Richard
10-04-2009, 07:49
Dallas plot suspect's family says he was troubled, not a terrorist
Dave Tarrant, The Dallas Morning News, 4 Oct 2009
Part 1 of 2
AJLOUN, Jordan – Hosam Maher Husein Smadi cradled his mother, weeping. Just 16 years old, the eldest of four children, he had dreaded this moment. During his mother’s 18-month fight with cancer, he had kept vigil by her bed.
Now it was time to let her go. Along with his brother, Husein, and several loved ones, he gripped his mother’s cloth-wrapped body. They began to lower her into the freshly dug 3-foot-deep grave.
Suddenly, he froze. Please, he implored of his uncle, a doctor. Check her pulse. Maybe she is still alive.
Hosam Smadi’s relatives here in Jordan see that childhood trauma as evidence that he did not start out determined to blow up one of Dallas’ signature skyscrapers. He came to the United States in April 2007 because he saw it as a land of opportunity, they said. He faked a marriage to stay here. He even considered converting to Christianity. They blame the FBI for enticing him to become an Islamic extremist — and entrapping him in a dangerous gambit.
Several experts in the U.S. and the Middle East, however, said would-be terrorists often arise from among the traumatized, the dislocated and the disillusioned. The FBI must take young men like Hosam Smadi seriously, these experts said. With al-Qaeda’s senior leadership in tatters, lost loners connected only by the Internet pose one of the biggest threats to Americans, particularly when they have shown signs of anger, depression and violence in the past, as Hosam had.
“A young person with no guidance and no monitoring can be easily turned into a radical, especially nowadays with the thousands of Web sites linked to extremist groups,” said Husein Khuzaii, a sociology professor in Jordan.
Ten days ago, Hosam Smadi, 19, who claimed to be a supporter of al-Qaeda, parked an SUV packed with what he thought were explosives under Fountain Place, a 60-story office tower, the FBI has said. He walked up to meet one of the undercover agents and called a cellphone number that he thought would trigger the blast, potentially jeopardizing hundreds of lives. The FBI said it first encountered him more than six months ago talking about holy war on an extremist Web site.
In Jordan, a long-standing U.S. partner in the Middle East, Hosam Smadi’s story is mystifying. Especially for those who knew him best — his sisters, cousins, friends and neighbors, his former teachers and classmates.
And, most of all, his father.
Maher Smadi, an agricultural engineer and civil servant, has tried to reconcile the son he knew, his eldest child, with an act better associated with Osama bin Laden.
“We never expected anything like this,” he said in Arabic, repeatedly conveying his regrets through a translator. “We sent him to the United States for a new life.”
The first child
On June 5, 1990, the first child of Maher Smadi and his wife, Haifa El-Momani, was born. They named him Hosam, which means “sword” in Arabic. A Muslim by birth, Hosam attended the Ajloun Baptist School through the ninth grade. Founded in 1952, the school is equally divided between Muslim and Christian students, said Essar Mazahreh, Hosam’s fifth-grade teacher and now the school principal.
“The Baptist school teaches English from kindergarten,” Maher Smadi said, explaining why he sent his children there. “Public school does not teach English until fifth grade.” The school also emphasized social skills and good manners.
Hosam was quiet, studious and sensitive to criticism, his teachers said. He liked to sing Christian hymns, occasionally wore a cross and recited Bible verses. His father said he could be unusually sensitive at times. “I remember there was a small insect on the floor, maybe an ant. We wanted to kill it, but Hosam said, ‘No, no! Jesus Christ created it,' ” Maher Smadi recalled.
The family observed Islamic law and customs at home. The father felt that the Christian experiences at school could benefit his son in a country with a strong Christian minority. His neighborhood in Ajloun is predominantly Christian, and he gets along well with his neighbors, he said.
Hosam spent his spare time playing video games on his computer or PlayStation. “He loved video games,” said Hammed Hosam, 19, a friend from school. “We met in each other’s homes all the time to play games.”
One of Hosam’s favorite games was Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, a game involving gangsters in a fictional American city modeled after Miami in the 1980s.
‘Crazily in love’
As a child, Hosam got along well with his parents but had an exceptionally close relationship with his mother. “He was crazily in love with his mother,” Maher Smadi said. “He used to tell her everything he felt.”
That emotional bond grew stronger after the father filed for divorce because of “family differences,” Maher Smadi said, adding that Hosam turned against him, and “he loved his mother even more.”
Hosam, who was 14, tried to pressure his father to reconcile with his mother, Maher Smadi said. He argued with him. He cursed him and kicked over furniture. “He was so violent with me,” he said.
“He did that with a hammer,” he said, pointing to a gouge on the side of a wood china cabinet in his home. Sometimes, Hosam skipped school and camped out in front of his father’s office building — or stalked him around town.
“He would follow me around and say no words,” Maher Smadi said. “He would direct his brother and sisters to bother me.”
At one point, the father filed a complaint with the local police. Hosam had taken about 10 or 15 Jordanian dinar (about $15 to $20) from him, and his father wanted to teach him a lesson. “So I went to the police. I did that to educate him,” he said. “It was a moment of anger for me.”
A judge sentenced Hosam to a week in a juvenile detention center, said Maher Smadi. After the divorce was finalized in January 2005, Hosam “became quieter,” the father said. But the peace didn’t last long.
‘You will survive’
In March 2005, Hosam’s mother, who was 36, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Hosam, who turned 15 that June, looked after his brother and two sisters. When his mother was in the hospital, he spent most nights sleeping in her room. Though his mother’s prognosis was poor, Hosam refused to believe it. “He thought she could survive,” his father said.
During her last two months, she was mostly asleep and unresponsive. But Hosam would talk to her continually, recalled his sister, Reem, 15. “You will survive. You’re a good person,” she recalled Hosam saying. “Mom, wink! Move your hands!”
He would pray over and over: “Allah saves her. Allah saves her.”
He closely followed a TV program about alternative medicine. When the host came to Ajloun, Hosam persuaded him to suggest an herbal recipe that he could try on his mother. Blending the herbs into a liquid, Hosam secretly slipped the formula into his mother's IV bottle one night, his father said. “By coincidence, when he put that mixture into the IV, his mother’s body flinched,” he said.
“It’s working,” Hosam told his family later. “I finally did it. It’s working.”
But Hosam’s mother died on Oct. 27, 2006. “It was Friday at 5 a.m.,” said Reem, a day after the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting.
Their mother went into cardiac arrest. The alarm brought doctors and nurses into her room. They used a defibrillator to shock her heart, but it was no use.
When the medical staff left, Hosam and his brother, Husein, slipped back into their mother’s room, Reem said. Hosam tried to reattach all the wires on his mother and use the electric paddles to revive his mother, but the staff stopped him.
“He turned violent and broke windows at the hospital,” she said. “He was so mad.”
For a month afterward, he stayed in his mother’s house, alone. He refused to open the door for anyone. Not for his uncles and aunts. Not for his brother. Not even for his sisters, Reem and Rama. They cried and pleaded with him to come out.
“He spent the time sleeping, doing nothing,” Reem said.
‘A fresh start’
Maher Smadi persuaded his son to return home. “I forced him to go back to school,” he said. But Hosam would often skip classes and sleep in.
His father never suggested counseling. There is a stigma attached to mental illness in Jordan, Maher Smadi said. He believed his son would react badly to the suggestion. “He would do something nasty. He’d be very insulted.”
In March 2007, Maher Smadi and his son met with Hana Elrabadi, a retired Jordanian businessman and U.S. citizen who lives in San Jose, Calif., and was visiting his native Ajloun. “They wanted me to help him [Hosam] get to the United States and help him find a new future,” Elrabadi said.
Hosam already had a visa. His father had visited the U.S. several times and said he wanted to return with his sons at some point. He had gotten two five-year multi-entry visas for each of his sons to use at the right opportunity.
“Hosam thought it would be a fresh start. I thought it would be a fresh start,” Maher Smadi said. “Leave everything behind. Maybe it will help him.”
On April 15, 2007, the father drove his son to the airport. Just before his son boarded the airplane, the father gave him a hug. “I was very happy,” he said.
Emotionally troubled
But Hosam couldn’t shake his turbulent past. Back in San Jose, Hana Elrabadi saw clear signs that the young man was emotionally troubled. He was short-tempered and moody. “Every time he remembered his mother, he cried.” Elrabadi believed Hosam had psychological problems.
(cont'd)
Dave Tarrant, The Dallas Morning News, 4 Oct 2009
Part 1 of 2
AJLOUN, Jordan – Hosam Maher Husein Smadi cradled his mother, weeping. Just 16 years old, the eldest of four children, he had dreaded this moment. During his mother’s 18-month fight with cancer, he had kept vigil by her bed.
Now it was time to let her go. Along with his brother, Husein, and several loved ones, he gripped his mother’s cloth-wrapped body. They began to lower her into the freshly dug 3-foot-deep grave.
Suddenly, he froze. Please, he implored of his uncle, a doctor. Check her pulse. Maybe she is still alive.
Hosam Smadi’s relatives here in Jordan see that childhood trauma as evidence that he did not start out determined to blow up one of Dallas’ signature skyscrapers. He came to the United States in April 2007 because he saw it as a land of opportunity, they said. He faked a marriage to stay here. He even considered converting to Christianity. They blame the FBI for enticing him to become an Islamic extremist — and entrapping him in a dangerous gambit.
Several experts in the U.S. and the Middle East, however, said would-be terrorists often arise from among the traumatized, the dislocated and the disillusioned. The FBI must take young men like Hosam Smadi seriously, these experts said. With al-Qaeda’s senior leadership in tatters, lost loners connected only by the Internet pose one of the biggest threats to Americans, particularly when they have shown signs of anger, depression and violence in the past, as Hosam had.
“A young person with no guidance and no monitoring can be easily turned into a radical, especially nowadays with the thousands of Web sites linked to extremist groups,” said Husein Khuzaii, a sociology professor in Jordan.
Ten days ago, Hosam Smadi, 19, who claimed to be a supporter of al-Qaeda, parked an SUV packed with what he thought were explosives under Fountain Place, a 60-story office tower, the FBI has said. He walked up to meet one of the undercover agents and called a cellphone number that he thought would trigger the blast, potentially jeopardizing hundreds of lives. The FBI said it first encountered him more than six months ago talking about holy war on an extremist Web site.
In Jordan, a long-standing U.S. partner in the Middle East, Hosam Smadi’s story is mystifying. Especially for those who knew him best — his sisters, cousins, friends and neighbors, his former teachers and classmates.
And, most of all, his father.
Maher Smadi, an agricultural engineer and civil servant, has tried to reconcile the son he knew, his eldest child, with an act better associated with Osama bin Laden.
“We never expected anything like this,” he said in Arabic, repeatedly conveying his regrets through a translator. “We sent him to the United States for a new life.”
The first child
On June 5, 1990, the first child of Maher Smadi and his wife, Haifa El-Momani, was born. They named him Hosam, which means “sword” in Arabic. A Muslim by birth, Hosam attended the Ajloun Baptist School through the ninth grade. Founded in 1952, the school is equally divided between Muslim and Christian students, said Essar Mazahreh, Hosam’s fifth-grade teacher and now the school principal.
“The Baptist school teaches English from kindergarten,” Maher Smadi said, explaining why he sent his children there. “Public school does not teach English until fifth grade.” The school also emphasized social skills and good manners.
Hosam was quiet, studious and sensitive to criticism, his teachers said. He liked to sing Christian hymns, occasionally wore a cross and recited Bible verses. His father said he could be unusually sensitive at times. “I remember there was a small insect on the floor, maybe an ant. We wanted to kill it, but Hosam said, ‘No, no! Jesus Christ created it,' ” Maher Smadi recalled.
The family observed Islamic law and customs at home. The father felt that the Christian experiences at school could benefit his son in a country with a strong Christian minority. His neighborhood in Ajloun is predominantly Christian, and he gets along well with his neighbors, he said.
Hosam spent his spare time playing video games on his computer or PlayStation. “He loved video games,” said Hammed Hosam, 19, a friend from school. “We met in each other’s homes all the time to play games.”
One of Hosam’s favorite games was Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, a game involving gangsters in a fictional American city modeled after Miami in the 1980s.
‘Crazily in love’
As a child, Hosam got along well with his parents but had an exceptionally close relationship with his mother. “He was crazily in love with his mother,” Maher Smadi said. “He used to tell her everything he felt.”
That emotional bond grew stronger after the father filed for divorce because of “family differences,” Maher Smadi said, adding that Hosam turned against him, and “he loved his mother even more.”
Hosam, who was 14, tried to pressure his father to reconcile with his mother, Maher Smadi said. He argued with him. He cursed him and kicked over furniture. “He was so violent with me,” he said.
“He did that with a hammer,” he said, pointing to a gouge on the side of a wood china cabinet in his home. Sometimes, Hosam skipped school and camped out in front of his father’s office building — or stalked him around town.
“He would follow me around and say no words,” Maher Smadi said. “He would direct his brother and sisters to bother me.”
At one point, the father filed a complaint with the local police. Hosam had taken about 10 or 15 Jordanian dinar (about $15 to $20) from him, and his father wanted to teach him a lesson. “So I went to the police. I did that to educate him,” he said. “It was a moment of anger for me.”
A judge sentenced Hosam to a week in a juvenile detention center, said Maher Smadi. After the divorce was finalized in January 2005, Hosam “became quieter,” the father said. But the peace didn’t last long.
‘You will survive’
In March 2005, Hosam’s mother, who was 36, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Hosam, who turned 15 that June, looked after his brother and two sisters. When his mother was in the hospital, he spent most nights sleeping in her room. Though his mother’s prognosis was poor, Hosam refused to believe it. “He thought she could survive,” his father said.
During her last two months, she was mostly asleep and unresponsive. But Hosam would talk to her continually, recalled his sister, Reem, 15. “You will survive. You’re a good person,” she recalled Hosam saying. “Mom, wink! Move your hands!”
He would pray over and over: “Allah saves her. Allah saves her.”
He closely followed a TV program about alternative medicine. When the host came to Ajloun, Hosam persuaded him to suggest an herbal recipe that he could try on his mother. Blending the herbs into a liquid, Hosam secretly slipped the formula into his mother's IV bottle one night, his father said. “By coincidence, when he put that mixture into the IV, his mother’s body flinched,” he said.
“It’s working,” Hosam told his family later. “I finally did it. It’s working.”
But Hosam’s mother died on Oct. 27, 2006. “It was Friday at 5 a.m.,” said Reem, a day after the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting.
Their mother went into cardiac arrest. The alarm brought doctors and nurses into her room. They used a defibrillator to shock her heart, but it was no use.
When the medical staff left, Hosam and his brother, Husein, slipped back into their mother’s room, Reem said. Hosam tried to reattach all the wires on his mother and use the electric paddles to revive his mother, but the staff stopped him.
“He turned violent and broke windows at the hospital,” she said. “He was so mad.”
For a month afterward, he stayed in his mother’s house, alone. He refused to open the door for anyone. Not for his uncles and aunts. Not for his brother. Not even for his sisters, Reem and Rama. They cried and pleaded with him to come out.
“He spent the time sleeping, doing nothing,” Reem said.
‘A fresh start’
Maher Smadi persuaded his son to return home. “I forced him to go back to school,” he said. But Hosam would often skip classes and sleep in.
His father never suggested counseling. There is a stigma attached to mental illness in Jordan, Maher Smadi said. He believed his son would react badly to the suggestion. “He would do something nasty. He’d be very insulted.”
In March 2007, Maher Smadi and his son met with Hana Elrabadi, a retired Jordanian businessman and U.S. citizen who lives in San Jose, Calif., and was visiting his native Ajloun. “They wanted me to help him [Hosam] get to the United States and help him find a new future,” Elrabadi said.
Hosam already had a visa. His father had visited the U.S. several times and said he wanted to return with his sons at some point. He had gotten two five-year multi-entry visas for each of his sons to use at the right opportunity.
“Hosam thought it would be a fresh start. I thought it would be a fresh start,” Maher Smadi said. “Leave everything behind. Maybe it will help him.”
On April 15, 2007, the father drove his son to the airport. Just before his son boarded the airplane, the father gave him a hug. “I was very happy,” he said.
Emotionally troubled
But Hosam couldn’t shake his turbulent past. Back in San Jose, Hana Elrabadi saw clear signs that the young man was emotionally troubled. He was short-tempered and moody. “Every time he remembered his mother, he cried.” Elrabadi believed Hosam had psychological problems.
(cont'd)