Yet again we hear that a Muslim aiming to commit violence was mentally ill — as we have often heard in freelance jihad cases. Why “mental illness” seems again and again to play itself out in this way when found among Muslims is never explained.
“Cyanide victim ‘not a terrorist’: family: Ottawa man with schizophrenia was in Denver on a vacation, sister says,” by Andrew Seymour, Andrew Duffy, Gary Dimmock and Neco for The Ottawa Citizen, August 14 (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):
OTTAWA – An Ottawa man whose mysterious death in a Denver hotel room is under investigation by the FBI was diagnosed with schizophrenia three years ago, his family revealed yesterday.
Preliminary autopsy results show Saleman Abdirahman Dirie, 29, may have died from exposure to cyanide, a rapidly acting chemical described by one expert as “the ideal terrorist weapon.”
Denver police confirmed yesterday that the jar of white powder found in Mr. Dirie’s hotel room contained sodium cyanide, the crystal form of the chemical.
The incident has raised disturbing new security concerns on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, which is to open in Denver on Aug. 25. The convention will officially nominate Illinois Senator Barack Obama as the party’s presidential candidate.
In Ottawa, Mr. Dirie’s sister told the Citizen that her brother suffered from mental illness, and she angrily rejected any suggestion that he was tied to terrorism or had any intention of harming Mr. Obama.
“He was not a terrorist,” said the sister, who declined to give her name. “We don’t want to hear that word, it hurts us. It is against our religion.”
Her brother, she said, had travelled alone to Colorado for a vacation. The family, she said, was devastated to learn that he had died in his Denver hotel room.
“He was just going on a trip,” his sister said.
“He just told us he wanted to go on a vacation and then we heard our brother had died,” the sister said.
Mr. Dirie’s sister said her brother had been doing well since he began receiving treatment for his illness at the Royal Ottawa Hospital about three years ago.
“He was fine. He was just a normal person.”
Her brother was taking his medication regularly when he left Ottawa, she said, and was not suicidal. She did not know how or why he would have come in contact with cyanide….