"Our goal is to identify the killers. We believe that when the killers are identified, the motive for this wanton and vile crime will be revealed."

Here's a clue: look to the Muslim Community. There you will find your answers.

Posted by: Prickzilla at January 21, 2005 11:15 AM

I can not believe that there has been so little media play of this. I have not seen anything at all. I know others here have seen sparse coverage, but c'mon, there is clearly something wrong here.

I for one am going to gather some of what's here on site and from web searches regarding this story and forward it on to some of the news organizations here in Canada.

The media really pisses me off some times. Are they reporters or political pawns? Maybe some have truly not heard of this, but that seems a little far fetched to me (someone with absolutely no news experienc). I would think that any reasonably sized news organization would have had this news event sent to them by now.

A family was horrifically murdered here by some "unknown" persons and/or group of persons.

Pathetic news coverage at best.

Dana

Posted by: Dana at January 21, 2005 11:16 AM

Anyone want to lay any bets as to how soon the usual suspects will be circulating conspiracy theories laying the blame on Jews trying to ignite discord between the Egyptian Coptic and the Muslim communities?

Posted by: waterdragon52 at January 21, 2005 1:07 PM

This Assyrian account is not from an original news source but is taken from the USA website: Men's News Daily. Which got it from news reports floating around? Perhaps?

http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/

Posted by: dennisw at January 21, 2005 3:10 PM

The story seems to mutate with a variety of 'facts' as time goes on.

[Meanwhile, authorities investigating the slayings say robbery remained a possible motive because no cash or jewelry was found in the home.]

from: "The Christian Post"
http://www.christianpost.com/article/americas/94/section/slaying.of.coptic.christian.family.a.%5Cwake-up.call%5C.says.vom.spokesman/1.htm

Posted by: justamomof4 at January 21, 2005 8:25 PM

Posted by: dennisw at January 21, 2005 03:10 PM

Did you see this in your search??

http://www.somethingcool.ca/backissues/052404/feature61.htm
"There are two wars on terrorism," Jeremy Reynalds says. "The one the governments are fighting, and, as I have come to see, a much less-noticed covert war that is played out on the Internet." The words hang in the air a moment, their ramifications undeniable. If there is a second war being fought online, that means it would make soldiers and potential jihadists of all of us. "We definitely have a problem," Reynalds suggests.
To the millions who are unaware of his existence, Jeremy Reynalds is not a government agent. Nor was he trained by the CIA. He is not - yet - a target of Al-Qaeda and he never set out to take up computerized arms against what he now calls "radical Islam." But it happened to him anyway, like a present he did not ask for. But if you asked him if he would change his lifestyle now and walk away from his online battle against evil, he would turn you down. No one would blame him if he did walk away - he is already responsible for running a homeless shelter in Albuquerque, New Mexico that helps thousands of people a year. But you won't find him shying away from what he sees as just another responsibility. "My method of relaxation is to track down terrorists," he says.
His fight against online terrorism started in perhaps the most subtle of ways. While busily working on comprehensive exams for his Ph.D., he found an email in his online Inbox that he first thought was spam and almost deleted it. Upon further inspection, however, it was a "hey, check this out" type of email, urging Reynalds to investigate a link the sender had found to a website. Curious, Reynalds clicked on it and found himself on a website run by the terrorist organization Hamas.

"It said something to the effect of, 'we have sold our wives jewelry to buy guns and bullets to kill Zionists and a bullet costs this much and a gun costs this much and if you want to be clean and clear before Allah, you need to consider doing the same thing'," Jeremy recalls. Intrigued, he sent an email to the address provided using a false Islamic name and two days later, got an email back with a name and an address with a routing number for a bank, complete with an account number so he could send in his cash. "So I published the number and handed the information over to the proper authorities."
But that was only the beginning. Reynalds found a link from the Hamas site to an al-Qaeda site. "I believe I was the first person to discover it," Jeremy remembers . From there, the network of online terror began to reveal itself piece by piece, and Reynalds knew he was on to something he could not simply walk away from. "I began to get much more involved than I had ever intended."
From there, his search for terrorists took him to, of all places, Yahoo!, the Internet company famous for its powerful search engine. He discovered a Yahoo! Group (essentially an online forum where people can discuss a certain topic) called Global Islamic Media (GIM), a group many now believe that acts as a "mouthpiece" for Al-Qaeda. Incensed, Reynalds started a crusade to have the group removed from the web.
He didn't get a response at first, but a few weeks about the initial complaint, the site was taken down. But a few weeks later, it returned under a new name. Reynalds informed CNN about this and they did a story on Jeremy's war against online terror, but Yahoo! did not respond to CNN's calls.
"Yahoo! seems like a law unto themselves," Reynalds says. "They didn't respond to CNN and they barely responded to me." Why would Yahoo!, he wonders, continue to allow the group to exist? "I am not into conspiracy theories," he continues, "but I find it very interesting that their CTO is an Iranian. What would be the reason for them wanting to keep their service base open to these radically Islamic Yahoo! Groups that aren't even making any money?"
While Yahoo! remains protected by freedom of speech laws, Jeremy says the threat GIM poses is real. Chatter was heard on them both before and after the Madrid bombing. "Kind of, 'hey look what we did' type stuff," Reynalds says. It's exactly this type of thing that makes the Internet so alluring to terrorists and terrorist-creators.
"The Internet is being used by terrorist organizations for two reasons," Reynalds suggests. "1) As a means of communication. I was sitting in an Internet Café in Amman, Jordan, and wondered, how many of these young jihadists are sitting around me? A frustrated young disenfranchised kid just needs a little encouragement to go over the edge. This is not an 'the Internet made me do it' type of excuse, but the encouragement offered over the Internet with some of the graphic images and so forth, could be just what he needs."
The other reason the Net is so popular among the terror crowd is that it is a cheap and fast way to pass along their intentions. "While a lot of the other sites were mostly images, the Al-Qaeda site was mostly text and I heard rumors terrorists were sending each other cryptic messages, communicating their plans."
So how many of these terror-oriented websites and groups are there online? "Thousands…thousands," comes the response from this Internet crusader. "If you go to Yahoo! Groups and do a Yahoo! Group search on 'radical Islam' or 'Islamic terrorist', you get thousands of hits coming back." With so many out there, how effective can Jeremy Reynalds be? "By myself, my effectiveness is sort of limited," he answers. "It might be impossible to get rid of them all, but adopting that attitude is like saying that because all politicians are corrupt, you aren't going to vote."
With such overwhelming odds, no one would blame him if he gave up this one man vs. the world of terror fight. Except, perhaps for Reynalds himself. "My objective is to motivate people to become just like me. There are many people out there more Internet-savvy than I am, but they are wasting their time playing games on the Internet. Unless people begin to exercise a measure of involvement and adopt a worldwide focus and take a stand against radical Islamic terrorism, they aren't going to have a home to use the Internet in, because these radical Islamics have an agenda and that is to obliterate us off the face of the earth."
Beyond the global motivation, there is a personal one as well. "I want to be a service to my country and help ensure that we don't have another repeat of 9-11," Reynalds says bluntly. "I think all of us have a responsibility to take care of our families. I am a conservative, evangelical, bible-believing, fundamentalist, right-wing, Bush-loving Christian and I also love Israel and the Jewish race. And I believe in free speech - but I want to see radical Islam defeated."
Asked if he is ever concerned about his personal safety in his pursuit of these terrorists, his answer is a resounding no. "I have a time to live and a time to die." Nor does he have any intention of stopping his online crusade. "If I need to continue doing this, then I need to continue to do it."
But as noble and righteous as this man might be, he is a realist. He knows the evil and darkness that exists in this world - he likely sees it on the faces of the homeless and lost people he helps every day. The war against terror - no longer confined within the borders of any one country - is an uphill battle, with no clear victory in sight. The rules of the battle continue to change almost daily, as one horrific act is replaced by something even more so.
"We used to have a war between nations," Reynalds says, quoting a concept he read in a book written by a professor named Samuel Huntington. "Now we have wars between cultures. And the big war brewing right now is between radical Islam and the West. It was Huntington's contention that radical Islam was going to win."
And you can almost see Jeremy Reynalds, those very words ringing in his ears, hunched over his computer scanning the Internet hunting those that would kill us, whispering to himself, "we'll see. We'll see."

Jeremy Reynalds encourages everyone to get involved in this online fight against terror. His email and a host of other information can be found on his website www.joyjunction.org.
Fred Johns

HMMMMM???

Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and ALL who Fight with her give them Strength, Wisdom, Sight, and Courage to stay the course to Destroy ALL Islamic Terrorist and ALL who Support them Open the Worlds Eyes to their Threay give the World Courage to Stand and Fight this Evil Amen

Posted by: Catherine at January 22, 2005 12:14 AM

Certainly a deafening silence about the murdered Coptic Christian family, and even more so about the severed head/body found in Hazlet, New Jersey, a few days later.

This is silence ordered 'from the top', not a lefty media thing, and begs the question how many other similar murders have been shushed up, or simple not recognized for what they are ?

Are the top cops, federal, handling these murders, or is it the local boys and girls ?

On a different note:
the message given at the haj this year in Saudi by both secular and religious authorities is that jihad is unislamic when it involves killing etc.
Bit late to change the message to peace, but interesting. The jihad danger to the Saudi regime itself must finally be obvious to the royals; those 'export only' instructions are being ignored.

Posted by: dby at January 22, 2005 2:24 AM

Regarding an earlier comment about the online article from the Christian Post -

A correction to the facts stated in yesterday's report is published today:

http://www.christianpost.com/article/americas/95/section/local.muslim.christian.groups.give.statements.on.new.jersey.slayings/1.htm

"However, authorities stressed that robbery remained a possible motive as reports indicate that money was taken from Hossam Armanious' wallet and Amal Garas' purse had been emptied. First Assistant Hudson County Prosecutor Guy Gregory also said that the killers rifled through drawers in the home, according to the North Jersey Media Group. But authorities did confirm Tuesday that there were no signs of a break-in and that a large amount of jewelry was left behind—despite earlier reports that no cash or jewelry was found in the home."

Posted by: justamomof4 at January 22, 2005 5:26 PM