PIJ Chief Caught on Tape Ordering Attack
By Bill West
A story just out in the Israel National News.com (and listed in today’s news column) reports that Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, the leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), since 1995, who is based in Damascus, Syria, was caught on tape ordering the recent PIJ terrorist bombing attack against the Stage Club in Tel Aviv. The news report further states that a transcript of the tape has been turned over to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Shallah, before assuming the chief leadership position of the PIJ, resided for several years in Tampa, Florida where he taught at the University of South Florida with Sami Al-Arian. He also helped run the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE) in Tampa with Al-Arian and Mazen Al-Najjar, Al-Arian’s brother-in-law, who was deported from the U.S. in 2002 after a lengthy legal battle against the U.S. Government.
Al-Arian is in U.S. custody awaiting trial now scheduled to begin in May in Tampa on a multi-count Federal terrorism and racketeering indictment charging him with terrorism support activities related to the PIJ. Shallah and Al-Najjar are also defendants in that same indictment, but are obviously not in U.S. custody since they are outside the U.S. and have managed to evade capture…so far.
Presumably, a copy of that aforementioned audiotape transcript and the tape itself will find their way to the Federal prosecutors on the PIJ case in Tampa. If it really does reflect Shallah ordering the terrorist hit, and can be admitted into a U.S. Court, that tape and the transcript will be powerful new evidence in a case already populated with it.
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» Syria -- caught in the act from Bookworm Room
If I remember, in the wake of the most recent Tel Aviv bombing, Syria was shocked, shocked, that Israel would dare accuse it of being behind that event. Of course, Syria's probably even more shocked now to learn that its henchman was caught on tape o... [Read More]
