Don’t Count on John Kerry to Rescue Americans

Posted on March 17, 2015March 17, 2015 by Denise Simon

There are millions of Americans that work in various positions across the globe. Each day many of them are in peril and there are some Americans being held in Iran. The go-to agency to deal with the release of Americans is the State Department. In dealing for several months with Iran over their nuclear program, has John Kerry demanded one of the issues to be resolved is for Americans to be released? Sadly, no one is saying. This also begs the question, will the American government come to the aid of Americans in jeopardy in a foreign country? Recent history tell us no when it came to the U.S Marine in a Mexican prison.

Marine Veteran Requests Deportation From Iran

By RICK GLADSTONE

Increasingly desperate to return to the United States, a Marine veteran of Iranian descent who has been incarcerated in Iran for three and a half years has renounced his Iranian citizenship, requested deportation and accused Iran of using American prisoners as “bargaining chips,” his family said Monday.

“Once deported, he promises never to return,” the family of the Marine veteran, Amir Hekmati, a dual citizen of the United States and Iran, said in a statement.

The statement also detailed what it described as a litany of previously undisclosed torture and other abuses — including feet whippings, Taser hits to the kidneys, sleep deprivation and extended solitary confinement — suffered by Mr. Hekmati in the Iranian penal system since he was arrested in August 2011.

There was no immediate comment from the judicial authorities in Iran or from Mr. Hekmati’s Iranian lawyer, Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei, about Mr. Hekmati’s renunciation of citizenship or new assertions of mistreatment. Mr. Tabatabaei has said before that he would try different approaches to secure his client’s freedom.

The family released a copy of a letter it said Mr. Hekmati had written, addressed to the Iranian interests section of the Pakistan Embassy in Washington, where he acquired his Iranian passport so he could visit relatives in 2011.

Mr. Hekmati stated in the letter that it had “become very clear to me that those responsible view Iranian-Americans not as citizens or even human beings, but as bargaining chips and tools for propaganda.”

For that reason, the letter stated, “I formally renounce my Iranian citizenship and passport.”

Mr. Hekmati, 31, who was born in Flagstaff, Ariz., grew up in Flint, Mich., and served with the Marines in Iraq, is one of at least three American citizens of Iranian descent known to be imprisoned in Iran.

The Iranian authorities do not recognize dual citizenship. They regard all three as Iranian citizens, regardless of birthplace, and have treated them accordingly, denying them the consular access that is afforded to foreign inmates.

Their cases have acquired added significance as Iran and the United States have intensified efforts to reach an agreement on Iran’s disputed nuclear program. The deal, if completed, could potentially lead to a broader thaw in the longstanding estrangement between the two countries.

It was not clear from the family’s statement why Mr. Hekmati believed that renouncing his Iranian citizenship might be a means of leaving the country. Iranian human rights advocates said they had not seen this strategy used before.

“It’s creative,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, a group based in New York. “I’m not sure that it will work.”

Mr. Hekmati was convicted of espionage after what the family has described as a forced confession. He was sentenced to death, but the verdict was reversed and he was convicted of the lesser charge of aiding a hostile country, meaning the United States, and sentenced to 10 years.

He and his family have repeatedly asserted that he is innocent and have implored the Iranian authorities to release him, if for no other reason than so he could return to Flint and see his father, Ali, who has terminal brain cancer.

Obama administration officials say they have raised his case — and those of the other prisoners — numerous times on the sidelines of the nuclear talks.

The new accusations that Mr. Hekmati has been tortured in prison were based on what the family’s statement described as accounts from “his family in Michigan, his extended family in Iran and from Amir himself.”

They said he had been held in solitary confinement for the first 17 months, often in stress positions for extended periods, and had not been allowed to speak with his family by phone for 20 months. “Cold, foul-smelling water was repeatedly poured into his cell to prevent him from sleeping,” the statement said.

He was also forcibly given drugs including lithium, Tasered in the kidneys during interrogations, whipped on the feet with cables and subjected to “mental torture through threats, insults and humiliations,” the statement said.

It repeated a complaint Mr. Hekmati made last December about the conditions of his imprisonment, asserting that he had been housed with hardened criminals and drug dealers and that “he experiences recurring lung infections, his cellmates have lice, and he is surviving on a diet of only rice and lentils.”

The release of the statement coincided with a new report by the United Nations human rights investigator for Iran, Ahmed Shaheed, asserting that political repression and use of the death penalty in Iran are rising.

The other Americans incarcerated in Iran are Jason Rezaian, 39, of Marin, Calif., The Washington Post’s Tehran correspondent, who has been held on unspecified charges since July; and Saeed Abedini, 34, of Boise, Idaho, a pastor sentenced in 2013 to eight years in prison on charges of disturbing national security through a private network of churches.

A fourth American, Robert A. Levinson, disappeared while visiting Iran in 2007. Iranian officials say they have no information on his whereabouts. Last Tuesday, on the eighth anniversary of Mr. Levinson’s disappearance, the United States quintupled, to $5 million, its reward for information that could lead to his safe return.

Anyone Notice the Genocide of Christians?

Posted on March 16, 2015March 16, 2015 by Denise Simon

ISIS’ dark agenda: Terror group’s tweets show more destruction of sacred Christian sites

Chilling new images released Monday show ISIS thugs advancing the Islamist army’s dark agenda of eradicating Christianity from Iraq by smashing crosses, toppling statues and destroying sacred relics that have been in place for thousands of years.

The latest batch of photos, culled from the Internet by watchdog Middle East Media Research Institute, show ISIS members in the heart of Iraq’s once-thriving Assyrian Christian community of Nineveh, destroying symbols the Islamist terror group considers polytheistic and idolatrous. The images show the men removing crosses from atop churches and replacing them with the black ISIS banner, destroying crosses at other locations such as atop doorways and gravestones, and destroying icons and statues inside and outside churches. The sickening images are just the latest evidence of ISIS’ ongoing effort to cleanse its so-called caliphate of its Christian heritage.

“They don’t care what it’s called; they are just following their ideology and that means getting rid of churches and minorities,” said MEMRI Executive Director Steven Stalinsky. “It is the Islamic State, and there’s no room for anyone else.

“This has been going on for some time, a systematic campaign to rid the region” of any vestiges of Christianity.

Although the United Nations has condemned the acts, Islamic State, as ISIS is also known, has enthusiastically circulated photos of its fighters destroying the sacred symbols and relics.

“We cannot remain silent,” Irina Bokova, head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, said Friday. “The deliberate destruction of cultural heritage constitutes a war crime. I call on all political and religious leaders in the region to stand up and remind everyone that there is absolutely no political or religious justification for the destruction of humanity’s cultural heritage.”

Bokova spoke after ISIS reportedly used heavy equipment to demolish the site of the ancient Assyrian capital of Nimrud, 18 miles south of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. Statues, tablets and other relics have been taken from churches and destroyed or possibly sold on the black market. While the humanitarian crisis facing Iraq’s Christian community is of paramount concern, religious leaders also lament the loss of the religion’s most ancient artifacts.

In Iraq, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Sako last week called on the central government and the international community “to act as soon as possible for the protection of innocent civilians and to offer them the necessary assistance in lodging, food and medication.”

ISIS “is burning everything: human beings, stones and civilization,” he said in a March 9 statement.

Sako said thousands of families have been displaced by the fighting, and he called for an emergency meeting of Iraq’s Council of Ministers and the National Assembly deputies “to discuss this situation that threatens to deteriorate from bad to worse.”

“This is obviously a human catastrophe that cannot suffer any silence,” he said.

Nimrud, built more than 3,000 years ago, was the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire after 883 B.C. The Neo-Assyrian Empire, whose rulers spoke a language distantly related to Arabic and Hebrew, ruled Mesopotamia, the ancient name for Iraq and parts of Syria, until approximately 600 B.C. For centuries, the region along the Tigris River retained monuments, frescos, temples and a ziggurat, the stepped pyramid characteristic of Mesopotamian civilizations.

But earlier this month, ISIS released video showing men smashing statues with sledgehammers in the Nineveh Museum, in Nineveh, the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire after 705 B.C.

In recent weeks, ISIS has also set off bombs around Mosul Central Library, destroying as many as 10,000 priceless and irreplaceable books and manuscripts.

Many relics have been taken to museums in Baghdad or around the world for safekeeping, but artifacts in churches, including murals and statues, have been left where they stood for millennia, until the rise one year ago of the black-clad terrorist army. Last summer, ISIS fighters used explosives to blow up the tomb of a key figure in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The holy site in Mosul was believed to be the burial place of the prophet Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale in the Islamic and Judeo-Christian traditions.

The mob beat them and broke their legs so they would not be able to flee. “They picked them up by their arms and legs and held them over the brick furnace until their clothes caught fire. And then they threw them inside the furnace.” — Javed Maseeh, family spokesman, to NBC News.

The attack was not an isolated one. Rather it seems to be part of systematic killings, community by community.

Imagine you are a person of Christian faith living as a citizen in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan: every moment your life is at risk. Imagine a Pakistani Muslim shouting that you have burned a page of holy Quran when you have not; or accusing you of having desecrated the Prophet Mohammed: you have hardly any chance of saving yourself. There would be no question of providing evidence or proof against you. You would be killed either by the mob or by the country’s legal system.

If you were one of the 3% minority Christians of Pakistan, you would fear for your life every moment among the majority Muslims; any one of them could shout and point at you as the Nazi collaborators did during the Second World War against the Jews. You inevitably would be beaten to death by your fellow countrymen.

This month in Pakistan, a Christian couple and their unborn child were burned to death, because of a false accusation of burning pages of a Quran.

Christians riot in Pakistan after attacks targeting churches kill 14
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Members of the Christian community rampaged through the streets of Lahore on Sunday after suicide bombers attacked two churches during morning services, killing at least 14 people and wounding more than 70.

The Pakistani Taliban took credit for the attacks, reviving concerns that the Islamist militant group will increasingly target religious minorities in a bid to further divide Pakistanis and distract them from ongoing military operations against extremists.

Failed Immigration Policy/Systems led to 9/11

Posted on March 13, 2015March 13, 2015 by Denise Simon

While reading the long and factual summary below on the 9/11 hijackers, ask yourself the following questions:

Note the date of this summary, 2010

Have immigration policies changed today?
Are there new systems in place?
Do members of Congress still standing with the 9/11 Commission Report?

The Complete Immigration Story of 9/11 Hijacker Satam al Suqami

By Janice Kephart September 2010

This Memorandum is in memory of Danny Lewin, whose incredible life was ended by hijacker Satam al Suqami on American Airlines Flight 11 prior to its tragic crash into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

I dedicate this Memorandum to my former colleague on the September 11 Commission, Walt Hempel, who gave me confidence that our investigation was as accurate and as thorough as possible. The collating of the digital images you find here was due primarily to his work.

The past year and a half has provided a litany of examples, some tragic, that America is not safe from terrorist conspiracies and acts. Our processing and informational analysis has improved greatly since September 11 at our air and land ports of entry, but our southwest border is suffering from a near national security crisis due to Mexican narco-insurgency. Meanwhile, aviation security remains subject to incomplete vetting procedures and issues of international cooperation. What is becoming increasingly clear is that despite some real gains in border and aviation security, we are not safe. Thus, the value of continuing to learn from the terrorist travel story of September 11 remains relevant today as we continue to rummage through panoplies of choices about immigration and border security. If any immigration issue should rise above the fray and remain a standalone, it should be border security. This Memorandum is an attempt to help inform that debate more fully, by providing never-before seen digital images that back up previously published material in the September 11 border team’s monograph, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel.

Background. In January 2009, the National Archives made available some of the 9/11 Commission work product that revealed to the public for the first time much of the evidence that resulted in the 9/11 Commission Report published (as required by law) in July 2004. Among those archives was some of the most precious work the border team had uncovered after numerous and arduous document requests to the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation: hard copies or digital images of travel documents of the hijackers.

In 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, my team and I were able to include images of about one-quarter of the physical evidence we had accumulated that aided fact development and recommendations for both the 9/11 Final Report and 9/11 and Terrorist Travel, which was written to provide substantive support for the 9/11 Final Report recommendations. But the remainder of those images has remained buried these past years.

As the ensuing five years have passed since the publication of the 9/11 Commission materials, one hijacker in particular stands out for a number of reasons – not only for the tragic story of his likely murder of Daniel Lewin on American Airlines Flight 11 before the crash – but also because he was the only hijacker (of two total) well aware that he was an illegal overstay on September 11. We know this because this hijacker had attempted to enter the Bahamas in May 2001 in order to re-enter the United States and obtain a six-month length of stay like his “muscle” co-conspirators (i.e., those who were not the pilots). He was also the only such hijacker that had only received a business traveler one-month length of stay upon entry. He failed, and thus was the only hijacker not to use his travel documents to obtain a state-issued driver’s license or ID, causing him again to be one of the few hijackers who we know used his passport for check-in on the morning of September 11, rather than a U.S.-issued ID card. In addition, because we did not – and still do not—have an Exit system in place that logs visitors out of the country, authorities were initially confused as to whether or not he was even in the United States on September 11. Both these issues – illegal overstays and failure to implement an Exit system – remain outstanding issues in the United States, affecting the national discussion of immigration and border security. The goal this story is to better inform that discussion.

Below is a consolidation of the 9/11 and Terrorist Travel facts, verbatim, about Satam al Suqami as developed by myself as immigration counsel and my colleague, Tom Eldridge, who conducted the visa analysis. Supporting our work are the digital images of Suqami’s passport culled from reams of materials, mostly done by Walt Hempel. One small miracle in our investigation was learning that Suqami’s passport survived the attack; having its images to review helped solidify findings.

I have not changed our words, but added in the heretofore unseen images alongside source information of Suqami’s travel documents, providing more depth to 9/11 Commission final work products and reiterating the basic message that our borders matter to national security. Detecting a terrorist through his travel documents and records, coordinated with intelligence – and today with biometrics and programs that assure we know who is entering and exiting our country – is equally important to economic and national security. This story of Suqami reiterates that point.

On September 11, Daniel Lewin was on board American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles, which crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. However, Lewin was likely murdered prior to the crash by 9/11 hijacker Satam al Suqami. Two months before his death, Lewin was named as one the 100 most important people in the national information industry. He was survived by his wife and two sons.

Daniel Lewin, 31, a mathematician and entrepreneur, co-founded and ran Akamai Technologies, nearly becoming a billionaire in the dot-com stock boom. At the time of his death, he was a PhD candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was said to have become a paper-billionaire when Akamai stock first became available. Lewin was born in Denver and raised in Jerusalem, where he served in Sayeret Matkal, a counter-terrorism unit of the Israeli Defense Forces. He had previously worked for IBM’s research lab in Haifa, Israel.

The FAA memo’s summary of the Flight 11 shooting incident, real or not, is the most detailed and specific – not to mention shocking – of the four hijacking summaries. It says Lewin, sitting in seat 9B, was “shot by passenger Satam al-Suqami,” sitting behind him in seat 10B. (Both names match those on the manifest released by the airline.) However, we do not know if he was shot or stabbed; the on-flight phone call between flight attendant Betty Ann Ong and the FAA states that Ong relayed that Lewin, sitting in seat 9B, was killed by the passenger in seat 10B at approximately 8:20. That passenger in 10B was later identified as Satam M. A. Al Suqami.

— Walt Hempel, professional staff member, 9/11 Commission

The 9/11 hijackers and conspirators on American Airlines Flight 11 – North Tower of the World Trade Center were: Mohamed Atta Hijacker (Pilot), Abdul Aziz al Omari, Waleed al Shehri, Wail al Shehri, and Satam al Suqami.

Introduction: Factual Overview of the September 11 Border Story

Entering the United States as tourists was important to the hijackers, since immigration regulations automatically guaranteed tourists six months of stay. Thus the 14 muscle hijackers who entered the United States in the spring and early summer of 2001 were able to remain in the country legally through September 11. The six-month tourist stays also assured the hijackers of sufficient time to make such preparations for their operation as obtaining the identification some of them used to board the planes on September 11.

Fourteen of 15 operatives and all of the pilots acquired one or multiple forms of U.S. state-issued identification. Only Satam al Suqami did not, possibly because he was the only hijacker who knew he was out of immigration status: His length of stay end date of May 20, 2000, was clearly inserted in his passport.

November 21, 2000. State Department records show that Satam al Suqami, a Saudi, applied for and received a two-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) visa in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. There is strong evidence that the passport Suqami submitted with this application had fraudulent travel stamps now associated with al Qaeda. These stamps remain classified, and are not contained here.

Suqami’s Saudi Arabian passport with numerous travel stamps, some of which were determined to be fraudulent. They include multiple travel to Instanbul, Malaysia, Oman, and Egypt. There are no travel stamps from Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Iran, all three locations likely destinations.

Although Suqami had false travel stamps in his passport as of 9/11, we do not know if these stamps were placed in his passport before or after submission of his visa application, although the dates on some of the false stamps pre-date the date he applied for his visa.

Suqami left blank the line on which he was asked to supply the name and street address of his present employer.

Suqami’s visa application. The stamp with the “No” crossed states: “Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization?”

The consular officer who issued the visa said he interviewed Suqami because he described his present occupation as “dealer,” the word Saudis often put on their applications when they meant “businessman.” The officer testified that he asked Suqami a number of questions, including, he believes, who was paying for the trip. Although the officer stated that notes were always taken during interviews, none were written on Suqami’s application, raising the possibility that the officer’s memory of having conducted an interview was false. In any case, Suqami evidently raised no suspicions and his application was approved.

April 23, 2001. According to INS records, Waleed al Shehri and Satam al Suqami, both Saudis, entered together at Orlando from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Suqami was the only Saudi muscle hijacker admitted on business, and only for one month. Both were admitted by the same primary immigration inspector.

Above is Suqami’s U.S. visa issued on November 21, 2000. The Final Report states that Satam al Suqami and Mojed Moqed flew from Iran to Bahrain in late November 2000, in all likelihood as soon as the plotters were assured that Suqami had obtained his U.S. visa, critical to al Qaeda for entry into the United States. Also note on page 18 a U.S. entry on April 23, 2001, and re-entry on May 16, 2001, after the failed attempt to enter the Bahamas.

Biographic pages of Suqami’s passport

FBI reports revealed that Suqami’s passport was recovered by NYPD Detective Yuk H. Chin from a male passerby in a business suit, about 30 years old. The passerby left before being identified, while debris was falling from WTC 2. The tower collapsed shortly thereafter. The detective then gave the passport to the FBI on 9/11. Later analysis showed that it contained what are now believed to be fraudulent travel stamps associated with al Qaeda. In addition, the forensic document analysis of Satam al Suqami’s passport indicates that on page 8, “An Arabic stamp impression located near the top of page 8 has been partially covered with correction fluid,” as stated in an INS letter from John Ross, INS Supervisory Forensic Document Examiner, to Lorie Gottesman, FBI Document Examiner, on November 2, 2001.

Correction fluid on top right stamp, indicating fraudulent travel stamps

Upon reviewing color copies of the document, the inspector who admitted Suqami told the Commission he did not note any such fraud. Indeed, he could not have been expected to identify the fraud at the time of Suqami’s admission – it was not discovered by the intelligence community until after the attacks.

May 16, 2001. Waleed al Shehri and Suqami again traveled together, this time out of the country to the Bahamas, where they reserved three nights at the Bahamas Princess Resort. INS records show that they turned in their arrival record, which was now acting as an exit record, boarded the plane, and arrived in Freeport. Ramzi Binalshibh, a key facilitator and organizer for the 9/11 conspiracy who was denied a U.S. visa, stated during interrogations that the trip was intended to extend Suqami’s legal length of stay in the United States.

Bahamian immigration refused the two entry, however, because neither had a Bahamian visa. They therefore had to return to their starting point, in this case Fort Lauderdale. Because they never entered the Bahamas, under U.S. immigration law they had never left the United States. After being refused entry by the Bahamian INS at Freeport, they were sent through U.S. “pre-clearance” before boarding the plane back to Miami. By making possible immigration inspections of U.S.-bound travelers prior to their arrival, pre-clearance helped ease the burden of admission at busy U.S. airports. These stations also prevented travelers deemed inadmissible from boarding U.S.-bound planes. Pre-clearance stations existed prior to September 11 in Canada, Ireland, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean. In this pre-clearance process, immigration waived them through but customs stopped Shehri. The inspection lasted one minute; Shehri was not personally searched, nor was his luggage x-rayed. Customs records showed they boarded a plane and returned to Miami.

The attempted three-day jaunt by Shehri and Suqami to the Bahamas would cause difficulty for the INS in assisting the FBI’s investigation into 9/11 since the INS records indicated the two had left the United States and not returned. This is because when the two left Miami for the Bahamas, they handed in their I-94 departure records as required. When they were turned around in the Bahamas for a lack of visas, under U.S. immigration law they never left the United States. However, they were not given new arrival records when they physically returned to the United States. Therefore, when the attacks occurred, investigators thought that Suqmai and Shehri had departed the United States, which is what the INS records indicated.

May 20, 2001. Suqami joined the millions of overstays in the United States after failing to file for an extension of stay with the INS after he returned from the Bahamas. Had he been allowed into the Bahamas, upon his return to the United States he would have likely been granted an additional length of stay in the country as a tourist. As it was, he remained in illegal status until September 11.

September 11. As the hijackers boarded four flights, American Airlines Flights 11 and 77, and United Airlines Flights 93 and 175, at least six used U.S. identification documents acquired in the previous months, three of which were fraudulently obtained in northern Virginia. Airline check-in personnel remembered that Suqami, the only hijacker who did not have a state-issued identification, used his Saudi passport as check-in identification for American Airlines Flight 11.

An Entry-Exit System. The INS also was unable to enforce the rules regarding the terms of admission of visitors to the United States because there was no national tracking system designed to match a person’s entry with that person’s exit. Inspectors were similarly unaware of whether a visitor had overstayed a previous visit.

In 1996, expressing frustration at the apparent number of overstays in the United States and the inability of INS to enforce the law, Congress took action. It passed a law requiring the attorney general to develop an automated entry-exit program to collect records on every arriving and departing visitor. Congress provided about $40 million over four years to fund the development of such a system. By contrast, Congress provided nearly $1 billion to increase the Border Patrol’s presence in the southwest in order to stem the flow of illegal immigration from Mexico. Countering terrorist entry was not a rationale for the system.

Leaders of border communities along the Canadian and Mexican borders, where more than a million people move back and forth daily, denounced the system. They argued that it would inhibit border trade. Some members of Congress, along with senior INS managers, agreed and decided to automate only the entry process. Prior to September 11, even these efforts were unsuccessful. Thus, while the hijackers were preparing for the planes operation in the United States, immigration authorities had no way to determine whether any of them had overstayed their visas or traveled in and out of the country. The lack of an entry-exit system was especially significant for Satam al Suqami and Nawaf al Hazmi, as both were illegal overstays.

(In June 2010, CIS held a symposium of high-level officials and policy thinkers on the issue of implementing an Exit control. A report can be found at http://cis.org/exit-panel.)

The Immigration and Naturalization Service Overview

A review of the entries and immigration benefits sought by the hijackers paints a picture of conspirators who put the ability to exploit U.S. border security while not raising suspicion about their terrorist activities high on their operational priorities. Evidence indicates that Mohamed Atta, the September 11 ringleader, was acutely aware of his immigration status, tried to remain in the United States legally, and aggressively pursued enhanced immigration status for himself and others.

Despite their careful efforts to understand and operate within the legal requirements, however, the hijackers were not always “clean and legal.” For example, they used fraudulent documents and alias names as necessary. And when the hijackers could, they skirted the requirements of immigration law. Ziad Jarrah, for example, failed to apply to change his immigration status from tourist to student, and Satam al Suqami failed to leave the country when his length of stay expired. They thus were vulnerable to exclusion at ports of entry and susceptible to immigration law enforcement action. In this section, we explore how the hijackers succeeded in making it through U.S. airports of entry in 33 of 34 attempts, drawing on interviews of the immigration and customs inspectors who had contact with the hijackers, immigration law, port of entry policy, training, and resources available to inspectors in primary and secondary inspections.

The four pilots, who went in to and out of the United States 17 times, were admitted on business four times. Only one muscle hijacker, Suqami, was given a one-month stay as a business traveler when he entered at Orlando on April 23, 2001, with Waleed al Shehri. Both hijackers had filled out their Customs declarations stating that they intended a 20-day stay. The immigration arrival record did not require information about the length of stay, however; and since immigration inspectors checked the Customs declarations only for completeness and not for substance, the 20-day stay request was ignored – to their advantage, in fact.

Indeed, the 30-year INS veteran inspector who admitted both hijackers told the Commission that the Customs declaration had no bearing on the length of stay he gave Suqami, which was based solely on Suqami’s answer regarding the purpose of his visit. That Suqami was limited to a business instead of a tourist stay meant that he and Nawaf al Hazmi (who overstayed his tourist visa despite filing for an extension of his stay in July 2000) were the only operatives who had overstayed their authorized lengths of stay as of September 11. The four pilots, who went into and out of the United States 17 times, were admitted on business four times. Only one muscle hijacker, Suqami, was given a one-month stay as a business traveler when he entered at Orlando on April 23, 2001, with Waleed al Shehri.

Immigration Violations Committed by the Hijackers in the United States

Once a non-U.S. citizen is admitted to the United States, he or she remains subject to U.S. immigration laws and may be deported if any are violated. The hijackers violated many laws while gaining entry to, or remaining in, the United States. Here are the violations pertaining to Suqami:

Every hijacker submitted a visa application falsely stating that he was not seeking to enter the United States to engage in terrorism. This was a felony, punishable under 18 U.S.C. § 1546 by 25 years in prison and under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 by 5 years in prison, and was a violation of immigration law rendering each one inadmissible under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(c).
The hijackers, when they presented themselves at U.S. ports of entry, were terrorists trained in Afghan camps who had prepared for and planned terrorist activity to further the aims of a terrorist organization – al Qaeda – making every hijacker inadmissible to enter the United States under 8 U.S.C.§ 1182(a)(3)(b).
At least two (Satam al Suqami and Abdul Aziz al Omari) and possibly as many as seven of the hijackers (Suqami, Omari, Mohand al Shehri, Hamza and Saeed al Ghamdi, Ahmed al Nami, and Ahmad al Haznawi) presented to State Department consular officers passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner, a felony punishable under 18 U.S.C. § 1543 by 25 years in prison and a violation of immigration law rendering them inadmissible under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(c).
At least two hijackers (Suqami and Omari) and as many as 11 of the hijackers (Suqami; Omari; Waleed, Wail, and Mohand al Shehri; Hani Hanjour; Majed Moqed; Nawaf al Hazmi; Haznawi; and Hamza and Ahmed al Ghamdi) presented to INS inspectors at ports of entry passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner, a felony punishable under 18 U.S.C. § 1543 by 25 years in prison and a violation of immigration law rendering them inadmissible under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(c).
Nawaf al Hazmi and Suqami overstayed the terms of their admission, a violation of immigration laws rendering them both deportable under 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(1)(B).

Walt Hempel
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
Commission hearing January 26, 2004
Senate Office Building

bin Ladin al Suri in Afghan Hideout

Posted on March 13, 2015March 13, 2015 by Denise Simon

The full photo catalog is here.

New York (CNN) The house is primitive, constructed of baked mud and stone. The landscape is sparse and mountainous, with snow cover in the winter. The terrain is rugged and challenging for the long walks the owner liked to take with his sons.

32 OBL photos GX-2067-OBL-film[3]-57

Photographs quietly introduced as evidence in the latest major terrorism trial in Manhattan federal court offer a rare look inside Osama bin Laden’s lair — years before al Qaeda flew hijacked planes into buildings or bombed U.S. embassies in Africa and even before the FBI placed bin Laden on its Most Wanted List.

Still, bin Laden was preparing, hiding out in a remote, mountainous area of Afghanistan known as Tora Bora.

A remarkable set of photos — the first showing bin Laden in the hideout where he would seek refuge after 9/11 — came to light only last month in the terrorism conspiracy trial of bin Laden lieutenant Khaled al-Fawwaz, a communications conduit for al Qaeda in London in the mid-1990s. Al-Fawwaz would arrange bin Laden’s first television interview for CNN’s Peter Arnett and Peter Bergen in 1997 and a sit-down for ABC News’ John Miller a year later. But before then, al-Fawwaz called on a Palestinian print journalist, whose 1996 journey to Afghanistan yielded these photos.

37 OBL photos GX-2067-OBL-film[3]-62

Visiting bin Laden
Bin Laden had declared war on the United States and wanted more people to know it, especially in the Arab world. He reached out to Abdel Barri Atwan, the founder and then-editor-in-chief of Al-Quds Al-Arabi, an independent Arabic weekly published in London that had been critical of certain Arab regimes and the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Atwan had broken the story about bin Laden’s first fatwa, or religious decree, stating his grievances against the United States, such as the presence of U.S troops in Saudi Arabia. He published the entire screed in August 1996. The next month, al-Fawwaz went to Atwan’s office to offer him the first print interview with the emerging jihadist leader in Afghanistan.

“I was told that Osama bin Laden was fond of my writing, he liked my style, and he wanted to meet me personally,” Atwan recalled in an interview for Bergen’s 2006 book, “The Osama bin Laden I Know.” “I was hesitant, because it was very dangerous.”

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Danger aside, in November 1996, Atwan was airborne to Afghanistan. The date-stamped photographs from his trip — which Scotland Yard detectives discovered two years later in a search of al-Fawwaz’s London home — show a healthy, relaxed, sometimes smiling bin Laden, not yet 40, conversing, hiking, videotaping pronouncements, surrounded by children.

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The photos also show rare images of another man who has become an influential ideologue in the global jihadist movement — Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, better known as Abu Musab al-Suri, a Syrian now in his mid-50s who has not been seen in public or heard from in a decade. Still, al-Suri is arguably the most influential strategic thinker in Islamist militant circles today.

“A generation of jihadis were influenced by his teachings,” said Paul Cruickshank, a CNN terrorism analyst who has written about al-Suri. “He wanted a global jihadist intifada, where people rose up and fought as individuals.

“His teachings have deeply influenced jihadis in Syria — how to build up an organization, how to win support for it,” he said.

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The mountain hideout
Bin Laden, from Saudi Arabia, first went to Afghanistan in the 1980s to participate in the armed resistance to Soviet invaders, one of thousands of Arab fighters defending a Muslim nation. As the anti-Soviet jihad wound down, bin Laden began organizing al Qaeda, meaning “the base,” around the border city of Peshawar, Pakistan. By 1992, Pakistan forced him and his fighters to leave.

Bin Laden relocated to Khartoum, Sudan, welcomed by a new Islamist regime. But after four years headquartered there, in 1996, under pressure from the United States, Sudan made bin Laden go. By then, the ideologically in sync Taliban had taken control of Afghanistan, and bin Laden decided to move there.

In May 1996, bin Laden settled in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. His mountain fortress in Tora Bora was a long drive up a dirt road he had built. Atwan was driven there in a red Toyota pickup in a twisting seven-hour drive through the mountains. As a photo of him shows, Atwan donned Afghan-style baggy trousers and a turban to get past security checkpoints and fit in.

Atwan met bin Laden in his cave. It was small, 13 by 20 feet in Atwan’s estimation, and as the new photos show, it was lined with shelves of books about the Koran and the Prophet Mohammed. Bin Laden liked to use the bookshelves as a backdrop for his videotaped edicts and interviews. The cave not only offered bin Laden a hiding place but also street credibility in the Muslim world, as the prophet is believed to have received the revelations of the Koran while camped in his own mountain cave.

After hours of conversation and an inedible dinner featuring salty cheese and sandy bread, Atwan ended up bunking in the cave on a mattress that rested on boxes of grenades.

“He wanted media exposure,” Atwan recalled in the interview for Bergen’s 2006 book. “He wants to say, ‘Now I am an international figure; I’m not just a Saudi. I am aggrieved at Americans who are occupying Saudi Arabia who are desecrating the Holy Land.’ ”

As seen in the photographs, bin Laden always carried a Russian-made Kalashnikov rifle. His comrades addressed him as “Abu Abdullah,” for father of Abdullah, his eldest son. Two younger sons, Saad and Ali, then in their early teens, sometimes were at the compound. As one photo shows, Atwan and bin Laden took a two-hour walk around Tora Bora.

“He loved that nature there. He loved the mountain. They were trying to have their own community, grow their foods,” Atwan recalled. “It’s like an oasis in Afghanistan.”

Bin Laden’s three wives and more than a dozen children did not share bin Laden’s joy in living the life of medieval peasants in the Tora Bora mountains, where the only light at night was from the moon and gas lanterns, and the only heat in a place where tremendous blizzards were common was a wood-burning metal stove. Hunger was a frequent companion to the bin Laden children who lived on a subsistence diet of rice, bread, eggs and that salty cheese.

In December 2001, with U.S. troops retaliating for 9/11 closing in, bin Laden fled Tora Bora, eventually making his way to Pakistan, where U.S. Navy SEALs ended a decade-long manhunt by killing him in his Abbottabad hideout, an hour north of Islamabad.

Atwan stepped down from the helm of Al-Quds in 2013 and recapped his journey in a deposition for the al-Fawwaz trial. Al-Fawwaz was convicted in Manhattan federal court on February 26 and faces a possible life sentence.

Even in Tora Bora, Atwan felt bin Laden was vulnerable to intelligence agencies. “I thought this man would not last,” Atwan said Tuesday. “He wasn’t really well-protected. He was visible and moving freely.”

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In 1996, bin Laden knew but certainly did not disclose the lethal plots he had set in motion — the embassy bombings, the planes plot that would become 9/11. Atwan said, “He was very optimistic, and it never occurred to me that this would be the most be dangerous man in the world.”

The jihadist intellectual
With his pale skin, short red hair and beard, and green wool hat, Abu Musab al-Suri could pass for Irish. But he is Syrian, originally from the ancient city of Aleppo, fought in the anti-Soviet Afghan war, and lived in London in the 1990s.

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Al-Suri was close to bin Laden, which explains his comfortable presence in the 1996 photos of Tora Bora, seated next to al Qaeda’s leader in his cave or hiking with him, carrying his own cameras. (Al-Suri also accompanied Bergen and Arnett on their visit to bin Laden in 1997.)

The United States has since accused al-Suri of training recruits at al Qaeda’s pre-9/11 al-Ghuraba and Derunta camps in Afghanistan, where operatives such as Ahmed Ressam, who planned to bomb Los Angeles International Airport in December 1999, learned how to kill with poisons and chemicals.

Eventually, al-Suri publicly criticized bin Laden for making al Qaeda so hierarchical, for courting publicity and being so controlling, even calling him a “Pharoah” for his imperial leadership style.

But al-Suri was no less militant. He set up his own training camp in Afghanistan and advocated a “leaderless jihad” featuring, as he put it, “spontaneous operations performed by individuals and cells all over the whole world without connection between them.”

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Al-Suri summarized his philosophy in his 1,600-page treatise, “The Call for Global Islamic Resistance,” which he published on the Internet in 2004. He coined the Arabic slogan nizam, la tanzim, meaning “a system, not an organization,” to describe his belief that there should be no organizational bonds between “resistance fighters.”

Al-Suri advocated terrorist cells of no more than 10 men and envisioned more “lone-wolf” attacks, such as the Fort Hood, Texas, massacre carried out in 2009 by rogue U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was inspired by the radical Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, himself an al-Suri disciple.

Strategically, al-Suri argued, a less centralized jihadist network would make operatives who were arrested less likely to expose fellow militants to intelligence or law enforcement agencies, because the fighters would not know who else was part of the movement. Al-Suri was forward thinking about al Qaeda evolving into an international ideology more than a centrally controlled organization.

After 9/11, al-Suri appeared on the U.S. Most Wanted Terrorists list with a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.

In 2005, al-Suri was tracked down in Quetta, Pakistan, and sent to Syria, where he was imprisoned. There were unconfirmed reports that he was released in 2012, followed by al Qaeda statements by leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and spokesman Adam Gadahn in 2014 saying, “May Allah release him.”

A decade after his arrest, al-Suri’s whereabouts are a mystery.

Balance of Power and Peace Determined Tuesday

Posted on March 13, 2015March 13, 2015 by Denise Simon

Israel’s next 22 months

By Caroline Glick

The next 22 months until President Barack Obama leaves office promise to be the most challenging period in the history of US-Israel relations.

Now unfettered by electoral concerns, over the past week Obama exposed his ill-intentions toward Israel in two different ways.
First, the Justice Department leaked its intention to indict Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez on corruption charges. Menendez is the ranking Democratic member, and the former chairman, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is also the most outspoken Democratic critic of Obama’s policy of appeasing the Iranian regime.
As former US federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote this week at PJMedia, “It is perfectly reasonable to believe that Menendez may be guilty of corruption offenses and that his political opposition on Iran is factoring into the administration’s decision to charge him. Put it another way, if Menendez were running interference for Obama on the Iran deal, rather than trying to scupper it, I believe he would not be charged.”
The Menendez prosecution tells us that Obama wishes to leave office after having vastly diminished support for Israel among Democrats. And he will not hesitate to use strong-arm tactics against his fellow Democrats to achieve his goal.

We already experienced Obama’s efforts in this sphere in the lead-up to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before the joint houses of Congress on March 3 with his campaign to pressure Democratic lawmakers to boycott Netanyahu’s address.
Now, with his move against Menendez, Obama made clear that support for Israel – even in the form of opposition to the nuclear armament of Iran – will be personally and politically costly for Democrats.
The long-term implications of Obama’s moves to transform US support for Israel into a partisan issue cannot by wished away. It is possible that his successor as the head of the Democratic Party will hold a more sympathetic view of Israel. But it is also possible that the architecture of Democratic fund-raising and grassroots support that Obama has been building for the past six years will survive his presidency and that as a consequence, Democrats will have incentives to oppose Israel.
The reason Obama is so keen to transform Israel into a partisan issue was made clear by the second move he made last week.
Last Thursday, US National Security Adviser Susan Rice announced that the NSC’s Middle East Coordinator Phil Gordon was stepping down and being replaced by serial Israel-basher Robert Malley.
Malley, who served as an NSC junior staffer during the Clinton administration, rose to prominence in late 2000 when, following the failed Camp David peace summit in July 2000 and the outbreak of the Palestinian terror war, Malley co-authored an op-ed in The New York Times blaming Israel and then-prime minister Ehud Barak for the failure of the negotiations.
What was most remarkable at the time about Malley’s positions was that they completely contradicted Bill Clinton’s expressed views. Clinton placed the blame for the failure of the talks squarely on then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s shoulders.
Not only did Arafat reject Barak’s unprecedented offer of Palestinian statehood and sovereignty over all of Gaza, most of Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem including the Temple Mount, he refused to make a counter-offer. And then two months later, he opened the Palestinian terror war.
As Jonathan Tobin explained in Commentary this week, through his writings and public statements, Malley has legitimized Palestinian rejection of Israel’s right to exist. Malley thinks it is perfectly reasonable that the Palestinians refuse to concede their demand for free immigration of millions of foreign Arabs to the Jewish state in the framework of their concocted “right of return,” even though the clear goal of that demand is to destroy Israel. As Tobin noted, Malley believes that Palestinian terrorism against Israel is “understandable if not necessarily commendable.”
During Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, then-senator Obama listed Malley as a member of his foreign policy team. When pro-Israel groups criticized his appointment, Obama fired Malley.
But after his 2012 reelection, no longer fearing the ramifications of embracing an openly anti-Israel adviser, one who had documented contacts with Hamas terrorists and has expressed support for recognizing the terror group, Obama appointed Malley to serve as his senior adviser for Iraq-Iran-Syria and the Gulf states. Still facing the 2014 congressional elections, Obama pledged that Malley would have no involvement in issues related to Israel and the Palestinians. But then last week, he appointed him to direct the NSC’s policy in relation to the entire Middle East, including Israel.
The deeper significance of Malley’s appointment is that it demonstrates that Obama’s goal in his remaining time in office is to realign US Middle East policy away from Israel. With his Middle East policy led by a man who thinks the Palestinian goal of destroying Israel is legitimate, Obama can be expected to expand his practice of placing all the blame for the absence of peace between Israel and the Palestinians solely on Israel’s shoulders.
Malley’s appointment indicates that there is nothing Israel can do to stem the tsunami of American pressure it is about to suffer. Electing a left-wing government to replace Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will make no difference.
Just as Malley was willing to blame Barak – a leader who went to Camp David as the head of a minority coalition, whose positions on territorial withdrawals were rejected by a wide majority of Israelis – for the absence of peace, so we can assume that he, and his boss, will blame Israel for the absence of peace over the next 22 months, regardless of who stands at the head of the next government.
In this vein we can expect the administration to expand the anti-Israel positions it has already taken.
The US position paper regarding Israeli-Palestinian negotiation that was leaked this past week to Yediot Aharonot made clear the direction Obama wishes to go. That document called for Israel to withdraw to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines, with minor revisions.
In the coming 22 months we can expect the US to use more and more coercive measures to force Israel to capitulate to its position.
The day the administration-sponsored talks began in July 2013, the EU announced it was barring its member nations from having ties with Israeli entities that operate beyond the 1949 armistice lines unless those operations involve assisting the Palestinians in their anti-Israel activities. The notion that the EU initiated an economic war against Israel the day the talks began without coordinating the move with the Obama administration is, of course, absurd.
We can expect the US to make expanded use of European economic warfare against Israel in the coming years, and to continue to give a backwind to the anti-Semitic BDS movement by escalating its libelous rhetoric conflating Israel with the apartheid regime in South Africa.
US-Israel intelligence and defense ties will also be on the chopping block.
While Obama and his advisers consistently boast that defense and intelligence ties between Israel and the US have grown during his presidency, over the past several years, those ties have suffered blow after blow. During the war with Hamas last summer, acting on direct orders from the White House, the Pentagon instituted a partial – unofficial – embargo on weapons to Israel.
As for intelligence ties, over the past month, the administration announced repeatedly that it is ending its intelligence sharing with Israel on Iran.
The Hillary Clinton email scandal has revealed that during her tenure as secretary of state, Clinton transferred top secret information regarding Israel’s operations against Iran to the New York Times. We also learned that the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is being fingered as the source of the leak regarding the Stuxnet computer virus that Israel and the US reportedly developed jointly to cripple Iran’s nuclear centrifuges.
In other words, since taking office, Obama has used the US’s intelligence ties with Israel to harm Israel’s national security on at least two occasions.
He has also used diplomacy to harm Israel. Last summer, Obama sought a diplomatic settlement of Hamas’s war with Israel that would have granted Hamas all of its war goals, including its demand for open borders and access to the international financial system.
Now of course, he is running roughshod over his bipartisan opposition, and the opposition of Israel and the Sunni Arab states, in the hopes of concluding a nuclear deal with Iran that will pave the way for the ayatollahs to develop nuclear weapons and expand their hegemonic control over the Middle East.
AMID ALL of this, and facing 22 months of ever more hostility as Obama pursues his goal of ending the US-Israel alliance, Israelis are called on to elect a new government.
This week the consortium of former security brass that has banded together to elect a leftist government led by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni accused Netanyahu of destroying Israel’s relations with the US. The implication was that a government led by Herzog and Livni will restore Israel’s ties to America.
Yet as Obama has made clear both throughout his tenure in office, and, over the past week through Malley’s appointment and Menendez’s indictment, Obama holds sole responsibility for the deterioration of our ties with our primary ally. And as his actions have also made clear, Herzog and Livni at the helm will receive no respite in US pressure. Their willingness to make concessions to the Palestinians that Netanyahu refuses to make will merely cause Obama to move the goalposts further down the field. Given his goal of abandoning the US alliance with Israel, no concession that Israel will deliver will suffice.
And so we need to ask ourselves, which leader will do a better job of limiting the danger and waiting Obama out while maintaining sufficient overall US support for Israel to rebuild the alliance after Obama has left the White House.
The answer, it seems, is self-evident.
The Left’s campaign to blame Netanyahu for Obama’s hostility will make it all but impossible for a Herzog-Livni government to withstand US pressure that they say will disappear the moment Netanyahu leaves office.
In contrast, as the US position paper leaked to Yediot indicated, Netanyahu has demonstrated great skill in parrying US pressure. He agreed to hold negotiations based on a US position that he rejected and went along with the talks for nine months until the Palestinians ended them. In so doing, he achieved a nine-month respite in open US pressure while exposing Palestinian radicalism and opposition to peaceful coexistence.
On the Iranian front, Netanyahu’s courageous speech before Congress last week energized Obama’s opponents to take action and forced Obama onto the defensive for the first time while expanding popular support for Israel.
It is clear that things will only get more difficult in the months ahead. But given the stakes, the choice of Israeli voters next Tuesday is an easy one.

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