From Here To Eternity
Suicide Bombers and TWA 800
All have not the gift of martyrdom
John Dryden 1631 - 1700
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Knowing that he would be convicted and sent to prison for life with no future opportunity to state his case in public, Ghazi Ibrahim Abu Maizar, against the advice of his attorney, took the stand at his trial in Brooklyn to state that he had planned to kill as many Jews as possible in a suicide bomb attack, though he insisted not on the subway. He also confessed to knowledge about the downing of TWA 800 which was received with "skepticism" since Federal officials had not found a "criminal" act associated with this disaster.
July 21, 1998 New York Times
One of two Palestinians charged with plotting to explode a powerful pipe
bomb in the New York City subway testified Monday that he had planned to
kill as many Jews as possible in a suicide bomb attack, though he insisted
not on the subway. The defendant, Ghazi Ibrahim Abu Maizar, also told the
jury in Federal District Court in Brooklyn that before he came to New York,
"I failed to assassinate President Clinton in Seattle,
Washington." Abu Maizar
was not asked to elaborate on this claim and said nothing more about it.
Later, both prosecutors and defense lawyers in the case said this was the
first time they had ever heard such a claim. And some investigators privately
expressed skepticism about the claim, pointing out that
a note found with a pipe bomb in Abu Maizar's Brooklyn
apartment when the police raided it last July claimed responsibility for
the 1996 crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800, which Federal
officials have said was not the result of a criminal act.
Even the defendant's own lawyers would not accept their client's assertions ....
July 21, 1998 New York Times
Abu Maizar's testimony Monday was also at odds with the contentions of his
own lawyers, who have argued that he had not intended to explode the pipe
bomb but rather had planned to use it as a prop in a scheme to collect reward
money from a government anti-terrorism program. .... During his testimony
Monday, a prosecutor, Bernadette Miragliotta, asked him:
"You wanted to make sure that you took as many Jews
as possible with you?" "As many as I could take," the 24-year-old
Abu Maizar declared in the dramatic testimony, in which he also asserted
to the jury that he had "come to the United States
because I feel that the United States is supporting the Jewish state and
the United States should be punished for supporting Israel." Abu
Maizar denied that he had planned to explode the bomb in the subway, but,
under questioning, did not say where he intended to explode it. ...... Ms.
Miragliotta, an assistant United States attorney in Brooklyn, noted in
cross-examining Abu Maizar that an F.B.I. agent had testified that after
his arrest, the defendant told him he had "wanted
to bomb the B train because there are a lot of Jews on the B train,"
which serves the predominantly Jewish Borough Park area of Brooklyn.
"That's not true," Abu Maizar replied
as he repeatedly denied that the subway was the target of his bombing plan.
Well if it was not true, what was he intending to do? A clue may found in events which occurred in Jerusalem just prior to his arrest.
July 30, 1997
Double-suicide bombing on at the main Jewish market in Jerusalem claimed
the lives of 17 people including the two bombers.
July 31, 1997 Reuters
Israeli and Palestinian security forces today arrested alleged Muslim militants
in ..raids following twin suicide attacks that killed 13 people in a market
in .. Jerusalem a day earlier.
July 31, 1997 Reuters and CNN
Police found explosive devices in a raid on a New York apartment and arrested
three men .. "The individuals involved are Middle
Eastern ..." the mayor told reporters at the site of the discovery
in ... Brooklyn. The raid resulted from a tip late Wednesday night from a
man who said his "roommates want to follow up on
Jerusalem," an apparent reference to the Jerusalem attack.
Was Maizar hinting that he intended to commit suicide by blowing up a bus in NY City? He seems to have followed an organization that involved itself in such acts....
July 21, 1998 New York Times
Abu Maizar .... said he was a supporter, though not a member, of Hamas, the
militant Islamic group that has claimed responsibility for the majority of
suicide bombings in Israel in recent years. "I always
dreamed to be a martyr," he declared.
The government might not be to happy with such a public statement but then it cannot control what a man says in his own 'defense' during his trial. It may have preferred that he go off to jail quietly ....
July 21, 1998 New York Times
Later, outside the courtroom, Padden said that Abu Maizar's declaration on
the witness stand that he had planned a suicide bombing would not change
the defense argument -- thus creating the unusual situation of lawyers disavowing
their client's testimony. "In spite of what he said,"
Padden told reporters, "our theory is,
and our argument will be, that there is no evidence he intended to use the
bomb."
In yet another flip-flop, which the major media appear not to notice, the government's present line is that Maizar was not connected to any group and that he was just a person who liked to throw stones .......
July 24, 1998 New York Times
A Palestinian immigrant who testified that he had wanted to kill as many
Jews as possible in a suicide attack was convicted Thursday of plotting to
explode a powerful pipe bomb in the New York City subway. But in a case that
raised the specter of another terrorist attack in a city where the World
Trade Center was bombed five years ago, the jury in federal district court
in Brooklyn acquitted a second defendant of charges that he had been part
of the conspiracy, instead finding him guilty only of an immigration-related
fraud charge. .... After the jury pronounced Ghazi Ibrahim Abu Maizar guilty
of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction, he exclaimed at the defense
table: "Palestinian children do not deserve to die!
Nobody in the world deserves to die!" .... Abu Maizar now faces
a sentence of life in prison. The immigration charge Khalil was convicted
of is normally punishable by up to 10 years in prison, but prosecution and
defense lawyers said it could bring a sentence of up to 25 years in this
case if the judge finds that Khalil used it to further a terrorist plot,
a judicial finding that is possible despite the jury's acquittal of Khalil
on charges in the bomb plot. Investigators in the
United States have said they had found no evidence linking the defendants
to any known terrorist group. And the Israeli government has said that the
men -- who came to the United States separately and met several months before
they were arrested -- were not known to have ties to militant groups, although
Abu Maizar was arrested as a teen-ager in 1990 for throwing stones at Israeli
soldiers during Palestinian protests.
But shortly after Maizar's arrest we learned that the FBI had already found a link to Hamas and knew how the operation was funded ....
August 4, 1997 TIME.com
The FBI has linked two suspects in a Brooklyn suicide-bombing plot to the
militant Mideast group Hamas. Palestinian
security officials think the two suspects could be members of a new group,
financed by Saudi dissident Osama bin
Laden, which takes its orders from Hamas or another Islamist group.
And at the time Maizar was about to carry out his attack a familiar figure, also linked to bin Laden, was about to go on trial ...
August 4, 1997 TIME.com
Ramzi Yousef, the alleged mastermind of the World Trade Center
bombing ... will go on trial today ....prosecutors hope to finger Yousef
as the mastermind of the WTC blast; another key concern is to uncover who
financed him.
Uncovering who financed him is not that difficult. If one asks who owned the house he was staying in when he was arrested it might make you suspicious ....
July 17, 1997 The New York Times
A Federal grand jury in Manhattan is investigating whether a renegade Saudi
millionaire .... has been funneling money to terrorist groups in the United
States.......Mr. bin Laden ... is believed to be living in Jalalabad,
Afghanistan. An official ... said that the money had been delivered to groups
in Detroit, Jersey City and Brooklyn
....He was ... linked to Ramzi Ahmed Yousef
...in the three years before the attack on the Trade Center,
Mr. Yousef lived in Pakistan in a house paid for
by Mr. bin Laden, the State Department report said. .......Federal
investigators have information that shows Islamic fundamentalist groups,
consisting mostly of legal noncitizen immigrants from the Middle East, have
received money from Mr. bin Laden. "the
level of terrorist activity within the United States is really very low,
..... groups typically do not want to trigger the type of response that an
attack in America would bring ..... Osama ... may
not have the same constraint."
Looking at some history of suicide bombings we find Hamas involved in a interesting double bombing ....
October 19, 1994 Hamas militant explodes bomb on bus in Tel Aviv bus,
killing 23 passengers.
January 22, 1995 Two Islamic Jihad militants blow themselves up amid
group of Israeli troops killing 21 soldiers.
April 9, 1995 Islamic Jihad suicide bomber attacks military
convoy in Gaza Strip, killing seven soldiers and a US tourist.
July 24, 1995 Unidentified suicide bomber explodes bomb aboard bus
near Tel Aviv, killing six passengers.
February, 25, 1996 Double suicide bombing in Jerusalem and Ashkelon,
claimed by Hamas, kills 26 people.
March 3, 1996 Suicide bombing on Jerusalem bus kills 19 people.
March 21, 1997 Suicide bombing Tel Aviv kills three Israeli women
and wounds 46 people.
July 30 1997 Suicide bombing in Jerusalem market kills 15 Israelis
and two bombers.
Two of the above bombings in Jerusalem were on the same bus route number. On the program 'Sixty Minutes' broadcast on October 5, 1997, a Hamas prisoner serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison said that the same bus number was chosen deliberately to show that Hamas could strike at will anywhere and at any time. Which leads one to note the similarity between the TWA 800 downing which occurred on July 17, 1996 and a similar incident which occurred in the same vicinity four months later ......
November 16, 1996 22:00 (EST)
Pakistan International Airlines Flight 712 Leaving Kennedy at 9:25pm, bound
for Frankfurt. The pilot, W. Shah, said his co-pilot saw an orange light
coming from the left hand side to the right hand side of the airplane. The
object was 3 - 4 miles in front of the aircraft and above it. Shah was told
by Boston controllers that there were no military exercises in the area.
Boston apparently confirmed two unidentified blips' on radar. The tapes have
been turned over to the FBI and NTSB. The object(s) rose directly out of
Long Island Sound and ascended almost vertically. The Pakistani crew just
saw a flash, and apparently a TWA crew,
which was behind the Pakistani, saw the whole thing. The
TWA crew was so alarmed by what they
had just seen that they considered returning to JFK. Later, they requested
clearance to skirt the area where the light had been seen. Radio 5 in the
U.K. reported that the object which crossed the Pakistani aircraft had exploded.
On a subsequent McNeill - Lehrer newshour when asked about the direction
of the object Mr. Kallstrom replied, "ascending".
November 17, 1996 WCBS-TV
WCBS-TV reports that last night Pakistani International Airlines flight 712
radioed Logan International (Boston) that a missile had just flown by their
plane (the story implied 'just missing them') ...Boston confirmed 'two
unidentified blips' on radar at the same time as the PIA report.
November 17, 1996 Associated Press
FBI spokesman Joseph Valiquette said
Sunday, "At this point we don't know what, if anything,
was seen." Shah (pilot of PIA 712) said they were told by Boston
air traffic controllers that there were no military exercises in the area.
He also said the pilots were interviewed by officials with the U.S. Embassy
in Frankfurt... A TWA plane flying
immediately behind the Pakistanis jet Saturday made a similar sighting and
asked to turn around .... The TWA plane
was rerouted and the air corridor used by the Pakistan Airlines flight was
closed. (For a transcript and an audio file of this incident see
A Tale of Two Tapes)
Joseph sees no evil and later we will find him feeling "comfortable" but in the meantime let us ask: Who is this group that would try to pull off the downing of a second TWA plane? .....
November 1, 1995 Electronic Telegraph World News
A British-educated economics lecturer, Ramadan Shallah, yesterday made his
first appearance as the new leader of the militant Islamic Jihad movement,
whose founder, Fathi Shiqaqi, was assassinated in Malta last week. Mr Shallah,
38, was at Damascus airport with other leaders of the rejectionist Palestinian
world to receive Mr Shiqaqi's coffin. (Shallah's) office in Damascus and
the group's members in the Gaza Strip refuse to confirm basic details of
his background..... From the differing accounts of his life, it seems that
Mr Shallah was born in 1957 in Gaza City's Shajaiya neighbourhood. Believed
to have headed Islamic Jihad's fund-raising operations in Britain he had
been a student with Mr Shiqaqi at Zaqazik university in Egypt, where they
joined Egyptian radicals in forming the Egyptian wing of Islamic Jihad, which
assassinated President Sadat in 1980 after he made peace with Israel. ....
The Palestinian wing of Islamic Jihad became known in the 1980s for its attacks
on Israeli targets and was among the early proponents of suicide bombings
.....He taught economics in Gaza and left in the mid-1980s, apparently taking
up studies in Egypt and America. He went to Britain in 1986 and received
his doctorate in economics at Durham University in 1991. He is believed to
have headed Islamic Jihad's fund-raising operations in Britain. He is also
thought to have been involved in militant Islamic activities in Florida.
..... Palestinian police have already jailed Mr Shallah's brother, Omar,
for 25 years for inciting Palestinians to commit suicide attacks against
Israelis.
The source of the funding is no secret ....
March 11, 1996 The Electronic Telegraph
Iran's support for Hamas .... involves training terrorists and providing
substantial financial backing. According to Western intelligence agencies,
large numbers of Hamas supporters have gone to Iran
for special terrorist training. Hamas receives substantial financial
support from the Department of Islamic Liberation Movements, which is run
from Teheran by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The
instructors are veterans of Hizbollah, the Lebanese Islamic fundamentalist
movement that pioneered suicide bombings in the mid-1980s with its attacks
on the American embassy and marine barracks in Beirut. In addition,
Hamas receives substantial financial support from
the Department of Islamic Liberation Movements, which is run from Teheran
by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's spiritual leader, who is opposed to President
Rafsanjani's policy of trying to reach an accommodation with the
West. The fund pays millions of dollars each year to Hamas and
other Islamic terrorist groups charged with implementing Ayatollah Khomeini's
legacy of exporting the Iranian revolution through the Muslim world .....
In addition, Iran directly funds and controls Islamic
Jihad, an offshoot of Hamas which is headed by Ramadan Shallah, an economics
graduate from Durham University. Although Islamic Jihad consists
of only 200 to 300 terrorists, unlike Hamas it rejects any notion of seeking
a political dialogue with either Arafat's Palestinian Authority or the Israelis.
The arrangement between Teheran and Islamic Jihad is simple. Teheran provides
the funds in return for Islamic Jihad carrying out successful terrorist attacks
against Israel. Hence, only four days after the Iranians met with
Mr Shallah in Damascus, an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber killed himself and
a group of innocent Israelis at a shopping centre in Tel Aviv last Monday.
For this Mr Shallah can expect to be handsomely rewarded by Teheran.
One of the best allies of the United States is very tolerant of fund-raising activities ....
March 11, 1996 The Electronic Telegraph World News
Britain is now the undisputed overseas fund-raising and educational headquarters
for Hamas, Israeli authorities claimed last week. Apart from raising millions
of pounds to support terrorist operations and publishing anti-Zionist propaganda,
the Israelis say Hamas supporters in London are also helping to orchestrate
terrorist attacks. Documents supporting the charges have been passed to British
intelligence by Jerusalem. The best example was provided by an American activist
jailed in Israel for supplying arms to Hamas. In his confession to the Israeli
security forces he said he was sent from Chicago to London to receive his
orders from a Hamas commander called Abu Obeida. According to Israeli
intelligence, Abu Obeida has masterminded a series of terrorist attacks,
including the abduction and murder of Israeli soldiers and bomb attacks against
civilians. ...... Another example, cited by the Israelis, of how Britain
is used as a safe haven by Hamas terrorists concerns the case of Ramadan
Shallah, the recently appointed head of Islamic Jihad, the Iranian-financed
offshoot of Hamas which carried out last Monday's suicide bomb attack in
Tel Aviv in which 11 Israelis, most of them children, died. Israeli intelligence
officials claim that up to 50 per cent of Hamas's
funding comes from Britain ...... Today Israeli officials are
deeply concerned about the activities of Filisteen al-Muslima (Islamic
Palestine), Hamas's official monthly magazine which is published in London,
and the Palestinian Relief and Development Fund, also known as Interpal.
Israeli intelligence officials claim that up to 50 per cent of Hamas's funding
comes from Britain. ....... Mr Howard is currently trying to expel a leading
Saudi dissident who is attempting to mastermind the overthrow of Saudi Arabia's
ruling family from his London headquarters. Israeli officials now believe
that the British Government will suffer similar embarrassment over the activities
of Hamas. MI5 confirmed last week that they were investigating alleged links
between Hamas and Interpal.
Another link in the funding chain is of great interest to the CIA and the circle returns again to Abu Maizar....
August 2, 1997 Electronic Telegraph Issue 799
A leading associate of a sworn enemy of the West is now in custody in Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia, where he is providing information about his former boss's Islamic
fundamentalist activities. Details have been passed to MI6 and to the CIA
at Langley, Virginia. United States intelligence sources yesterday named
the informant as Abu Fadel, the terrorist alias for Sidi Tayyib. He handled
the distribution of Osama bin Laden's vast wealth as the "godfather" of
anti-American terror groups. Just how he ended up in Riyadh is uncertain.
US officials, who have found the Saudis difficult to deal with in the matter
of terrorism, will not say if he was captured or was working as a double
agent for the desert kingdom. All they will disclose is that he has been
in Saudi hands since the middle of May. There is also a report that a second
aide to bin Laden, said to go by the name of Jallud, is helping the Saudis
after being arrested. Exiled from Saudi Arabia, bin Laden, 44, who has an
inherited fortune estimated at £154 million, is zealously committed
to striking at American interests. He is a towering figure in Islamic circles,
where he gained heroic status in the Eighties, fighting the Soviets in
Afghanistan. Reporters who have interviewed him say he is a tall and elegant
figure in a gold-trimmed white robe and red-and-white keffiyeh. He lives
with his three wives at Hadda in Afghanistan, beyond the reach of the West
and under the protection of the Taliban, who captured Kabul almost a year
ago. He is especially feared because of his ability to fund many diverse
operations. Britain has a special interest in him because he has been linked
to the transfer of funds two years ago to a London-based Algerian group suspected
of seven bombings in France. He has also been connected to the London-based
Saudi opposition group, the Committee for the Defence of Legitimate Rights.
Egypt wants to question him for allegedly funding a plot to assassinate President
Mubarak in December 1995. Cairo believes that in association with the blind
sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, he was behind
some of the murders of Western tourists in Egypt.
America believes that bin Laden was the patron of
Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the 28 year-old Pakistani on trial in Manhattan for allegedly
masterminding the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing for which the sheikh is
serving a prison term. A State Department report labels
him as "one of the most significant financial sponsors of Islamic extremist
activities in the world today". It is thought to
be no coincidence that two alleged suicide bombers, Abu Mezer, 23, and Lafi
Khalil, 22, carrying Jordanian passports, were captured two days ago making
pipe bombs in a flat in Brooklyn, New York. They were apparently
plotting to blow up a subway train. American sources say the information
being given in Riyadh by Tayyib relates to the distribution of money to Arab
communities in Brooklyn, Jersey City
in New Jersey, and Detroit. Tayyib has apparently given details of bin Laden's
bank accounts in Pakistan and Afghanistan from which money has been sent
to London and Detroit for passing on to individuals. His information is thought
to have been the reason a federal grand jury has been secretly convened in
New York to examine the financing of terrorism in America.
The CIA believes that bin Laden had advance knowledge
of two Saudi bombings that killed 24 US servicemen. He is thought to have
provided the money, with Iran supplying the muscle through
Hizbollah.
Despite which Mr. Valiquette remains "comfortable" ......
July 12, 1998, NY Times
No Flight 800 Connection - Abu Maizar and Khalil, 23, were arrested last
July when the police raided an apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and found
what they described as a pipe bomb "fully rigged and ready to be detonated,"
along with a rambling note that threatened attacks against Jewish and American
interests if various demands were not met. The demands
included the release of imprisoned Islamic militants including Ramzi Ahmed
Yousef, who was convicted of masterminding the World Trade Center bombing
in 1993. .. The note -- not only warned that Islamic militants were "ready
to hit everywhere" with suicide bombs, but also claimed responsibility for
the crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 in July 1996, in which 230 people
died. Whether Abu Maizar and Khalil are guilty of plotting a subway
calamity will be decided by the jury at their trial, but the note's claim
of responsibility for the Flight 800 catastrophe will not require a trial,
an FBI spokesman indicated. The claim was one of the "thousands of leads"
the bureau pursued in its investigation of the TWA crash, the spokesman,
Joseph Valiquette, said on Friday.
"We are comfortable with our announcement last November
that we have found no evidence that a criminal act was responsible for the
plane going down," he said.
Looking at the Islamic calendar, Mr. Valiquette, does it give you 'comfort' that a funny thing happened on the way to the subway?
July 31, 1997 Reuters
FEDEX Aircraft Crashes on 26 Raby` al-awal 1418
A.H. (July 31, 1997)
Five crewmembers . escaped ..when their Federal Express MD-11 cargo plane
crash-landed,... at Newark .. overturned and burst into flames. CBS radio
quoted a witness as saying he had seen flames from the plane before it crashed.
August 11, 1997 Aviation Week and Space Technology
Safety investigators are scrutinizing pilots' reactions and retrieving data
from a Federal Express MD-11F to better understand why the aircraft crashed
..... Investigators have questioned the two pilots but have not released
information on their interviews.
Funny because it occurred on the anniversary of an event that Hamas considers as "the ultimate submission to Zionism"........
September 13, 1993
26 Raby` al-awal 1414 A.H.
DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES ON INTERIM
SELF-GOVERNMENT ARRANGEMENTS - The
Oslo Accords of 1993 heralded a new era
of dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians through their representative
- the PLO - after decades of war and conflict. Following the initial agreement,
known today as "Oslo A", Israel withdrew its security forces from the city
of Jericho and its environs and from most of the Gaza strip, thereby transferring
civil administration and security responsibility to the newly established
Palestinian Authority. "Oslo A" was denounced by
some in Israel as the beginning of the end of the Jewish state; at the same
time the Palestinian opposition to Arafat, and especially the terrorist
organization Hamas, called it "the ultimate submission to
Zionism".
Cold comfort, Mr Valiquette!