MASterful Lies: Bray and Omeish Keep Digging
By The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)
As the fallout from MAS President Esam Omeish's resignation from Virginia's immigration commission continues, another MAS official's past actions have come back to haunt the organization.
Mahdi Bray, head of MAS's "civil rights" arm, the Freedom Foundation, appeared at an October 2000 rally, marking the second Palestinian Intifada. As reported previously, Bray stood by and cheered as now-jailed Islamist leader Abdurrahman Alamoudi announced his support for the terrorist groups Hamas and Hizballah.
Watch the video yourself. Bray is off to the side and spotlighted.
After the IPT posted this video, journalists and politicians have started investigating ties between high ranking State officials and the Northern Virginia-based Islamist group.
Worried over the prospect of his open support for terrorism damaging his groups' ability to push its Islamist agenda, Bray has started dissembling. Stating that he does not support violence or terrorist groups, Bray claims he and the audience were reacting with laughter, not approval, at Alamoudi's words. He told a local newspaper:
The majority of the people they were kind of raising their hands, and kind of cheering, and so on because this was so uncharacteristic of al-Amoudi. We didn't know he had a problem with law enforcement. He was considered the pillar of the American Muslim community.
Bray said his gestures weren't in support of Hamas and Hezbollah.
You saw me pumping my fists. You didn't see me raising my hands. If they had shown the audience, you would have seen people in the audience raising their hands and falling out laughing. For him to come and make these kinds of radical rants, no one took him seriously.
For the entire article, visit the IPT's website.
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://counterterrorismblog.org/mt/pings.cgi/4516
