Bad timing blamed for group's detainment

The Daily Oklahoman ^ | October 12, 2005 | Randy Ellis and Judy Gibbs Robinson

[MizSterious]

Bad timing blamed for group's detainment By Randy Ellis and Judy Gibbs Robinson The Oklahoman NORMAN - A University of Oklahoma instructor from Egypt said he and others of foreign descent were handcuffed at gunpoint and questioned after the OU bomb blast Oct. 1, but added he is not bitter. "Not at all. I understand. They explained. But if they keep coming back -- that's something else," Hossam Barakat said. "Because I'm not guilty in any way." Barakat, 37, blames unfortunate timing. The roommate of the student killed by the explosion just happened to wander into an apartment where he and four or five others were visiting. Also arrested was Pakistani student Fazal M. Cheema, the roommate of the student who apparently killed himself with a bomb, Joel "Joe" Henry Hinrichs III. Cheema took a polygraph test and later was released, The Oklahoman has learned. The others do not wish to be identified or interviewed, Barakat said. He described them as either born abroad or Americans of Middle Eastern descent but said he does not believe they were targeted because of nationality or religion. "It wasn't toward the Muslim community. It was just because of Cheema," Barakat said. "I can understand. He's the roommate." Roommate visited The others came under suspicion because Cheema had stopped by an apartment where they were talking around midnight Oct. 1, Barakat said. "Cheema always come to this apartment. That night, he just walk in," Barakat said. In addition, one of the men in the apartment was a visiting professor from Algeria who had his suitcases packed and was ready to leave the country on an airplane the following day, Barakat said. "I understand, absolutely, that something had happened and we needed to cooperate. If this had happened in any other country, they would have done it the same way." Hinrichs, an engineering student, has tentatively been identified as the student who died Oct. 1 in an explosion on a campus bench about 100 yards from OU's packed football stadium. Investigators believe he blew himself up. Investigators found identification on the body, but the state medical examiner is awaiting DNA test results for a positive identification. Salvador Hernandez, special agent in charge of the FBI's Oklahoma City office, told a congressman Tuesday the investigation into the explosion is continuing, but so far it appears to be "an individual act." Barakat, who lives in the same university apartment complex as Hinrichs, said that hours after the bomb blast, he went to another apartment in the complex to say goodbye to the Algerian friend who was scheduled to fly out of the United States the next day. Later, Cheema dropped in unexpectedly, staying only a few minutes. When Cheema left, the commotion began. Outside, guests heard yelling, Barakat said. "We heard someone said, 'Put your hands up! Put your hands up!' And someone looked from the window and seen that Cheema got arrested," he said. Because Cheema has a hearing impairment, he did not respond immediately to the police order to stop. "That's why they got mad and started to yell and flashed in his eyes and got guns," Barakat said. Barakat said he started to leave his friend's apartment to go home about 15 minutes later, but an officer pulled a gun and ordered him back inside. "We knew that they are investigating this thing but I didn't know that we are under house arrest. That didn't come to our mind," Barakat said. Hours passed as the group waited in the apartment. "We are terrified. We were sitting waiting for them to come at any time," Barakat said. About 4:05 a.m., police telephoned the apartment and told the group to come out the front door, one at a time, hands up, he said. As they arrived outside, they were ordered to kneel and put their hands behind their heads so they could be handcuffed. Barakat said they were separated at that point and questioned individually. "They asked if I knew Joel," Barakat said. "I said, 'No.' They kept asking over and over, 'Do you have bombs, guns or knives?'" Barakat said he did not. About 5:30 a.m. Sunday, all were released to go home except Cheema, who was put up in a motel overnight because FBI agents wanted him to take a polygraph the next day, Barakat said. The apartment where they had been was among those evacuated so officers could remove explosive material from Hinrichs' home, so the group went to Barakat's apartment, which was outside the evacuation area. Exhausted, they fell asleep, some on the floor, he said. An FBI agent called again about 8:45 a.m. Oct. 2, saying agents wanted to talk to them some more, Barakat said. Later that morning, the agents arrived but instead of questioning them at Barakat's apartment as expected, they took them to an FBI office in Oklahoma City, where they spent the day watching football on television with an equal number of FBI agents. The agents brought in chicken for lunch and pizza for dinner and joked with the men. But they also accompanied them to the rest room, Barakat said. Eventually, an immigration officer arrived and questioned each person individually to make sure they were in the country legally, he said. "He make a copy of everything I have in my wallet -- everything except the cash," he said. Later, FBI agents separated the group again and asked more questions: Where have you been? What have you been doing? Do you know any radical person in the Islamic community? Did you ever see anyone taking anything out of Hinrichs' apartment in a garbage bag? Barakat said he answered "no" to the last two questions. About 10:30 p.m., an FBI agent finally told them it was all over and thanked them for their assistance. Barakat said the FBI agents were polite and professional throughout the investigation, but he also said Norman police were "very aggressive, very mean."

[LibertyRocks]

Pinged a few people I can remember off-hand - Several new items today...
1.) Inhofe, Cole seek answers in OU blast
http://newsok.com/video/1641314/
By Tamara Pratt
NEWS 9
Interesting video with a phone call recorded from Cole.
a.) Cole said there is "no indication one way or another" regarding Hinrichs attempting to enter the stadium. To say this they would have to be completely ignoring Adam Smith's statements. Apparently Jayna Davis has found and contacted the ticket-taker, but they are refusing comment. (Forgot to note where I found that info (re: Davis) - will look and provide a link when I find it)
b.) I'm wondering why Inhofe is not commenting in the media on this at all...
c.) Still wondering how the FBI was able to tell Cole what has been found in the apartment if the file is sealed per the DOJ.

2.) Also, a transcript from Mark Tapscott's appearance last night on CNN:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0510/14/asb.01.html

3.) And, thanks to FReeper origlonewolf for transcribing Cole's appearance (complete with stutters and mis-pronunciations) on Hannity and Colmes last night...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1502759/posts?page=76#76

[Rte66]

Thanks for the ping and the transcripts. Still scratching my head.

I'll post sometime soon when I'm finished with the family background and y'all can FReepmail me for it--it's too detailed to post. *yawn* It's also pretty boring.

I will say one other thing, in a roundabout way. I do not want to step on anyone's toes, so I'm not sure how to state this, except what I found.

I knew absolutely nothing about Jehovah's Witnesses before this, except that I actually let some into my home a few years ago and let them talk to me. All I heard was armageddon and the end of time.

So, I wanted to learn more about the religion while I looked at the family's comings and goings. I was under the impression that if someone said they were a JW, then they had to be rather intense and active about it, or they wouldn't be in it anymore. That part was right.

I knew about the "no blood transfusions" thing, but I did NOT know about the not saluting the US (or any other nation's or secular entity's) flag, or the never celebrating anyone's birthday or any holidays, or the shunning of family members who weren't "in the truth," meaning a practicing JW.

There was more and I was rather shocked to read it. I wanted to find out the true beliefs of the "church" (but it's not--they hate churches) and could only find ONE hit on google out of 488,000 that was positive or truly written by the religion to its adherents. That was the watchtower website, the real one--there are many anti- ones with similar names.

Just don't know what to make of all that, as it pertains to Joel H. Hinrichs III. Except for one thing--I did start reading the first few website hits I got that looked legit and they all said that suicide among family members, especially offspring, was a major problem. There were numerous references to this, but I had to quit reading after a few hours, it was all so dark.

Does anyone here have anything to add to help my understanding about JW? TIA

[LibertyRocks]

I'm guessing at this point you've found a link between Hinrichs family and the JW religion? Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading your synopsis on the family when you are finished. (o:

[RegulatorCountry]

I've gone into the transcript and excerpted a few interesting points that I'd like to juxtapose and comment upon:

"Was it terrorism? No, authorities say, but that hasn't stopped the blogosphere from running wild with conspiracy theories." - Joe Johns, CNN Correspondent

"Here's how the conspiracy theory goes. Hinrichs lives three blocks from the Islamic Center. He once had a beard, he had a Pakistani roommate, leading some to speculate he was part of an Islamic terror ring. Nonsense, says the university president and former U.S. Senator David Boren." - Joe Johns, CNN Correspondent

"JOHNS: We stopped by the apartment. Empty. Scrubbed clean by the FBI. At the Islamic Center, no one had ever heard of Hinrichs until they saw the picture in the newspaper." - Joe Johns, CNN Correspondent

" Talk of terrorism strikes a raw nerve here. The Oklahoma City bombing happened just 20 miles away. But in this case, all signs suggest the fear doesn't match the facts." - Joe Johns, CNN Correspondent

Joe Johns hasn't put forth much in the way of facts to "match," prior to reaching his conclusion. Further into the transcript, it is stated clearly that terrorism is not ruled out until proven otherwise, and yet this CNN correspondent leads in by stating that authorities say this is not terrorism. The case is not closed, the warrant is sealed, the apartment was scrubbed, by their own observation, and yet anything contrary to the assertion of Boren and various unidentified males and females is to be taken as gospel.

As far as keying up so heavily on Hinrich's beard, I note that they're backing off of the "Abe Lincoln" thing of last week, implying that he'd had that beard for a lengthy period of time, which was noted on FR because his DMV photo lacked a beard. Why all the contortions over a beard, I wonder, if it is so truly insignificant?

As far as Hinrichs being completely unheard of at the Islamic Center, there were several quotes from OU students who are Islamic (posted to FR in various threads under keyword oubombing), and who no doubt frequent the center, who knew Hinrichs. So, this is patently false on its face, and can be proven so through written interviews, many of which appear in the selfsame newspaper that appears to be so desperate to make this all go away, referred to in this transcript as the "Oklahoma Daily."

Other than Mark Tapscott, there is absolutely no commentary upon the fact that Hinrichs attempted to purchase ammonium nitrate fertilizer at Ellison Feed & Seed just days prior to blowing himself up. There is also no commentary, other than Tapscott, upon the reportedly large cache of explosives found in Hinrichs and Cheema's apartment. No comment at all upon Hinrichs having used TATP, notoriously associated with radical Islamic terrorists, in London and elsewhere, so much so that it even has a specific name among Jihadists, "Mother of Satan." The fact that there was a substantial cache of explosive materials in Hinrichs and Cheema's apartment is not diminished by CNN's report of that apartment having been "scrubbed." Rather, this would seem to confirm that as fact, and not wild speculation or any sort of "conspiracy theory."

Put all this together, Hinrichs blowing himself up with a backpack bomb containing TATP; his having sought ammonium nitrate fertilizer very recently, which, by the way, is used to make an ANFO bomb by combining the fertilizer with fuel oil, with TATP being used to detonate the much larger ANFO bomb; his having a large cache of explosives in an apartment shared with a Pakistani, in an apartment building populated largely with Muslim students, and that "cooking" TATP has a notoriously acrid "funny smell" that would have been quite obvious to Cheema, and to those in adjoining apartments as well. This all points to Cheema being at a minimum aware of Hinrich's activities, and at worst, involved himself. The same is quite possibly true for the occupants of surrounding apartments.

In my opinion, this isn't even particularly good spin, let alone an effective smokescreen. All I see are soundbites that would seem to effectively negate any cause for concern, when taken out of context, such as in a newspaper headline or in video shorts on the nightly news.

[RegulatorCountry]

" and yet anything contrary"

Correction: and yet NOTHING contrary.

[LibertyRocks]

You've done a good job going through the transcript. According to Tapscott there was a lot that was taped that wasn't broadcast as well...

For some reason everyone in the MSM - who most of the time are at least questioning of officials' reports - are for some reason trying to push the "official story" of lone suicide instead of looking at this in any objective way. It is disturbing frankly...

[RegulatorCountry]

"It is disturbing frankly..."

Yes, it is. If I were truly the paranoid sort, I'd also be quite disturbed by how long any reply containing "TATP" or "ANFO" takes to post, lol.