy, "Does this dress make me look fat?")
Now we're all waiting for Jimmy to give Hamas some of the same depth of constructive criticism, and show them some true friendship.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Update on Hemlock Park Hezbollah Fighter
There are going to be still more delays before any facts about the Houssein Ali Zorkot case see the light of day.
Zorkot, the third-year medical student who was arrested last September for deploying in Hemlock Park with loaded AK-47, has changed his mind about waiving his preliminary exam, and wants one after all. (“Accused Hemlock Park gunman back in court”).
He waived his preliminary exam in December, letting himself be bound over for trial in circuit court. But now the circuit court has granted Zorkot’s motion to come back to Judge Hultgren’s courtroom Dearborn’s 19th District Court for his preliminary exam. At a preliminary a prosecutor must show the court that there’s sufficient probable cause that a crime has been committed to warrant trial. The new hearing is now scheduled for April 18.
City officials say Zorkot has not been tied to terrorism. But Zorkot was running a pro-Hezbollah website, and posted photographs of himself in Lebanon wearing military garb, and posing in front of heroic photographs of Hezbollah Headman Hassan Nasrallah (known locally in Dearborn as “Our Leader!”). Zorkot was charged with “one count of carrying a dangerous weapon with unlawful intent, one count felony firearm and one count of possession of a loaded firearm.”
When he was stopped by police exiting Hemlock Park he fought back so hard he had to be Tasered twice.
Frankly, this may all turn out to be nothing, or at least, nothing that ever adds up to anything. Zorkot may have become the victim of his own fantasies of himself as a fighter, and got caught playing army in the park with a loaded AK. I am interested, though, in the basis for the dangerous weapon with unlawful intent count.
Zorkot, the third-year medical student who was arrested last September for deploying in Hemlock Park with loaded AK-47, has changed his mind about waiving his preliminary exam, and wants one after all. (“Accused Hemlock Park gunman back in court”).
He waived his preliminary exam in December, letting himself be bound over for trial in circuit court. But now the circuit court has granted Zorkot’s motion to come back to Judge Hultgren’s courtroom Dearborn’s 19th District Court for his preliminary exam. At a preliminary a prosecutor must show the court that there’s sufficient probable cause that a crime has been committed to warrant trial. The new hearing is now scheduled for April 18.
City officials say Zorkot has not been tied to terrorism. But Zorkot was running a pro-Hezbollah website, and posted photographs of himself in Lebanon wearing military garb, and posing in front of heroic photographs of Hezbollah Headman Hassan Nasrallah (known locally in Dearborn as “Our Leader!”). Zorkot was charged with “one count of carrying a dangerous weapon with unlawful intent, one count felony firearm and one count of possession of a loaded firearm.”When he was stopped by police exiting Hemlock Park he fought back so hard he had to be Tasered twice.
Frankly, this may all turn out to be nothing, or at least, nothing that ever adds up to anything. Zorkot may have become the victim of his own fantasies of himself as a fighter, and got caught playing army in the park with a loaded AK. I am interested, though, in the basis for the dangerous weapon with unlawful intent count.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Worshippers of Death
By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
The Wall Street Journal
March 3, 2008; Page A17
Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber.
At the recent funeral for the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist Imad Moughnaya -- the mass murderer responsible for killing 241 marines in 1983 and more than 100 women, children and men in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 -- Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times giving the following warning to her son: "if you're not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don't want you."
Zahra Maladan represents a dramatic shift in the way we must fight to protect our citizens against enemies who are sworn to kill them by killing themselves. The traditional paradigm was that mothers who love their children want them to live in peace, marry and produce grandchildren. Women in general, and mothers in particular, were seen as a counterweight to male belligerence. The picture of the mother weeping as her son is led off to battle -- even a just battle -- has been a constant and powerful image.
Now there is a new image of mothers urging their children to die, and then celebrating the martyrdom of their suicidal sons and daughters by distributing sweets and singing wedding songs. More and more young women -- some married with infant children -- are strapping bombs to their (sometimes pregnant) bellies, because they have been taught to love death rather than life. Look at what is being preached by some influential Islamic leaders:
"We are going to win, because they love life and we love death," said Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. He has also said: "[E]ach of us lives his days and nights hoping more than anything to be killed for the sake of Allah." Shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden told a reporter: "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us."
"The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death," explained Afghani al Qaeda operative Maulana Inyadullah. Sheik Feiz Mohammed, leader of the Global Islamic Youth Center in Sydney, Australia, preached: "We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam. Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid." Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech: "It is the zenith of honor for a man, a young person, boy or girl, to be prepared to sacrifice his life in order to serve the interests of his nation and his religion."
How should Western democracies fight against an enemy whose leaders preach a preference for death?
The two basic premises of conventional warfare have long been that soldiers and civilians prefer living to dying and can thus be deterred from killing by the fear of being killed; and that combatants (soldiers) can easily be distinguished from noncombatants (women, children, the elderly, the infirm and other ordinary citizens). These premises are being challenged by women like Zahra Maladan. Neither she nor her son -- if he listens to his mother -- can be deterred from killing by the fear of being killed. They must be prevented from succeeding in their ghoulish quest for martyrdom. Prevention, however, carries a high risk of error. The woman walking toward the group of soldiers or civilians might well be an innocent civilian. A moment's hesitation may cost innocent lives. But a failure to hesitate may also have a price.
Late last month, a young female bomber was shot as she approached some shops in central Baghdad. The Iraqi soldier who drew his gun hesitated as the bomber, hands raised, insisted that she wasn't armed. The soldier and a shop owner finally opened fire as she dashed for the stores; she was knocked to the ground but still managed to detonate the bomb, killing three and wounding eight. Had the soldier and other bystanders not called out a warning to others -- and had they not shot her before she could enter the shops -- the death toll certainly would have been higher. Had he not hesitated, it might have been lower.
As more women and children are recruited by their mothers and their religious leaders to become suicide bombers, more women and children will be shot at -- some mistakenly. That too is part of the grand plan of our enemies. They want us to kill their civilians, who they also consider martyrs, because when we accidentally kill a civilian, they win in the court of public opinion. One Western diplomat called this the "harsh arithmetic of pain," whereby civilian casualties on both sides "play in their favor." Democracies lose, both politically and emotionally, when they kill civilians, even inadvertently. As Golda Meir once put it: "We can perhaps someday forgive you for killing our children, but we cannot forgive you for making us kill your children."
Civilian casualties also increase when terrorists operate from within civilian enclaves and hide behind human shields. This relatively new phenomenon undercuts the second basic premise of conventional warfare: Combatants can easily be distinguished from noncombatants. Has Zahra Maladan become a combatant by urging her son to blow himself up? Have the religious leaders who preach a culture of death lost their status as noncombatants? What about "civilians" who willingly allow themselves to be used as human shields? Or their homes as launching pads for terrorist rockets?
The traditional sharp distinction between soldiers in uniform and civilians in nonmilitary garb has given way to a continuum. At the more civilian end are babies and true noncombatants; at the more military end are the religious leaders who incite mass murder; in the middle are ordinary citizens who facilitate, finance or encourage terrorism. There are no hard and fast lines of demarcation, and mistakes are inevitable -- as the terrorists well understand.
We need new rules, strategies and tactics to deal effectively and fairly with these dangerous new realities. We cannot simply wait until the son of Zahra Maladan -- and the sons and daughters of hundreds of others like her -- decide to follow his mother's demand. We must stop them before they export their sick and dangerous culture of death to our shores.
Mr. Dershowitz teaches law at Harvard University and is the author of "Finding Jefferson" (Wiley, 2007).
The Wall Street Journal
March 3, 2008; Page A17
Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber.
At the recent funeral for the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist Imad Moughnaya -- the mass murderer responsible for killing 241 marines in 1983 and more than 100 women, children and men in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 -- Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times giving the following warning to her son: "if you're not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don't want you."Zahra Maladan represents a dramatic shift in the way we must fight to protect our citizens against enemies who are sworn to kill them by killing themselves. The traditional paradigm was that mothers who love their children want them to live in peace, marry and produce grandchildren. Women in general, and mothers in particular, were seen as a counterweight to male belligerence. The picture of the mother weeping as her son is led off to battle -- even a just battle -- has been a constant and powerful image.
Now there is a new image of mothers urging their children to die, and then celebrating the martyrdom of their suicidal sons and daughters by distributing sweets and singing wedding songs. More and more young women -- some married with infant children -- are strapping bombs to their (sometimes pregnant) bellies, because they have been taught to love death rather than life. Look at what is being preached by some influential Islamic leaders:
"We are going to win, because they love life and we love death," said Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. He has also said: "[E]ach of us lives his days and nights hoping more than anything to be killed for the sake of Allah." Shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden told a reporter: "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us."
"The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death," explained Afghani al Qaeda operative Maulana Inyadullah. Sheik Feiz Mohammed, leader of the Global Islamic Youth Center in Sydney, Australia, preached: "We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam. Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid." Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech: "It is the zenith of honor for a man, a young person, boy or girl, to be prepared to sacrifice his life in order to serve the interests of his nation and his religion."
How should Western democracies fight against an enemy whose leaders preach a preference for death?
The two basic premises of conventional warfare have long been that soldiers and civilians prefer living to dying and can thus be deterred from killing by the fear of being killed; and that combatants (soldiers) can easily be distinguished from noncombatants (women, children, the elderly, the infirm and other ordinary citizens). These premises are being challenged by women like Zahra Maladan. Neither she nor her son -- if he listens to his mother -- can be deterred from killing by the fear of being killed. They must be prevented from succeeding in their ghoulish quest for martyrdom. Prevention, however, carries a high risk of error. The woman walking toward the group of soldiers or civilians might well be an innocent civilian. A moment's hesitation may cost innocent lives. But a failure to hesitate may also have a price.
Late last month, a young female bomber was shot as she approached some shops in central Baghdad. The Iraqi soldier who drew his gun hesitated as the bomber, hands raised, insisted that she wasn't armed. The soldier and a shop owner finally opened fire as she dashed for the stores; she was knocked to the ground but still managed to detonate the bomb, killing three and wounding eight. Had the soldier and other bystanders not called out a warning to others -- and had they not shot her before she could enter the shops -- the death toll certainly would have been higher. Had he not hesitated, it might have been lower.
As more women and children are recruited by their mothers and their religious leaders to become suicide bombers, more women and children will be shot at -- some mistakenly. That too is part of the grand plan of our enemies. They want us to kill their civilians, who they also consider martyrs, because when we accidentally kill a civilian, they win in the court of public opinion. One Western diplomat called this the "harsh arithmetic of pain," whereby civilian casualties on both sides "play in their favor." Democracies lose, both politically and emotionally, when they kill civilians, even inadvertently. As Golda Meir once put it: "We can perhaps someday forgive you for killing our children, but we cannot forgive you for making us kill your children."
Civilian casualties also increase when terrorists operate from within civilian enclaves and hide behind human shields. This relatively new phenomenon undercuts the second basic premise of conventional warfare: Combatants can easily be distinguished from noncombatants. Has Zahra Maladan become a combatant by urging her son to blow himself up? Have the religious leaders who preach a culture of death lost their status as noncombatants? What about "civilians" who willingly allow themselves to be used as human shields? Or their homes as launching pads for terrorist rockets?
The traditional sharp distinction between soldiers in uniform and civilians in nonmilitary garb has given way to a continuum. At the more civilian end are babies and true noncombatants; at the more military end are the religious leaders who incite mass murder; in the middle are ordinary citizens who facilitate, finance or encourage terrorism. There are no hard and fast lines of demarcation, and mistakes are inevitable -- as the terrorists well understand.
We need new rules, strategies and tactics to deal effectively and fairly with these dangerous new realities. We cannot simply wait until the son of Zahra Maladan -- and the sons and daughters of hundreds of others like her -- decide to follow his mother's demand. We must stop them before they export their sick and dangerous culture of death to our shores.
Mr. Dershowitz teaches law at Harvard University and is the author of "Finding Jefferson" (Wiley, 2007).
Monday, March 03, 2008
Patrons to La Shish: 'Buh-Bye Ghannooj!'
Photo: KATHLEEN GALLIGANSo Talal Chahine's customers really did resent the idea that part of the cost of a plate of hummus was going to fund Hezbollah. ("La Shish chain closes amid accusations against owner").
Right on cue, Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News in Dearborn, told the Detroit Free Press that "federal prosecutors drove La Shish out of business by recklessly accusing Chahine of supporting Hizballah." ("La Shish closes 11 metro eateries").
As has been discussed here, and elsewhere, on many occasions, Chahine's ties with Hezbollah are hardly in doubt.
The Free Press wants to say the chain's demise began in April 2005, when "Federal agents raid his homes in Plymouth Township and Dearborn Heights and La Shish's headquarters in Dearborn...[seizing] computers and financial records." As if Chahine was just minding his own business, and down come the Feds for nothing. There are plenty of reasons to give credence to federal prosecutors' charges that Chahine has "connections at the highest levels of ... Hezbollah."
We know who's fault it is, and why all those people are now out of work.
Chahine in 2002 in a place of honor beside Hezbollah spiritual leader Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, at a Hezbollah fundraiser in Lebanon.Saturday, March 01, 2008
Chahine's Wife's U.S. Citizenship Revoked
There really isn't much I can think of to say about this story any more. Anyone else have any thoughts? La Shish owner's wife sentenced for citizenship fraud
BY DAVID ASHENFELTER • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER • February 26, 2008
The wife of fugitive La Shish restaurant owner Talal Chahine was sentenced today to 90 days in prison and stripped of her U.S. citizenship for citizenship fraud in a case that tripped up an illegal immigrant who concealed her past to get into the FBI and CIA.
Elfat El Aouar, 41, of Plymouth, is to serve the sentence simultaneously with an 18-month term she received last May for helping Chahine, 55, evade $6.9 million in federal income taxes from 2001 to 2005 on his Dearborn-based La Shish restaurant chain. He fled to Lebanon in September 2005 to avoid prosecution.
Although Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Chadwell wanted a longer sentence -- she was facing up to 11 months under a plea agreement with the government -- U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn said he didn’t want El Aouar to serve additional time for the crime because her three young children need her. Chadwell said the government got the main thing it wanted in the case – the revocation of her citizenship.
Chadwell said federal immigration authorities probably would seek her deportation when she gets out of prison. Cohn, sitting in Detroit, sentenced her by telephone from a prison in Danbury, Conn.
El Aouar pleaded guilty last November to charges that she entered into a sham marriage in 1990 so she could remain in the United States and eventually become a U.S. citizen. The fraudulent marriage took place before she married Chahine.
Two of her sisters — including Nada Nadim Prouty, the former FBI agent and CIA operative who pleaded guilty late last year — were targeted in the investigation. A former roommate, a decorated Marine Corps captain, also pleaded guilty in the case.
All of them are Lebanese immigrants.
El Aouar, who has a master’s degree in business administration, is serving time for keeping dual computerized books so her husband could carry out the tax evasion scheme. Authorities said much of the money they skimmed was sent to Lebanon, where they said Chahine has links to Hizballah. The U.S. State Department designated Hizballah a terrorist group in 1997.
Prouty, El Aouar’s sister, pleaded guilty in federal court in Detroit on Nov. 13 to obtaining her U.S. citizenship through a fraudulent marriage and parlaying it into a college education and key jobs at the FBI and CIA. She also pleaded guilty to accessing an FBI computer system she wasn’t authorized to use to find out whether she, her sister or Chahine were being investigated and to read details about a Detroit-based investigation of Hizballah.
It’s unclear what Prouty, 37, of Vienna, Va., did with the information. Authorities suspect she shared it with Chahine. A sentencing date hasn’t been set in her case.
In October, Chahine was indicted on charges that he conspired with bribing a federal immigration official in Detroit and using the relationship to extort more than $260,000 from La Shish employees from 1999 to 2003.
In December, he was indicted again on a conspiracy charge for allegedly vouching for the phony marriages the women used to obtain citizenship.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Mortgage Fraud Going Strong in Dearborn
The Dearborn area’s latest mortgage-fraud case ended in a guilty plea for Kalil Khalil, who was convicted in federal court 2 weeks ago for a fraud scheme that raked in $21 million. (“Tax accountant sentenced in $21-million mortgage fraud case”).
According to Stephen Murphy, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, Khalil’s “scheme began in January 2001 with fraudulent loan applications and documents.
“Murphy said the fraud occurred in several ways, including: loans received were not used to purchased or refinance a home; fake borrowers were named on the applications; the fraudulent borrower’s employment was false as were documents confirming employment; and appraisals were forged or inflated.”
Khalil’s partner in crime, Tariq Hamad, already was sentenced last September to nine years in prison for his part in the scheme. (“Dearborn man pleads guilty to mortgage fraud charges”).
After they fraudulently obtained money, Hamad and Khalil deposited it in various bank accounts, concealing their identitied by creating them in the names of straw title companies.
In a FrontPageNews article, (“Mortgage Fraud Funding Jihad?”), Patrick Poole details how these schemes often work:
The fraud usually begins when a seller is approached by a buyer with an offer too good to be true: the purchase of the home at a price well above list price (in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars). The catch is that the money over and above the list price is to be returned to the buyer by the seller at the time of closing. The incentive for the seller is that they receive their initial asking price, and in many mortgage fraud cases, the fraud ring tries to target homes that have been on the market for more than a year and where the seller will be eager to accept the buyer's unusual arrangements.
The next phase of the fraud almost always involves an insider at the mortgage company who will agree to a loan at the inflated value of the home (the list price plus whatever amount is to be returned to the buyer). In some instances, a phony construction company is established by the buyer on an associate to justify on paper the additional amount of the loan. Once the loan is approved, the deal goes to closing where the seller takes the equivalent of the list price and the buyer walks away with their share of the transaction. In a number of cases, no one ever occupies the home nor is a mortgage payment ever made.
The Columbus case demonstrates the flexibility and ease with which the fraudulent transactions are accomplished. According to an article in the Columbus Dispatch, one buyer, Mohamed A. Mohamed targeted homes in the inner city, where in one case a mortgage was obtained for $160,000 on a home that county officials had only appraised for $34,000. That mortgage was eventually foreclosed and Mohamed lost his mortgage brokers license, but he still maintains a real estate agent license and has been involved in other transactions in that capacity.
Conversely, a series of purchases made by Hany Rezk Ibrahim and his wife involve several of the highest priced residential real estate transactions made in the Columbus area in the past year, with the Ibrahims walking away with approximately $250,000 in each transaction. In one case, the pair bought a home for $1.3 million that had sold for $540,000 the year before. Just prior to going on his real estate purchasing spree, Hany Ibrahim incorporated a home improvement company, listing an address at a local condominium complex as the corporate address.
Poole also identifies at least three more recent incidences of mortgage fraud in Dearborn:
As we said last October, "mortgage fraud is a big problem in Dearborn for several reasons, not least of which include the destruction of property values, the deterioration of neighborhoods, and further destabilizing an already badly depressed real-estate market.Dearborn’s mortgage-scammers are also a problem because fraud is one more source of funds that find there way to international terrorist organizations, especially, in Dearborn’s case, Hezbollah." In this most recent case, court records stated that Tariq Hamad claimed he invested the money in the stock market, where he lost it.
We at DU possess no information at this stage permitting us to contradict this, or to state the pair were in reality diverting the funds to terrorism. But it wouldn’t be unreasonable to draw an inference from the patterns of recent history.
According to Stephen Murphy, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, Khalil’s “scheme began in January 2001 with fraudulent loan applications and documents.
“Murphy said the fraud occurred in several ways, including: loans received were not used to purchased or refinance a home; fake borrowers were named on the applications; the fraudulent borrower’s employment was false as were documents confirming employment; and appraisals were forged or inflated.”
Khalil’s partner in crime, Tariq Hamad, already was sentenced last September to nine years in prison for his part in the scheme. (“Dearborn man pleads guilty to mortgage fraud charges”).
After they fraudulently obtained money, Hamad and Khalil deposited it in various bank accounts, concealing their identitied by creating them in the names of straw title companies.
In a FrontPageNews article, (“Mortgage Fraud Funding Jihad?”), Patrick Poole details how these schemes often work:
The fraud usually begins when a seller is approached by a buyer with an offer too good to be true: the purchase of the home at a price well above list price (in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars). The catch is that the money over and above the list price is to be returned to the buyer by the seller at the time of closing. The incentive for the seller is that they receive their initial asking price, and in many mortgage fraud cases, the fraud ring tries to target homes that have been on the market for more than a year and where the seller will be eager to accept the buyer's unusual arrangements.
The next phase of the fraud almost always involves an insider at the mortgage company who will agree to a loan at the inflated value of the home (the list price plus whatever amount is to be returned to the buyer). In some instances, a phony construction company is established by the buyer on an associate to justify on paper the additional amount of the loan. Once the loan is approved, the deal goes to closing where the seller takes the equivalent of the list price and the buyer walks away with their share of the transaction. In a number of cases, no one ever occupies the home nor is a mortgage payment ever made.
The Columbus case demonstrates the flexibility and ease with which the fraudulent transactions are accomplished. According to an article in the Columbus Dispatch, one buyer, Mohamed A. Mohamed targeted homes in the inner city, where in one case a mortgage was obtained for $160,000 on a home that county officials had only appraised for $34,000. That mortgage was eventually foreclosed and Mohamed lost his mortgage brokers license, but he still maintains a real estate agent license and has been involved in other transactions in that capacity.
Conversely, a series of purchases made by Hany Rezk Ibrahim and his wife involve several of the highest priced residential real estate transactions made in the Columbus area in the past year, with the Ibrahims walking away with approximately $250,000 in each transaction. In one case, the pair bought a home for $1.3 million that had sold for $540,000 the year before. Just prior to going on his real estate purchasing spree, Hany Ibrahim incorporated a home improvement company, listing an address at a local condominium complex as the corporate address.
Poole also identifies at least three more recent incidences of mortgage fraud in Dearborn:
- [In 2006] a Dearborn, MI man pled guilty to mortgage fraud in a plea deal with federal authorities to prevent being charged additionally with terrorist activities. At the time of his arrest, federal authorities found books, posters and recruitment videos for the Hezbollah terrorist organization inside the home of Nemr Ali Rahal. According to the Detroit News, a picture was also recovered of Rahal tearing up an American flag. Rahal had fraudulently obtained more than $500,000 by falsifying information on a mortgage application. Customs officials had also stopped Rahal and his son the previous year for having military-grade explosive residue on their passports as they reentered the US from Canada.
- In another Dearborn-area case, two men, Mohammed Krayem and Mahmoud Youssef Kourani were accused in 2004 of transferring more than $200,000 obtained through real estate fraud and cigarette smuggling to Kourani's brother, Haider Kourani, the Hezbollah chief of military security for southern Lebanon. The money was to be used for purchasing military equipment from the United Nations Protection Force for use in attacks against Israel….
- In June 2005, two Dearborn-area men, Ahmad and Musa Jebril, were convicted of mortgage fraud charges after defrauding six banks for $250,000 and dozens of people of up to $400,000. The Jebrils were active supporters of Hamas, and federal authorities said that Ahmad Jebril was training a cell of local men to wage jihad against the US. Both Musa and Ahmad Jebril had been thrown out of their local mosque, where Musa had been an imam, for their radical activities. A local Muslim writer has described in an article for Beliefnet the climate of fear that the two men created in the Islamic community by their jihadist preaching and activities. The indictment also noted that immediately following the November 1995 car bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which killed four Americans, the Jebrils faxed a statement in support of the attacks to CNN. Subsequent to their conviction of mortgage fraud, the Jebrils and one of their associates were additionally charged by the federal government with trying to bribe a juror during their fraud trial.
As we said last October, "mortgage fraud is a big problem in Dearborn for several reasons, not least of which include the destruction of property values, the deterioration of neighborhoods, and further destabilizing an already badly depressed real-estate market.Dearborn’s mortgage-scammers are also a problem because fraud is one more source of funds that find there way to international terrorist organizations, especially, in Dearborn’s case, Hezbollah."
We at DU possess no information at this stage permitting us to contradict this, or to state the pair were in reality diverting the funds to terrorism. But it wouldn’t be unreasonable to draw an inference from the patterns of recent history.
Monday, December 10, 2007
CIA Mole, or Destroyed Videotape: Tough Call on News Interest
This isn't what I'd call rigorously scientific, but I did a little Google search this morning after getting this update for America’s Truth Forum: “More details on ex-agent's security breach.”
On Wednesday, prosecutors said Prouty illegally accessed the FBI's Hezbollah investigative files in 2002 and 2003, at a time when she was a Washington, D.C.-based FBI field agent who was not working Hezbollah cases. Prouty accessed them electronically, "without authorization and in excess of her authorized access," the prosecutors said in a court filing.
At the time, her sister's husband, Talal Khalil Chahine, 51, was under investigation by the FBI in Detroit for his suspected ties to Hezbollah. The Lebanon-based group was designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization in 1997….
One senior federal law enforcement official said an ongoing damage assessment focused on what information Prouty -- who started working for the FBI in 1999 and the CIA in 2003 -- passed onto Chahine and perhaps others with connections to Hezbollah here. Officials also are trying to determine whether the information undermined any of the FBI's long-running investigations into the organization.
So why isn’t this a bigger story?
I put in these search terms for the CIA videotape story: “CIA videotape investigation,” and got 318 hits.
I Googled “Prouty FBI spy Hezbollah” and got 41 hits.
(As a reality check, I Googled “Michael Vick sentencing”, 3,392 hits, but we’re just coming off a weekend.)
So Hezbollah has apparently managed to get a mole into not one, but two of our highest-echelon intelligence agencies, and used their mole to steal secrets of direct benefit to Hezbollah, and it’s a smaller story than the CIA destroying a videotape after going to the Congress and saying, “Hey, we’re going to get rid of this videotape, all right?”
I wonder how many Congressional investigations Carl Levin is going to demand about this one. After all, it happened in Michigan, the State he represents, I'm told.
On Wednesday, prosecutors said Prouty illegally accessed the FBI's Hezbollah investigative files in 2002 and 2003, at a time when she was a Washington, D.C.-based FBI field agent who was not working Hezbollah cases. Prouty accessed them electronically, "without authorization and in excess of her authorized access," the prosecutors said in a court filing.
At the time, her sister's husband, Talal Khalil Chahine, 51, was under investigation by the FBI in Detroit for his suspected ties to Hezbollah. The Lebanon-based group was designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization in 1997….
One senior federal law enforcement official said an ongoing damage assessment focused on what information Prouty -- who started working for the FBI in 1999 and the CIA in 2003 -- passed onto Chahine and perhaps others with connections to Hezbollah here. Officials also are trying to determine whether the information undermined any of the FBI's long-running investigations into the organization.
So why isn’t this a bigger story?
I put in these search terms for the CIA videotape story: “CIA videotape investigation,” and got 318 hits.
I Googled “Prouty FBI spy Hezbollah” and got 41 hits.
(As a reality check, I Googled “Michael Vick sentencing”, 3,392 hits, but we’re just coming off a weekend.)
So Hezbollah has apparently managed to get a mole into not one, but two of our highest-echelon intelligence agencies, and used their mole to steal secrets of direct benefit to Hezbollah, and it’s a smaller story than the CIA destroying a videotape after going to the Congress and saying, “Hey, we’re going to get rid of this videotape, all right?”
I wonder how many Congressional investigations Carl Levin is going to demand about this one. After all, it happened in Michigan, the State he represents, I'm told.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Fighting Terror Is Not the Same as Fighting Crime
Here's an excerpt from an interesting piece in last Friday’s Detroit News:
Dearborn man accused of providing support to Hezbollah
Paul Egan / The Detroit News
DETROIT -- A Dearborn man who has spent three years behind bars awaiting trial is expected to plead guilty in federal court Dec. 6 to providing support to the terrorist group Hezbollah.
Fawzi Mustapha Assi, 47, was stopped in 1998 while attempting to depart from Detroit Metropolitan Airport with global positioning equipment, night vision goggles and a thermal-imaging camera.
The former Ford Motor Co. engineer was released on an electronic tether soon after his arrest and fled to Lebanon. He returned to the United States and surrendered in 2004.
Assi was the first person indicted under a 1996 anti-terrorism law that made it illegal to knowingly provide money or materials to terrorists. The U.S. State Department designated Hezbollah a terrorist group in 1997.
Those who follow the Detroit-Dearborn are already aware that in most instances of criminal charges or investigations of people suspected of assisting terrorism, the favored beneficiary is almost always Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is very popular amongst the Lebanese Shia population of Dearborn. We have seen Hezbollah's supporters demonstrating openly, and vocally, in support of the Army of Allah. During one demonstration last summer thousands of Dearborn residents loudly declared Hezbollah Big Cheese Sheikh HassanNasrallah to be “Our leader!”
We've also seen a heap of examples of criminal activity intended to benefit Hezbollah, from fraudulent FBI and CIA agents, to marriage fraud, bribes paid to ICE officials, a local resident running around Hemlock Park with an AK-47, tax evasion, flight from prosecution, money laundering, mortgage fraud, and cigarette smuggling.
There are people who believe that the “so-called” war on terror is either completely non-existent, or, at best, exaggerated.
It can’t be a war, they say, because the people attacking us are not nation-states, the way Japan and Germany were in 1941.
Therefore, every act of terrorism can only be investigated and prosecuted as an individual criminal act, without regard to all the connected dots that lead to highly organized, and extremely dangerous terrorist organizations and paramilitary groups, nor to the states behind them, e.g., Afghanistan, Syria, Iran.
This rule about only going to war against nation-states seems awfully arbitrary to me.
In human history, the rise of the nation-state is fairly recent, while warfare goes all the way back. If you’ve got an army, weapons, and a will to make war on someone, then it seems right to me that that someone has a right to make war in self-defense. Whether your defending your tribe, your extended family, your kingdom, your city-state, your right to self-defense should be the same.
By the same token, those who support armies that are sworn to make war on us aren’t merely criminals. They are themselves national enemies, because they have made common cause with our country's enemies. They aren't committing their crimes to get rich, but to assist a foreign army to destroy its foes--whether the foe is our ally, Israel, or us.
Which is why money laundering for Hezbollah, or cheating on your taxes to give the proceeds to Hezbollah, or smuggling cigarettes to earn money for Hezbollah, while they are still only criminal acts, are very similar to treason, or acts of war.
Dearborn man accused of providing support to Hezbollah
Paul Egan / The Detroit News
DETROIT -- A Dearborn man who has spent three years behind bars awaiting trial is expected to plead guilty in federal court Dec. 6 to providing support to the terrorist group Hezbollah.
Fawzi Mustapha Assi, 47, was stopped in 1998 while attempting to depart from Detroit Metropolitan Airport with global positioning equipment, night vision goggles and a thermal-imaging camera.
The former Ford Motor Co. engineer was released on an electronic tether soon after his arrest and fled to Lebanon. He returned to the United States and surrendered in 2004.
Assi was the first person indicted under a 1996 anti-terrorism law that made it illegal to knowingly provide money or materials to terrorists. The U.S. State Department designated Hezbollah a terrorist group in 1997.
Those who follow the Detroit-Dearborn are already aware that in most instances of criminal charges or investigations of people suspected of assisting terrorism, the favored beneficiary is almost always Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is very popular amongst the Lebanese Shia population of Dearborn. We have seen Hezbollah's supporters demonstrating openly, and vocally, in support of the Army of Allah. During one demonstration last summer thousands of Dearborn residents loudly declared Hezbollah Big Cheese Sheikh HassanNasrallah to be “Our leader!”
We've also seen a heap of examples of criminal activity intended to benefit Hezbollah, from fraudulent FBI and CIA agents, to marriage fraud, bribes paid to ICE officials, a local resident running around Hemlock Park with an AK-47, tax evasion, flight from prosecution, money laundering, mortgage fraud, and cigarette smuggling.
There are people who believe that the “so-called” war on terror is either completely non-existent, or, at best, exaggerated.
It can’t be a war, they say, because the people attacking us are not nation-states, the way Japan and Germany were in 1941.
Therefore, every act of terrorism can only be investigated and prosecuted as an individual criminal act, without regard to all the connected dots that lead to highly organized, and extremely dangerous terrorist organizations and paramilitary groups, nor to the states behind them, e.g., Afghanistan, Syria, Iran.
This rule about only going to war against nation-states seems awfully arbitrary to me.
In human history, the rise of the nation-state is fairly recent, while warfare goes all the way back. If you’ve got an army, weapons, and a will to make war on someone, then it seems right to me that that someone has a right to make war in self-defense. Whether your defending your tribe, your extended family, your kingdom, your city-state, your right to self-defense should be the same.
By the same token, those who support armies that are sworn to make war on us aren’t merely criminals. They are themselves national enemies, because they have made common cause with our country's enemies. They aren't committing their crimes to get rich, but to assist a foreign army to destroy its foes--whether the foe is our ally, Israel, or us.
Which is why money laundering for Hezbollah, or cheating on your taxes to give the proceeds to Hezbollah, or smuggling cigarettes to earn money for Hezbollah, while they are still only criminal acts, are very similar to treason, or acts of war.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Dearborn Hosts Premiere of 'Sister Act 3'
Well, some of us got it and some of us don't. And Talal Chahine, that old lady killer, most clearly has got it.
How else to explain how yet one more female accomplice of Chahine, La Shish restaurateur and Hezbollah financier, gets to face federal charges, while Chahine gets to do his wudu five times a day in the congenial environs of Bint Jbeil, Lebanon?
This time, the defendant is Nada Nadim Prouty, the elder sister of Elfat El Aouar and Rula Al-Aouar, both of whom preceded their big sister into federal custody. If I were in charge of the investigation, I’d find out how many El Aouar sisters are left, and go right on down the line.
First was Elfat El Aouar, who was married to Chahine. She was indicted along with him in May 2006 but, unfortunately for her, was not smart enough to be charged in absentia the way her wily husband was. and is now doing 18 months for tax evasion.
Then there is Rula Al-Aouar, 36, a Detroit-area physician, charged this past September with citizenship fraud. More specifically, she paid a dishwasher to marry her in order to obtain US citizenship by fraud.
She also worked for Chahine's restaurant. Along with tax evasion and Hezbollah money-laundering, Chahine used his La Shish restaurant to arrange lots of fraudulent marriages between immigrants and La Shish employees who were US citizens.
He even worked out a scheme to pay (now former) ICE official, Roy Bailey, to accept bribes in exchange for helping with these kinds of marriage frauds, or releasing illegal immigrants facing deportation. Chahine and Bailey also conspired to use Bailey’s ICE position to then extort money from some of La Shish’s former employees with precarious immigration problems they don’t want reported. Chahine was charged along with Bailey for that in October, but, as the DOJ’s press release notes, “CHAHINE has failed to return to the United States and is believed to be living as a fugitive in the country of Lebanon.”
And now there is big sister Nada Nadim Prouty, who overstayed her student visa, and in 1990 paid some out-of-work guy to marry her so she could become a citizen. Then, after a few years of internship as waitress and hostess at La Shish, then managed to get hired consecutively by both the FBI and the CIA.
As is now being reported all over, (even in the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press!!), Ms. Prouty used her positions as an FBI special agent, and then as CIA operations officer, to access classified information to see if she or other family members, including Chahine, were being investigated for terrorist activities. To aid in her search, she concentrated on an investigation file targeting Hezbollah. She also took classified FBI documents home. As the Free Press headline states it quite literally: "Fake U.S. citizen got FBI secrets from files".
All of which has now led to her agreement to plead guilty to federal charges of “conspiring to fraudulently obtain U.S. citizenship; illegally accessing the FBI computer system, and naturalization fraud.” For this she faces six-12 months in prison, loss of citizenship, and deportation. Her plea deal also stipulates that the government will allow her little sister, Rula Al-Aouar, to be referred to a pre-trial diversion program so she can avoid her own charges for naturalization fraud.
David Ashenfelter at the Free Press gives a decent chronology of this in his article today. In it, he describes how Ms. Prouty, while still at the FBI, and before she joined the CIA, was using her position there to assist her brother-in-law, Chahine, as he continued to provide material assistance to Hezbollah. As things unfolded once Ms. Prouty joined the FBI in 1999, as Ashenfelter recounts:
In August 2000, Chahine married Prouty's sister.
The next month, Prouty accessed an FBI computer system without authorization to find out whether she, El Aouar or Chahine was being investigated.
In 2002, Prouty's sister and Chahine attended a fund-raiser in Lebanon that featured speeches by Chahine and Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of Hizballah, which the U.S. State Department says is a terrorist organization.
In June 2003, a few weeks before joining the CIA as an operations officer, Prouty again accessed the FBI computer system to learn about a Detroit-based national security investigation involving Hizballah.
In other words, she was spying. But she is notably not being charged with spying, nor anything remotely so grave.
How else to explain how yet one more female accomplice of Chahine, La Shish restaurateur and Hezbollah financier, gets to face federal charges, while Chahine gets to do his wudu five times a day in the congenial environs of Bint Jbeil, Lebanon?
This time, the defendant is Nada Nadim Prouty, the elder sister of Elfat El Aouar and Rula Al-Aouar, both of whom preceded their big sister into federal custody. If I were in charge of the investigation, I’d find out how many El Aouar sisters are left, and go right on down the line.
First was Elfat El Aouar, who was married to Chahine. She was indicted along with him in May 2006 but, unfortunately for her, was not smart enough to be charged in absentia the way her wily husband was. and is now doing 18 months for tax evasion.
Then there is Rula Al-Aouar, 36, a Detroit-area physician, charged this past September with citizenship fraud. More specifically, she paid a dishwasher to marry her in order to obtain US citizenship by fraud.
She also worked for Chahine's restaurant. Along with tax evasion and Hezbollah money-laundering, Chahine used his La Shish restaurant to arrange lots of fraudulent marriages between immigrants and La Shish employees who were US citizens.
He even worked out a scheme to pay (now former) ICE official, Roy Bailey, to accept bribes in exchange for helping with these kinds of marriage frauds, or releasing illegal immigrants facing deportation. Chahine and Bailey also conspired to use Bailey’s ICE position to then extort money from some of La Shish’s former employees with precarious immigration problems they don’t want reported. Chahine was charged along with Bailey for that in October, but, as the DOJ’s press release notes, “CHAHINE has failed to return to the United States and is believed to be living as a fugitive in the country of Lebanon.”
And now there is big sister Nada Nadim Prouty, who overstayed her student visa, and in 1990 paid some out-of-work guy to marry her so she could become a citizen. Then, after a few years of internship as waitress and hostess at La Shish, then managed to get hired consecutively by both the FBI and the CIA.
As is now being reported all over, (even in the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press!!), Ms. Prouty used her positions as an FBI special agent, and then as CIA operations officer, to access classified information to see if she or other family members, including Chahine, were being investigated for terrorist activities. To aid in her search, she concentrated on an investigation file targeting Hezbollah. She also took classified FBI documents home. As the Free Press headline states it quite literally: "Fake U.S. citizen got FBI secrets from files".
All of which has now led to her agreement to plead guilty to federal charges of “conspiring to fraudulently obtain U.S. citizenship; illegally accessing the FBI computer system, and naturalization fraud.” For this she faces six-12 months in prison, loss of citizenship, and deportation. Her plea deal also stipulates that the government will allow her little sister, Rula Al-Aouar, to be referred to a pre-trial diversion program so she can avoid her own charges for naturalization fraud.
David Ashenfelter at the Free Press gives a decent chronology of this in his article today. In it, he describes how Ms. Prouty, while still at the FBI, and before she joined the CIA, was using her position there to assist her brother-in-law, Chahine, as he continued to provide material assistance to Hezbollah. As things unfolded once Ms. Prouty joined the FBI in 1999, as Ashenfelter recounts:
In August 2000, Chahine married Prouty's sister.
The next month, Prouty accessed an FBI computer system without authorization to find out whether she, El Aouar or Chahine was being investigated.
In 2002, Prouty's sister and Chahine attended a fund-raiser in Lebanon that featured speeches by Chahine and Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of Hizballah, which the U.S. State Department says is a terrorist organization.
In June 2003, a few weeks before joining the CIA as an operations officer, Prouty again accessed the FBI computer system to learn about a Detroit-based national security investigation involving Hizballah.
In other words, she was spying. But she is notably not being charged with spying, nor anything remotely so grave.
I hope that the lenient charges (the heaviest charge she faces is for naturalization fraud), and the favor to her younger sister, are being exchanged for something of substantial value in return from Ms. Prouty--something that could finally get authorities to lower the boom on Hezbollah in Dearborn.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Leader of Dearborn Mortgage Scam Gets 10 Years
Safi Sobh, 34, of Dearborn, convicted by a federal jury of leading a mortgage fraud conspiracy, has been sentenced to ten years in prison in by U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Duggan, and ordered to pay $1,256,579 in restitution.
Sobh’s conspiracy worked by obtaining “inflated appraisals on residential properties, created false applications and obtained millions of dollars in bank loans.”
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the trial evidence
Established that between July 2002 and December 2005, Sobh led a large conspiracy that successfully corrupted the system of checks and balances lending institutions rely upon to determine how much money they can safely lend on a property, and whether a particular borrower is qualified to repay the loan. Ohio Savings Bank, Commercial Federal Bank and several other federally insured financial institutions relied upon the false representations of the conspirators and loaned millions of dollars, most of which has not been recovered. Workiong out of his realty, The Success Group, Sobh hand-picked and taught his co-conspirators how to commit these crimes. Eight indicted co-conspirators pleaded guilty to acting as corrupt loan originators, processors, appraisers, and straw buyers.
Mortgage fraud is a big problem in Dearborn for several reasons, not least of which include the destruction of property values, the deterioration of neighborhoods, and further destabilizing an already badly depressed real-estate market.
Dearborn’s mortgage-scammers are also a problem because fraud is one more source of funds that find there way to international terrorist organizations, especially, in Dearborn’s case, Hezbollah.
We see a regular pattern in the Dearborn-Detroit area of criminal conspiracies involving everything from cigarette smuggling to extortion to tax evasion to health-care fraud to mortgage fraud in which proceeds are intended for Hezbollah. Although some mortgage fraud might be motivated by nothing more than simple greed, we believe a large portion of mortgage fraud in this area (bearing in mind the large number of Arabic defendants) has its roots in Hezbollah’s bottomless need for funds.
One local blogger who posts at JihadChat, commenting this past May on the Sobh conspiracy , said “a title company officer told me Dearborn-Detroit [Wayne County] now has the HIGHEST REAL ESTATE MORTGAGE TITLE FRAUD IN AMERICA.”
She researched a recent report by the Mortgage Asset Research Institute [MARI], which she says “explains many Muslim Scams without ever saying ‘Muslim.’”:
What sort of games are Arab-Muslims (with big gas cash) playing with mortgage applications? You name it -- everything from little white lies about income or assets all the way up to what the FBI calls "air loans" that are based on completely fabricated information. The Umma never work alone. They can fabricate and falsify for each other.
The popularity of low- and no-documentation ("stated income") mortgages is also a key component of rising fraud levels, according to MARI. Sometimes referred to as "liar loans" or "NINAs" (no asset, no income verification), low-doc mortgages originally were designed for professionals and business owners with high credit scores who preferred not to lay out their confidential tax, income and investment information every time they applied for a mortgage. Typically those loans required FICO scores above 700, relatively low loan-to-value (LTV) ratios, and came with slightly higher fees or rates.
But recently, even consumers with subprime credit scores, low down payments and questionable incomes are opting for reduced documentation. Too many of these, however, turn out to be liar loans indeed, says MARI, where applicants falsify their incomes and asset information -- frequently with the help or a cooperative mortgage broker. Muslims, because of non-tax paying immigrant status, can fabricate interest in many assets or show assets owned by various family members as being owned by the applicant.
The MARI report cites this real-life example to illustrate the problem: "An officer at a Florida mortgage company applied to a second lender for two stated income loans. The applications were submitted 90 days apart. In the first application, the borrower stated his monthly income as $24,000, and in the second he said it was $30,000." When the mortgage officer was challenged about the discrepancy, he replied, "I thought that on stated income loans you could claim an income as high as necessary" to qualify for the loan amount the applicant needed. Muslims use al-Taquia in a way of being agreeable but confused when they know the actual requirements.
MARI
The most common misrepresentation and frauds in 2003-2004 related to falsehoods on applications (56 percent of all reported frauds), followed by fabricated tax returns and bank documents (33 percent -- up sharply from 23 percent three years earlier), false employment verifications (12 percent), and hoked-up appraisals (10 percent). because the Muslim sub-culture is primarily one of cash transactions funds are easily converted or diverted to bolster a financial position.
Remember this. Of over 10,000 FBI agents, only approximately 13 speak and read Arabic. How many of those are native Muslims and loyal only to umma?
There is a reciprocal relationship between Hezbollah's terrorist state-within-a-state in Southern Lebanon, and many (that's many, not all), of Dearborn's Lebanese residents: Dearborn sends Hezbollah money, and Hezbollah uses it to buy rockets to kill Jews, further Hezbollah's grip on all of Lebanon, and otherwise forward the agenda of Hassan Nasrallah (celebrated here in Dearborn as “Our Leader”), of whom so many Dearborn residents are fervent supporters.
We aren't Hezbollah's only source of money. But our contributions put us in the shady company of the likes of Iran and Syria. We'd like to see Dearborn's contributions stopped.
Sobh’s conspiracy worked by obtaining “inflated appraisals on residential properties, created false applications and obtained millions of dollars in bank loans.”
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the trial evidence
Established that between July 2002 and December 2005, Sobh led a large conspiracy that successfully corrupted the system of checks and balances lending institutions rely upon to determine how much money they can safely lend on a property, and whether a particular borrower is qualified to repay the loan. Ohio Savings Bank, Commercial Federal Bank and several other federally insured financial institutions relied upon the false representations of the conspirators and loaned millions of dollars, most of which has not been recovered. Workiong out of his realty, The Success Group, Sobh hand-picked and taught his co-conspirators how to commit these crimes. Eight indicted co-conspirators pleaded guilty to acting as corrupt loan originators, processors, appraisers, and straw buyers.
Mortgage fraud is a big problem in Dearborn for several reasons, not least of which include the destruction of property values, the deterioration of neighborhoods, and further destabilizing an already badly depressed real-estate market.
Dearborn’s mortgage-scammers are also a problem because fraud is one more source of funds that find there way to international terrorist organizations, especially, in Dearborn’s case, Hezbollah.
We see a regular pattern in the Dearborn-Detroit area of criminal conspiracies involving everything from cigarette smuggling to extortion to tax evasion to health-care fraud to mortgage fraud in which proceeds are intended for Hezbollah. Although some mortgage fraud might be motivated by nothing more than simple greed, we believe a large portion of mortgage fraud in this area (bearing in mind the large number of Arabic defendants) has its roots in Hezbollah’s bottomless need for funds.
One local blogger who posts at JihadChat, commenting this past May on the Sobh conspiracy , said “a title company officer told me Dearborn-Detroit [Wayne County] now has the HIGHEST REAL ESTATE MORTGAGE TITLE FRAUD IN AMERICA.”
She researched a recent report by the Mortgage Asset Research Institute [MARI], which she says “explains many Muslim Scams without ever saying ‘Muslim.’”:
What sort of games are Arab-Muslims (with big gas cash) playing with mortgage applications? You name it -- everything from little white lies about income or assets all the way up to what the FBI calls "air loans" that are based on completely fabricated information. The Umma never work alone. They can fabricate and falsify for each other.
The popularity of low- and no-documentation ("stated income") mortgages is also a key component of rising fraud levels, according to MARI. Sometimes referred to as "liar loans" or "NINAs" (no asset, no income verification), low-doc mortgages originally were designed for professionals and business owners with high credit scores who preferred not to lay out their confidential tax, income and investment information every time they applied for a mortgage. Typically those loans required FICO scores above 700, relatively low loan-to-value (LTV) ratios, and came with slightly higher fees or rates.
But recently, even consumers with subprime credit scores, low down payments and questionable incomes are opting for reduced documentation. Too many of these, however, turn out to be liar loans indeed, says MARI, where applicants falsify their incomes and asset information -- frequently with the help or a cooperative mortgage broker. Muslims, because of non-tax paying immigrant status, can fabricate interest in many assets or show assets owned by various family members as being owned by the applicant.
The MARI report cites this real-life example to illustrate the problem: "An officer at a Florida mortgage company applied to a second lender for two stated income loans. The applications were submitted 90 days apart. In the first application, the borrower stated his monthly income as $24,000, and in the second he said it was $30,000." When the mortgage officer was challenged about the discrepancy, he replied, "I thought that on stated income loans you could claim an income as high as necessary" to qualify for the loan amount the applicant needed. Muslims use al-Taquia in a way of being agreeable but confused when they know the actual requirements.
MARI
The most common misrepresentation and frauds in 2003-2004 related to falsehoods on applications (56 percent of all reported frauds), followed by fabricated tax returns and bank documents (33 percent -- up sharply from 23 percent three years earlier), false employment verifications (12 percent), and hoked-up appraisals (10 percent). because the Muslim sub-culture is primarily one of cash transactions funds are easily converted or diverted to bolster a financial position.
Remember this. Of over 10,000 FBI agents, only approximately 13 speak and read Arabic. How many of those are native Muslims and loyal only to umma?
There is a reciprocal relationship between Hezbollah's terrorist state-within-a-state in Southern Lebanon, and many (that's many, not all), of Dearborn's Lebanese residents: Dearborn sends Hezbollah money, and Hezbollah uses it to buy rockets to kill Jews, further Hezbollah's grip on all of Lebanon, and otherwise forward the agenda of Hassan Nasrallah (celebrated here in Dearborn as “Our Leader”), of whom so many Dearborn residents are fervent supporters.
We aren't Hezbollah's only source of money. But our contributions put us in the shady company of the likes of Iran and Syria. We'd like to see Dearborn's contributions stopped.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Lebanon Not Deterred by Murder of MP Assassination
From Ya Libnan:
The killers will not succed; Lebanon vows to move on
Thursday, 20 September, 2007 @ 8:23 PM
Beirut - Antoine Ghanem fell victim as the eighth political assassination in Lebanon since February 2005. Lebanon's pro-Western government says it is determined to hold a presidential election, despite the latest assassination.
Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said the killers of MP Antoine Ghanim would not be allowed to succeed in their aims.
Syria has been accused of being behind the killing, but it denies involvement.
MPs are due to choose a new president next week. The killings of several anti-Syrian figures has left Lebanon's government with only a slim majority.
Banks, schools and government offices have been closed in Lebanon, as the country mourns Mr Ghanim, of the Maronite Phalange party.
The education ministry said schools and universities would remain closed again on Friday, when a funeral would be held.
Mr Ghanim died with at least six others in a car bombing in the mainly Christian Sin al-Fil district on Wednesday.
Mr Siniora said on Thursday: "The hand of terror will not win and will not succeed in subduing us and silencing us.
"The Lebanese will not retreat and will have a new president elected by lawmakers, no matter how big the conspiracy was."
He has called for a UN investigation into the assassination of Mr Ghanim, who had returned to Beirut just a few days before his death to take part in next week's vote.
Lebanon is poised to choose a successor to pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud.
The country has been mired in an ongoing political crisis, with a deadlock between pro- and anti-Syrian factions in parliament.
'Hand of terror'
Syria said it had no involvement in the attack, calling it a "criminal act" that undermined hopes for Lebanese national reconciliation.
But some Lebanese politicians were quick to blame Damascus for the blast.
Saad Hariri, son of Rafik Hariri, a former prime minister who was assassinated in a bomb attack in 2005, said responsibility lay with the "cowardly regime" of Syria.
Even pro-Syrian Mr Lahoud said it was no coincidence someone was killed whenever there were positive developments in Lebanon.
US President George W Bush denounced the "horrific assassination", which he described as attempts by Syria and Lebanon to destabilise Lebanon.
The attack has also been criticised by the UK, the EU, Russia, China, France and Italy.
Six other leading figures in Lebanon's anti-Syria movement have been killed since Rafik Hariri's assassination in 2005.
Lebanese Assassinations
Feb 2005: Ex-PM Rafik Hariri
Feb 2005: MP Bassel Fleihan
June 2005: Anti-Syria journalist Samir Kassir
June 2005: Ex-Communist leader George Hawi
Dec 2005: Anti-Syria MP Gebran Tueni
Nov 2006: Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel
June 2007: Anti-Syria MP Walid Eido
Sep 2007: Anti-Syria MP Antoine Ghanim
The killers will not succed; Lebanon vows to move on
Thursday, 20 September, 2007 @ 8:23 PM
Beirut - Antoine Ghanem fell victim as the eighth political assassination in Lebanon since February 2005. Lebanon's pro-Western government says it is determined to hold a presidential election, despite the latest assassination.
Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said the killers of MP Antoine Ghanim would not be allowed to succeed in their aims.
Syria has been accused of being behind the killing, but it denies involvement.
MPs are due to choose a new president next week. The killings of several anti-Syrian figures has left Lebanon's government with only a slim majority.
Banks, schools and government offices have been closed in Lebanon, as the country mourns Mr Ghanim, of the Maronite Phalange party.
The education ministry said schools and universities would remain closed again on Friday, when a funeral would be held.
Mr Ghanim died with at least six others in a car bombing in the mainly Christian Sin al-Fil district on Wednesday.
Mr Siniora said on Thursday: "The hand of terror will not win and will not succeed in subduing us and silencing us.
"The Lebanese will not retreat and will have a new president elected by lawmakers, no matter how big the conspiracy was."
He has called for a UN investigation into the assassination of Mr Ghanim, who had returned to Beirut just a few days before his death to take part in next week's vote.
Lebanon is poised to choose a successor to pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud.
The country has been mired in an ongoing political crisis, with a deadlock between pro- and anti-Syrian factions in parliament.
'Hand of terror'
Syria said it had no involvement in the attack, calling it a "criminal act" that undermined hopes for Lebanese national reconciliation.
But some Lebanese politicians were quick to blame Damascus for the blast.
Saad Hariri, son of Rafik Hariri, a former prime minister who was assassinated in a bomb attack in 2005, said responsibility lay with the "cowardly regime" of Syria.
Even pro-Syrian Mr Lahoud said it was no coincidence someone was killed whenever there were positive developments in Lebanon.
US President George W Bush denounced the "horrific assassination", which he described as attempts by Syria and Lebanon to destabilise Lebanon.
The attack has also been criticised by the UK, the EU, Russia, China, France and Italy.
Six other leading figures in Lebanon's anti-Syria movement have been killed since Rafik Hariri's assassination in 2005.
Lebanese Assassinations
Feb 2005: Ex-PM Rafik Hariri
Feb 2005: MP Bassel Fleihan
June 2005: Anti-Syria journalist Samir Kassir
June 2005: Ex-Communist leader George Hawi
Dec 2005: Anti-Syria MP Gebran Tueni
Nov 2006: Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel
June 2007: Anti-Syria MP Walid Eido
Sep 2007: Anti-Syria MP Antoine Ghanim
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