This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/592
Muslim Brotherhood member followed guerilla training in Iraq and smuggled false passports into Saudi Arabia
May 5, 2005
S. GOVERNMENT TO DEPORT AREA SYRIAN FOR "MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD" TIES, IRAQ GUERILLA WARFARE TRAINING
May 4, 2005 6:33 pm US/Central
By Todd Bensman and Robert Riggs
The Investigators
CBS-11 News
In a rare public assertion, the U.S. government is citing an Arlington man's association with a secretive worldwide Muslim organization as grounds to deport him, CBS-11 has learned.
In a Dallas immigration court, the government has openly argued that Syria-born Ahmed Barodi should be deported, in part, because of his membership in the Muslim Brotherhood, his participation in brotherhood-sponsored guerilla training in Iraq, and for smuggling fraudulent passports for the organization.
Barodi's attorney and his wife would not respond to the allegations.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a violent religious, political and social order whose goal is the spread of strict Islamic law throughout the world. The secret Middle-east spawned radical movement, which has expanded throughout the U.S., has birthed several violent groups in recent decades that the U.S. has formally designated terrorist organizations, among them Al Qaida, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad.
"Osama bin Ladin has been influenced by the philosophy and teaching of the Muslim Brotherhood," said Mark Briskman, head of the Dallas chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, which has studied the organization. "They are the fountainhead…the founding ideology for everything we see in the world today, for the individuals that are attacking American troops in Iraq, for the suicide bombings in Israel and for the threats against the regimes in Egypt and Syria."
The U.S. government's tactic in Dallas sets a precedent because federal authorities have never formally designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organizationl. And so, membership and support to the Muslim Brotherhood is not illegal.
But the government's willingness to penalize a reputed member for his association became evident for the first time in a Dallas immigration court during ongoing deportation proceedings against Barodi. The Arlington businessman was detained earlier this year on grounds that he entered the U.S. illegally in 1989 on a fraudulent Syrian passport. Government lawyers are countering his subsequent appeal for political asylum by citing his close admitted ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and to a top international terrorist who is believed to have masterminded the 1982 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
Specifically, according to records obtained exclusively by CBS-11 News, Barodi has acknowledged attending a 21-day "Guerrilla Warfare Training Camp" in Iraq in 1981 that was sponsored by the Muslim Brotherhood. Barodi himself provided this information when he applied for immigration status in 1989, the document states, and he included details that would add credence to the Bush administration's longtime contention that the Iraqi government materially supported terrorist training.
"Barodi advised that the Iraqi government provided all of the training aids consisting of RPG's (rocket propelled grenades), firearms and the facility," the document states.
The training in Iraq was approved by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and led by a Syrian terrorist named Abu Hazem, according to the document. Hazem is the top brotherhood leader who linked to the Sadat assassination the year after Barodi's reputed training. Barodi also told authorities that his brother, Ali Barodi, was "a high level ranking member" of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The document also states that authorities in Saudi Arabia incarcerated Barodi for seven months after catching him smuggling several false passports for the brotherhood. More recently, Barodi insisted the interpreter had not correctly translated his statements about smuggling passports "and that he never stated anything like that."
Barodi, a 41-year-old entrepreneur in the gas station and convenience store businesses, came to the government's attention when members of another North Texas Muslim family, according to them, overheard Barodi bragging about current terror-related activities and brotherhood ties.
Vicki Alkhatib, the American-born wife of another area Syrian and associate of Barodi, told CBS-11 she called the FBI after overhearing discussions that Barodi's activities for the brotherhood were continuing.
"They were talking about how he had ties with Al Quaida training, how he had been kicked out of every country he had been in for fraud," she said. "What he had been trained for through the terrorist organization was documentation fraud."
Vicki Alkhatib's call to the FBI sparked an investigation into brotherhood activities in North Texas continues, sources tell CBS-11. Ironically, her husband, Abdulbari Alkhatib, was then detained on immigration charges and now also faces deportation with Barodi. Alkhatib came to the U.S. on a visitor's visa years ago and overstayed it, accumulating several felony convictions along the way, records show.
Vicki Alkhatib said she believes her husband's willingness to help the FBI uncover terrorist connections in North Texas entitles him to a break.
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Attacks in Egypt Leave 3 Dead, 9 Hurt
2 Women Shoot at Egypt Tour Bus, and Bomber Strikes Tourist Area; Violence Leaves 3 Dead, 9 Hurt
By LEE KEATH
The Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/International/print?id=718530
May. 1, 2005 - Two veiled women shot at a tour bus, and a man the brother of one shooter and the fiance of the second blew himself up as he leapt off a bridge during a police chase Saturday. All three attackers died and nine people, four of them foreigners, were wounded in an apparent revival of violence against Egypt's vital tourism industry.
The attacks occurred within two hours and at locations just 2 1/2 miles distant.
Those wounded by the explosion in the center of Cairo included an Israeli couple, a Swedish man and an Italian woman, along with three Egyptians. Two Egyptians were wounded in the shooting, which targeted a bus headed toward one of Cairo's most prominent historic Islamic sites.
Egyptian authorities deny major militant groups have returned to violence and said Saturday's attacks were a result of its crackdown on a small militant cell it says carried out an April 7 suicide bombing in a Cairo tourist bazaar that killed two French tourists and an American.
But the attacks deepened fears that militants are launching a new round of violence in Egypt, which saw a bloody campaign by Islamic extremists in the 1990s. After that campaign was suppressed, the country saw a lull in violence until October, when near simultaneous bomb blasts in two Sinai resorts killed 34 people. Then, on April 7, a suicide bomber targeted foreigners near the crowded Khan el-Khalili tourist bazaar in Cairo, killing two French citizens and an American. Eighteen people were wounded.
Tourism is Egypt's biggest foreign currency earner, and the industry had made a strong recovery after the 1990s violence.
The Interior Ministry said Saturday's bombing was a result of the police roundup of those behind the Khan el-Khalili attack. It said police earlier in the day captured two suspects Ashraf Saeed Youssef and Gamal Ahmed Abdel Aal in connection with that attack and were chasing a third, Ehab Yousri Yassin, on a highway overpass when he jumped off, setting off the nail-filled bomb.
The two women who carried out the shooting attack were identified as Negat Yassin, the bomber's sister, and Iman Ibrahim Khamis, his fiancee, both in their 20s. They carried out the shooting on the tourist bus in revenge for Yassin's death, then shot themselves, the ministry said. Women are not known to have carried out past attacks in Egypt.
Two militant groups posted Web statements claiming responsibility for the twin attacks the Mujahedeen of Egypt and the Abdullah Azzam Brigades. Neither claim's authenticity could be verified.
The Abdullah Azzam Brigades said Saturday's violence was in revenge for the arrests of thousands of people in Sinai after the October bombings there. The group claimed responsibility for those attacks as well. Egyptian authorities have said the October attack was connected to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not domestic politics.
Saturday's blast went off in a crowded square between an exclusive hotel on the banks of the Nile and the Egyptian Museum, near a bus station that was relatively empty because of a holiday weekend.
Remains of a body, covered with newspapers, were seen beneath the bridge a few minutes after the 3:15 p.m. explosion was heard through downtown Cairo. Photos in state media showed the body lying in a pool of blood, its head destroyed in the blast.
The injured Swede sitting upright in a stretcher with his bloody hands held to his face was lifted by paramedics into an ambulance. On a nearby curb, two Westerners checked their wounds; the young woman's left arm was bloodied and the man sitting next to her appeared to have a leg injury. The extent of the other woman's injuries were not immediately clear.
"The explosion was caused by a very primitive bomb full of nails. Most of the injuries were superficial caused by the destruction of the nails," Health Minister Mohammed Awad Tag Eddin said.
Soon after the bomb exploded, the two women dressed in head-to-toe black veils carried out the shooting attack on a highway leading to the Citadel, a 12th-century fortress with a towering 18th-century mosque, in a part of old Cairo rich with historic sites and cemeteries.
The women were in car following the bus and fired three bullets through its back window before shooting themselves, the Interior Ministry said. One died immediately and the other died later in a hospital, it said.
Witnesses, however, said police opened fire on the women. Two other Egyptians were wounded in the shooting, and none of the tourists on the bus was hurt, police said.
At the site, a pistol and a black glove of the type worn by veiled women lay on the ground that was covered by blood and shattered glass.
Police had launched a wave of arrests after the Khan el-Khalili bombing, which they initially said was carried out by a man acting alone. Later, however, they said he was part of a cell. At least three suspected cell members were arrested, along with more than 30 other people, most of them relatives of wanted suspects.
Associated Press reporter Paul Garwood contributed to this report.
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/592