Wait, no, scratch that. His name is Youssef Mohammed el-Hajj Dib — more likely a Muslim than a Maronite. Not that his religion had anything to do with this. Oh, no. To think that would be “Islamophobic.” He just probably objected to the gum stuck to the bottom of his seat on the commuter train.
“Germany: Lebanese man found guilty of bomb plot,” from AKI, December 9 (thanks to C. Cantoni):
Dusseldorf, 9 Dec. (AKI) – A Lebanese man has been sentenced to life in prison for a failed plot to bomb a German commuter train in 2006. A regional court in the city of Dusseldorf on Tuesday convicted 24-year-old Youssef Mohammed el-Hajj Dib of multiple counts of attempted murder and attempting to cause an explosion.
Prosecutors said el-Hajj Dib and an accomplice, Jihad Hamad, boarded two trains in Cologne, one headed for Koblenz, one for Dortmund, in July 2006 with two suitcase bombs that failed to explode.
The bombs failed to detonate, but prosecutors said the planned attacks in western Germany could have caused up to 75 casualties.
Ottmar Breidling, the presiding judge, said el-Hajj Dib was guilty of a “terrorist act” and dismissed the defendant’s claim that he had only deposited a mock bomb packed in a suitcase in a rail carriage to scare the German public….
Still, this is possible. Maybe his mission was only to “strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah” (Qur’an 8:60).