Posted on 11/07/2002 10:54:40 AM PST by AmericanInTokyo
Original Article: Accused Terrorist on Trial in Jordan Attended Classes at Sac State; Initiation to Terrorism May Have Started in Sacramento, According to Published Reports.
Layla Bohm State Hornet (Student Newspaper) November 27, 2001
Former Sacramento State student Raed Hijazi at his trial in Jordan Nov. 26. Hijazi pleaded innocent to nine charges stemming from a plot to execute terrorist attacks on America and Israel during Millenium celebrations in December 1999. Courtesy Photo/A
He was a typical California student. Born in San Jose Dec. 3, 1968, Raed Hijazi eventually attended Sacramento City College, took a Sacramento State extension course in the spring of 1988, then began attending Sac State as a full-time business major in the spring of 1989. Hijazi enrolled in five classes that first semester, including three upper division business classes, and earned a 2.43 grade point average, according to his transcript. He returned in the fall, took 15 units, withdrew from one class and finished the semester with a 1.65 grade point average. That fall marked the end of the 21-year-old’s studies at Sac State and, like so many other students, he faded into oblivion without appearing in the college yearbook or in the alumni directory.
But Hijazi’s life has changed drastically in the past 12 years. On Monday, he pleaded innocent in a Jordanian court to nine charges, including "possession of arms and explosives and conspiring to carry out terrorist attacks against American and Israeli targets” during millennium celebrations nearly two years ago, according to an Associated Press report from Jordan.
Local NBC affiliate KCRA3, in addition to several other news sources including CNN and The New York Times, recently reported that Hijazi has possible connections to Osama bin Laden, the man suspected of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks on Washington and New York. In addition, U.S. Customs officials found evidence of financial transactions between Hijazi and Nabil al-Marabh, a man being held in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.
Hijazi was first tried in absentia last year, because he could not be found at the time of his trial, according to the Jordan Times. In September 2000, he was sentenced to death for the millennium bomb plots. According to a CNN report, Hijazi “was apprehended in Damascus on Oct. 1 (2000) and was later extradited to Jordan.” Under Jordanian law, he may be retried, and that trial began in September.
Although Hijazi pleaded innocent Monday, an Oct. 24 article in the Christian Science Monitor cited a Jordanian government prosecutor who confirmed that Hijazi had admitted to plotting to bomb a hotel containing hundreds of American and Israeli tourists. He supposedly bragged that “there wouldn’t be enough body bags in all of Jordan to carry away the dead.”
Hijazi has since claimed that he was tortured in prison and forced to confess, according to a Sept. 5 Jordan Times article.
What happened to Hijazi in the 10 years between the time he left Sac State and when the millennium plot was uncovered is still not clear. However, one possibility is that Hijazi became involved in terrorist activities while at Sac State.
“[Hijazi] told prosecutors that he had been converted to the Islamic cause while studying business at California State University in Sacramento,” read a New York Times article by Judith Miller. Why Hijazi might have gotten involved with potential terrorists is a mystery, although Miller wrote that he became involved with a Sacramento group called the Islamic Assistance Organization after attending a mosque.
“It was there, he told Jordanian investigators, that he met a Muslim from the Fiji islands who schooled him in radical Islamic philosophy and persuaded him to go to Afghanistan,” Miller wrote in the Jan. 15 article.
Whether that report is accurate is not known, but Mohamed Hamada, president of the Sac State Muslim Student Association, thought it was false. He had no knowledge of any such organization, and neither did his faculty adviser.
“Mosques don’t send people to other countries,” Hamada said, adding that neither he nor his faculty adviser had ever heard of the radical group.
Imam Hamdani of the Islamic Center of Sacramento has been in Sacramento since 1975 and also said he had no recollection of a group like the one described by Miller. Calls to several other mosques in the Sacramento area were not returned.
Officials and faculty members at Sac State didn’t recognize Hijazi’s name, although one professor did recognize his face when shown a copy of Hijazi’s 1997 Boston cab driver’s license.
“His face is familiar, but I cannot remember anything about him,” said Ayad Alqazzaz, who taught a sociology class taken by Hijazi in the 1989 winter inter-session. “You remember the ones who talk in class and ask questions,” he said.
This article was updated Nov. 28, 2001.
As of last semester they had at least one Christian group meeting in the Student Union.
I am equally impressed with all the Freepers here on this thread.
Wow, it's a day later on this post.
We still need to establish: a) American citizen Raed Hijazi was released from Jordan recently. True or not?
and,
b) he is the same American citizen 'Hijazi' reported (leaked) to be in the crowded car of rad-islam towelheads in Yemeni when he and the other alQaida brothers were sent to their waiting virgins, courtesy of the best of US private industry technology?
Hopefully we can establish these facts today.
If so, MICHAEL SAVAGE on his national conservative radio talk show will have a field day, what with perhaps another California Johnny Jihad w/ a US passport overseas for Allah, but this one going to meet his Maker thanks to a Predator drone.
"Boston Yemeni Killed in Missile Strike (Is) US National US officials confirm Ahmad Hijazi killed in CIA-led missile strike against al-Qaeda members in Yemen is US national. WASHINGTON - One of six people killed in Yemen in a CIA-led missile strike against suspected al-Qaeda members was a US citizen, The Washington Post said Friday quoting a senior US officials. Identified as Ahmad Hijazi, the US national was not born in the United States but resided here for an unknown time. He was also a citizen of an unidentified Middle Eastern country, said the official who was not named. On Thursday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said he was not yet able to confirm the report out of Yemen. "We don't have enough information to determine whether this name is a particular American or not," he said. (But) Yemeni security sources on Thursday had identified Hijazi as one of the six men killed when the vehicle they were travelling in exploded in eastern Yemen on Sunday, in an operation attributed to the Central Intelligence Agency. The man was described as the leader of a group of six suspected Al-Qaeda associates arrested near Buffalo, New York, in September, CBS News reported. The vehicle was reportedly destroyed by a missile fired by a pilotless CIA drone aircraft that had been tracking it, according to media reports that were later implicitly confirmed by US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. The State Department said it had indefinitely closed the US embassy in Sanaa, fearing reports of Washington's involvement in the missile strike may spark retaliatory attacks. The Yemeni sources said Hijazi and the other five were "dangerous elements" of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network wanted for "involvement in terrorist acts that harmed the national interests of Yemen." The highest-ranking of the six, Ali Qaeda Sunian al-Harithi, also known as Abu Ali, was main instigator of the terrorist acts, the sources said. US defense officials on Monday named Harithi as a key planner of the suicide attack on the USS Cole in October 2000 in the Yemeni port city of Aden that left 17 American sailors dead.
-AIT
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.