LaShish: More Than Just a Restaurant, It's a Hezbollah Soap Opera

The Talal Chahine web has caught another victim, and it still isn’t Talal Chahine.

Now Chahine’s sister-in-law, Dr. Rula Nadim Al-Aouar, is being charged in federal court with obtaining her citizenship fraudulently, because her family paid a man $1,000 to marry her in 1992. (“Sister-in-law of LaShish owner charged with fraud").

She never lived with the man, Timojin Steven Pruett, who was a dishwasher at the time (we can just guess where). He told the feds the couple never had marital contact beyond a brief kiss at the marriage ceremony. Pruett didn’t even take his rubber gloves off.

Within a year Al-Aouar was admitting to immigration officials the marriage wasn’t working out, and they ordered her to leave the country by November 1993. In response, she requested asylum, citing her fear of being persecuted by Hezbollah if she returned to Lebanon. Dr. Al-Aouar eventually managed to become an OB-GYN, but at the time of the paid-for marriage she was only a waitress at Chahine’s restaurant, LaShish.

Dr. Al-Aouar is the sister of Elfat El Aouar, who is Chahine’s second ex-wife, and another beneficiary of Chahine's bad medicine. Elfat El Aouar pleaded guilty to money laundering in December 2006, and went away to jail last May. She got in trouble for helping her husband skim millions in unreported LaShish receipts that he then forwarded to Hezbollah. She apparently didn’t get the same timely warning her husband did that the authorities were closing in. Chahine skedaddled owing $20 million in back taxes, and is comfortably untouchable now in Lebanon.

Then there’s Chahine’s son, Khalil Talal Chahine, who’s been in prison since his conviction in April 2005 for second degree murder, felonious assault and felony firearm after he and an accomplice--his brother-in-law, Ali El-Ozeir--shot down a romantic rival after a fight over a girl. Ali El-Ozeir fled to Lebanon, where last we heard he was being mistreated in a Beirut prison with standards far below those at Gitmo.

Then in January of this year, we learned about the plight of Talal Chahine’s illegitimate 7-year-old daughter, Aliyah, the love-child of another LaShish-related arrangement. (“La Shish Owner Sought as Deadbeat Dad”). Chahine’s baby mama, Wendy Whitelaw, was unfortunate enough to be another of LaShish's waitresses when Chahine was "between wives." Since Chahine skipped the country he stopped paying his child support to Whitelaw, and now mother and daughter are trying to make ends meet on food stamps and Medicaid.

Everything this bum touches turns to tears. Who knows if, hiding out with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, anything ever touches him?

Chahine’s Wife To Be Sentenced for Tax Evasion

As we have related earlier in these pages, ("Dearborn, Michigan: Where Hezbollah Gets Its Laundry Done"), Elfat El Aouar, the wife of restaurant owner, Hezbollah money-launderer, and fugitive Talal Chahine, is facing sentencing for her role in the scheme to skim more than $20 million of restaurant profits and avoid taxes. (“La Shish Owner’s wife to be sentenced”).

While federal prosecutors alleged in their court filings that some of the skimmed money went to support Hezbollah, neither Chahine nor his wife are being charged with supporting terrorism.

I find this quite strange, but consistent with US Attorney Stephen Murphy’s consistent bashfulness about charging Middle Eastern suspects with links to terrorism.