Of course, everyone who knows him is shocked, shocked! He's a terrific guy! The most gentle soul in the world! Why, this must all be trumped up! (All this may be true this time, of course, but it would be much more convincing if we didn't hear it every time someone was arrested on terror charges.) "Local man caught up in al-Qaida case," from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, with thanks to Richard:
To the government, Malkandi is seen as a threat to national security. FBI and immigration officials say he tried to help one of the world's deadliest terrorists, a top lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, gain entry into the country in 1999.Malkandi, 46, has been jailed at the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac since Aug. 25. He has not been charged with any crime.
He says his troubles came from one brief effort to help a friend of a friend come to the United States for medical treatment. He emphatically denies knowing who the man truly was, or his terrorist intentions.
It turns out the man he attempted to assist was Tawfiq bin Attash -- also known as "Khallad" -- the one-legged al-Qaida operative who helped plan the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, and the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He also served as a bodyguard for bin Laden, and, in lieu of making it into the United States to participate in the 9/11 attacks, he helped plan them, specifically serving as a key contact for the pilot and crew of the airliner that smashed into the Pentagon, according to U.S. authorities....
Malkandi flatly denies he had any idea whom he may have been assisting. He said he didn't know who Osama bin Laden was until after Sept. 11. "I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of al-Qaida," he wrote....
"I would be hard-pressed to say anything negative about Sam at all, and I'm one of the world's worst cynics," said family friend Barbara Minton, a Redmond woman who met the Malkandis when her husband was taking an English-as-a-second-language course with Mali Malkandi at a local community college three years ago.
"We would always tell him he was too trusting. He just doesn't want to hurt anybody," Minton said. "He's always there to do anything for anybody."
Greg Hope, director of the refugee resettlement program for the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, agrees. Hope said he's helped Malkandi with a loan for his home, and with another loan that was about to be finalized when Malkandi was arrested. That one would have made it possible for him to buy a sub shop in Kenmore.
Hope said Sam also has gone out of his way to be helpful to him on several occasions, including agreeing to give a keynote address to the Episcopal group's annual dinner a few years back.
"He's just a genial guy, a born networker," Hope said -- "a great guy to have in the country."
Get out the violins as the lying liar is at best deported.
The most famous case of this Standing Up For Someone Because If He's Guilty I'll Eat My Hat is Steve McGready, who for ten years was Mike Hawash's boss at Intel. He was quick, along with another Intel muck-a-muck, to set up a website (called www.mikehawash.org, to "raise awareness" about the innocence of the accused and the terrible witch-hunt that was being conducted against Muslims. The site came down, I believe, just a few hours after Mike Hawash pleaded guilty, but before he actually started serving his sentence.
In old movies, of the 1930s, the immigrant mother, as the G-Men or the T-Men take away her still-defiant son. insists that "my boy is a good boy."
Now all the neighbors, the supposedly clear-headed engineer boss, and practically everyone under the sun as if in chorus shouts: Our Mohammed, our Khalid, our Fawaz, our Omar, is the soul of soft-voiced courtesy. He was always doing favors. Always had a kind word. Best kind of immigrant, only wish there were more like him. He couldn't possibly...
Don't be stupid. Of course he could.
"Barbara Minton, a Redmond woman who met the Malkandis when her husband was taking an English-as-a-second-language course with Mali Malkandi..."
Well, golly. I wonder where her husband is from.
Most cynical person in the world? Make that gullible.
"He's just a genial guy, a born networker," Hope said -- "a great guy to have in the country."
Just wish we could deport guillible enabler-morons like Greg Hope and Barbara Minton along with Malkandi. They could all live happily ever after in Saudi Arabia (aka "The Land of Genial Guys Who Would Do Anything for Anyone Because They Are So Trusting and Nice").
"But he [Tawfiq bin Attash] told me he lost his leg when, while serving soup to the homeless at the local shelter, he ran and pushed a pregant woman and a small family of ducks off the railroad tracks just in the nick of time" - Malkind
s_g:
You think Hope and Minton are gormless? Up in Canaduh we had a Prime Minister who fell for a similar line and got the Pakistani government to release one of Osama's Afghan "compound mates" from detention in a hospital bed recovering from battle injuries, because he was only over there doing charitable works.
Happily, Ahmed Khadr got his own in the battlefield as did two of his four sons. The youngest son is in Gitmo for having killed a US army medic when the son was all of 14. The last is back here in Canada last I heard and about to be glorified as some kind of hero because he gave some useful information while in custody and we're also stuck with the patriarch's wife and a daughter who somehow manage to keep losing their Canadian passports while abroad. The daughter was also recently in the news for refusing to rise when the judge entered the court room where her lawyer was seeking the release of a computer that was confiscated from her by the Mounties on her return from one of the usual suspect countries.
One small lucky thing about jihaddists as Daniel Pipes recently observed, is that they are about as dumb as they are homicidal.
"He's just a genial guy, a born networker," Hope said -- "a great guy to have in the country."
And 'a great guy' to have in an international organization that has to work secretly. Every organization needs people with different skill sets. Al-Qaeda needs people who can design bombs, people who can strategize, people who can get money, people who can design websites even, and people like "Sam" who can snow non-Muslims and who can network with people to achieve desired ends, such as transporting terrorists into our country.
Why do so many have the assumption that bad guys can never appear nice and smiley?