Osama Awadallah
Posted on 12/25/2006 4:00:49 AM PST by radar101
LA MESA, Calif. (AP) -- Osama Awadallah never even had a parking ticket when he was detained by FBI agents in San Diego 10 days after hijacked jets destroyed the World Trade Center and struck the Pentagon.
One of hundreds of Muslim men picked up in a frenzied law enforcement dragnet that followed the attacks, Awadallah was a 21-year-old community college student from Jordan who had met two of the hijackers. He was whisked to New York to testify as a material witness before a grand jury investigating the terrorist plot.
He was never accused of any involvement in terrorism, but after testifying twice before the grand jury he was charged with misleading the panel about how well he knew one of the hijackers, launching a five-year legal ordeal that ended with his acquittal by a New York federal jury just before Thanksgiving.
Now 26 and back in California, where he graduated with honors last spring from San Diego State University, Awadallah is looking for a computer technician job, studying for graduate school entrance exams, and moving ahead with long-held plans to apply for U.S. citizenship.
"I want to move on from this, find my lucky girl and just be like every other American," he said in an interview at a Denny's restaurant in suburban San Diego, just a half-mile from the apartment where he was arrested. He dressed casually and sports a chicly close-cropped beard, a large digital wristwatch and wire-rim glasses.
An observant Muslim, he politely declined to shake hands with a female reporter. He began the interview with brusque questions about motives for talking to him, but quickly relaxed in conversation.
"I watch what I say, who I'm talking to these days," he apologized with a ready grin. "The real effect is in trusting people."
Born in Caracas, Venezuela, where his father worked as a halal butcher, Awadallah grew up in Amman, Jordan, while his father and three older brothers moved to San Diego to start a courier business. In 1999, Awadallah joined his father -- by then a naturalized U.S. citizen -- in California as a legal resident.
He found a mosque, got a job at a Texaco station and took English language classes before enrolling as a freshman at Grossmont College in the fall of 2000. At the gas station, Awadallah briefly worked with a Saudi named Nawaf al-Hazmi. A friend of al-Hazmi's, another Saudi named Khalid al-Mihdhar, sometimes stopped by the Texaco.
Awadallah says he got up early to pray Sept. 11, 2001 and turned on the TV just as a hijacked American Airlines jet slammed into the Pentagon with al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar on board.
"It was unbelievable, like a movie or something," Awadallah said. "I couldn't believe that was happening."
On Sept. 21, the FBI picked him up for questioning after agents found his phone number on a piece of paper in a car registered to al-Hazmi that was left at Dulles International Airport. Awadallah says the agents promised he would be back in time for noon prayers.
He didn't get home until December.
Instead, Awadallah says, he was flown to New York -- his first trip there -- and greeted by a heavily armed escort. He said he was housed in solitary confinement, cut off from his family and his lawyer, repeatedly strip-searched and subjected to excessive physical force by guards that left him bruised.
"Suddenly all these fingers were pointing at me, people were telling me I was responsible for 4,000 deaths," Awadallah said. "That I cannot forget. It's impossible for anyone to imagine how that feels."
He was brought before a grand jury in early October 2001 wearing shackles on his wrists and ankles -- restraints convicts refer to as a "three-piece suit." Awadallah told the panel that he met al-Hazmi in San Diego, but denied knowing al-Mihdhar until prosecutors confronted him with an assignment notebook for his English-as-a-Second-Language class in which he wrote both men's names. Five days later, Awadallah recanted before the grand jury.
Prosecutors charged him with two counts of perjury, alleging that he had withheld potentially critical information about the hijackers. His defense attorneys said that Awadallah -- tired, disoriented, and struggling to understand legal terms in English -- had simply been confused. He was held on $500,000 bail but posted bond in early December and returned to San Diego wearing an electronic ankle bracelet.
Back at school and at the mosque, Awadallah said, his friends avoided him, afraid they would get caught up in the ongoing investigations.
"They thought if they walked with me they'd get in trouble, and there were other people who even thought I was working for the government," he said.
The perjury case finally went to trial last April, ending in a mistrial after a lone juror held out against his conviction during a weeklong deliberation. A second jury deliberated over two days in November before finding Awadallah not guilty.
Awadallah has filed a civil suit against the government in New York federal court, alleging that he was wrongly detained and mistreated by guards. Elizabeth Wolstein, an assistant U.S. attorney representing the government in the case, declined to comment.
"I'm happy for myself because of the verdict, but I think I should fight for my rights," Awadallah said. "My whole life has been affected."
Sadly enough, tagyyeh—lying, or dissimulation—is not only condoned, it is recommended to the Muslims in their scripture. Hence, a Muslim can and would lie without any compunctions, whenever it is expedient
Violation of the non-Muslim laws, therefore, is no violation at all to a Muslim.
I remember him and his case. I hope his lawsuit goes nowhere.
Why lie if he did nothing wrong?
The case marks the largest number of U.S. officers to be charged in an alleged crime since the start of the Iraq war, said John Hutson, a former Navy judge advocate general.
"The honorable thing is not to 'protect' your subordinates," said Hutson, who is now president of New Hampshire's Franklin Pierce Law Center. "The honorable thing is to look above that and realize they have a greater responsibility to the Marine Corps and military justice system."
A criminal probe was launched after Time magazine reported in March, citing survivor accounts and human rights groups, that innocent people were killed
I'm lost. I have not slept much tonight.....
An observant Muslim, he politely declined to shake hands with a female reporter. He began the interview with brusque questions about motives for talking to him, but quickly relaxed in conversation.
. "I watch what I say, who I'm talking to these days," he apologized with a ready grin. "The real effect is in trusting people."
Reread the above, and think about it. How many U.S. Muslims are so fanatiaclly observant, even after several years of assimilation, that they won't shake a woman's hand during an interview? Something about this raises the hair on my neck.
They may not have had enough evidence for a perjury charge, but the FBI is probably right to have put a close zoom in on this guy, in the days following 9/11. I imagine this article isn't even mentioning the tip of the iceberg that lead them to investigate him.
I'd love to be an Arabic speaking fly on the wall when he goes to the mosque. I'll be he and his associates prefer a certain type of imam.
He was "simply confused."
Violation of the Muslim laws is no violation at all to a Muslim.
Wow, how outrageous! I bet that would be hard on him, what with the "friends" he associates with.
It could happen to anybody. Imagine you were hauled into the police station and shown a picture of some guy you know, and the cops ask, 'Do you know this guy'. Only they ask you about 600 times, the 600th time in an actual courtroom.
Then, around the 605th time they ask you, you realize that you DO know the guy, and inform them you made a mistake. I'm sure it happens all the time.
Osama Awadallah
LOL
I sure hope we have one or more 'moles' praying to that rock 5 times a day in every mosque across the USA.
Islam doesn't allow any rights. He should change religion. I'd suggest relocating to the Middle East, but the only country with individual rights he's worried about is Israel.
an observant moderate muslim...that just happens to know or to known of the 9/11 other mdoerate muzzies that flew planes into buildings and killed 3000 innocents....
maybe he should jsut go back to the texaco station and think about this.....
better yet...why not go back to venezuela...I am sure that uncle hugo would be waiting with open arms!!!
Yeah sure..if he applied for a job with me, I'm SURE I'd consider him....
I hear you. These people are dangerous.
If a US Christian were in similar circumstances in any Muslim country, there would be no trial and no whining news articles afterward. We all know that, yet these bearded losers expect us to bend over backward so that their widdle fweewings aren't hurt after the jihadis attack on 9/11.
As for that "lucky girl" he's looking for, she'll be lucky if he allows her out of the house without a burka on.
So why is the MSM so damned careful to make sure this particular fact is included, when the illegal pieces of excrement are described as just plain immigrants?
Far as I'm concerned, he's still a POS that needs to be deported.
Now he hangs around, sucks us dry of whatever tax money he can get, sues the government and becomes a rich man.
And perople ask me why I feel the way I do about muslims and islam.
My Christmas spirit is sorely lacking this morning when I think of these murdering pieces of camel dung.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.