Dallas plot suspect's family says he was troubled, not a terrorist
Dave Tarrant, The Dallas Morning News, 4 Oct 2009
Part 2 of 2
A relative of Elrabadi’s, who worked with the mentally ill, told him Hosam seemed to show symptoms of schizophrenia. Once, “he cut his hand with a knife,” Elrabadi said. “Maybe on purpose, yes.”
Elrabadi, who is Christian, said Hosam asked for help to convert to Christianity. But Elrabadi didn’t want to do that, knowing that if Hosam returned to Jordan, someone might kill him for converting. “I tried to take him to the mosque. I tried to take him to school,” but Hosam had no interest in either, Elrabadi said. Finally, he found Hosam work at a restaurant.
He said he warned Hosam that the U.S. offered many opportunities — but also trouble if he wasn’t careful. After a month and half, he gave his guest an ultimatum: “Listen, Hosam,” Elrabadi recalls telling him. “You have to leave my house.”
Hosam moved into an apartment with some other young men, said Elrabadi, who quickly lost contact with his former house guest.
Hosam’s brother, Husein. came to visit for the summer and never left. Maher Smadi said Husein told him he would live with his brother and attend high school in Santa Clara, Calif. The father wired his sons money every month to help with their living expenses.
‘A lot of hostility’
In early 2008, Maher Smadi visited his sons in California, staying in the apartment with Hosam and Husein for almost two weeks. He got along well with his younger son, but not with Hosam.
When Hosam met his father at the airport, Maher Smadi recoiled in anger and shock. Hosam was wearing an earring. “In our culture, it is never acceptable for a man to wear earrings,” Maher Smadi said.
The young man seemed brusque to the point of being rude to others. He cursed often and criticized his family’s religion. “He was talking really badly about Islam, saying he was American now. There was a lot of hostility,” the father said.
Hosam told his father that he wanted to join the U.S. Army. “I’m willing to join them and fight in Iraq,” his father recalled. But he showed no interest in politics, his father said. “He was bad with geography. I don’t think he even knew where Afghanistan and Pakistan were.”
Hosam attended high school in Santa Clara, his father said, but dropped out after a fire at his apartment in February 2008.
Then, without telling his father, Hosam drove to Dallas. Maher Smadi said his son later told him that a man named Riyadh, who lived in a Dallas suburb, said he could get him a job at a barbecue restaurant in the town of Italy, about 40 miles south of Dallas. Hosam briefly lived in the Dallas area.
Then, around April 2008, he moved near the restaurant, Texas Best Smokehouse, in Ellis County.
Maher Smadi said he called Hosam once or twice a week on his cellphone. Hosam seemed happy working as a cashier at the restaurant. He lived in a housing development along U.S. Highway 77. One friend described his home as simple and neat, with a stereo, laptop, weights bench, TV and bed.
Hosam’s marriage
Maher Smadi doesn’t recall when his son first mentioned he was married. But he said he wasn’t shocked, and he didn’t disapprove. “I knew he was doing this to get a green card” — a permanent resident card issued by the U.S. government that permits noncitizens to stay in the country. Foreigners who marry a U.S. citizen can apply for a green card, though approval is not automatic.
Maher Smadi said he wired his son $4,000 to pay for an immigration attorney in Arlington.
Hosam got married to Rosalinda Duron on July 16, 2008, court records show. Duron, 20, wouldn’t comment to The News but told The New York Times that she and Hosam separated after three months and remained friends. Her grandfather told WFAA-TV (Ch. 8) that Hosam offered Duron $5,000 to marry him. But Duron denied that he paid her to get married.
His friends in Italy knew him as “Sam” and said he loved techno music, wore earrings and often wore a belt buckle decorated with rhinestones that formed a gun. He drank occasionally and smoked cigarettes, they said.
One particular day, Kellye Kines and her boyfriend Chris Husack sat in their car at the Shell station when Hosam approached and offered them a cigarette. As the trio puffed together on a wooden bench near the Texas Best Smokehouse, Hosam noticed Husack sipping a soda and began teasing him. “What’s wrong with you? Why aren’t you drinking a beer?” Hosam asked.
When Husack said he didn’t have the money for anything heavier, the teenager reached in his pocket and pulled out $2.
Tabatha Rogers said Hosam sometimes baby-sat her two children, ages 2 years and 3 months. He once admonished her when she tried to spank the 2-year-old after the child dropped a glass on the floor. “Don’t you spank him, he doesn’t deserve it,” Hosam told her. “Just get me a dustpan and we’ll clean it up.”
But there may have been more to Hosam than he was showing them. At some point, he started visiting extremist Islamic Web sites, according to the FBI.
Tewfiq Smadi, 61, a longtime family friend who lives in Irving, said he thought Hosam might have picked up his violent thinking online. “He’s a kid,” he said. “He doesn’t have anybody to instruct him, raise him — barely anybody from his family [lives] around here.”
Hosam’s alienation is not uncommon among young people who arrive in U.S. to start anew. Husein Khuzaii, the Jordanian sociologist, said Hosam faced a critical turning point: “Moving from Jordan to the U.S. must have been a culture shock. In such cases, a person would either integrate or keep away and become self-centered.” If they become self-centered, “they are really susceptible to thinking in an extreme way.”
The last week of April of this year, Maher Smadi flew to Dallas to see his son. During the 10-day visit, Maher Smadi noticed a change in Hosam. “I realized he had started to pray. He had a prayer cloth,” he said. “I was surprised.”
His son now criticized the Israeli crackdown in Gaza, which flared up in 2008. “The Israelis are killing Palestinians in front of the whole world,” he told his father.
“I was really afraid. It was a big change,” Maher Smadi said. “I was thinking, ‘What’s happening to you?’ I was actually worried, what if radicals get to know Hosam? Would they brainwash him?”
He asked Hosam what had caused this sudden interest in Islam and politics. “God showed me the way. I know the path,” Hosam said.
Maher Smadi told his son to come back to Jordan, but Hosam wanted to stay in the U.S. to get his green card. The father thought about reporting Hosam’s behavior to Jordanian intelligence officials. “I should have reported that I saw a change in my son’s behavior. I think if I did that, I would have saved him.”
But he said nothing. “Basically, I didn’t think it would be that serious,” he said. “I thought it was a whim.”
On Sept. 24, Maher Smadi called Hosam. It was early Thursday morning in Texas — late afternoon in Jordan, which is eight hours ahead. He asked Hosam for an update on his green card application. “He seemed happy,” he said.
Unbelievable news
The next morning, Maher Smadi saw a news report that a Jordanian man had been arrested by the FBI. “I had a suspicion it was Hosam,” he said. He received a phone call from a friend confirming it was his son; he saw a full report on the news.
The FBI had arrested Hosam the day before in the sting. “I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t talk,” Maher Smadi said. “Then I had a billion phone calls.” Relatives, friends and the media called throughout the day — and the calls have not stopped.
Hosam’s brother, Husein, was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in California on the same day as his brother’s arrest in Dallas and charged with overstaying his visa, according to an agency spokesman. He is being detained in San Francisco, awaiting preliminary hearings on Tuesday.
“Hosam was turned into an extremist with the help of the FBI,” Maher Smadi said at his home in Ajloun. “They deceived him. … They played with him.” Everyone he meets in his city agrees with him, including Hosam’s friends and teachers at the Ajloun Baptist School.
Dr. Robert Taylor, executive director of the W.W. Caruth Jr. Police Institute at Dallas, a national urban policing think tank, said Hosam Smadi may well have been distraught.
“But that’s kind of like saying, ‘Well, you know, Osama bin Laden was really upset because a lot of his friends got killed, and a lot of his family members were involved ... and he lost a lot of money,” Taylor said.
“Clearly there are people who have been abused, who have been victimized, and they aren’t ever wired tight ... but it still doesn’t relieve them of the burden of guilt that they have,” he said.
Hana Elrabadi, the Jordanian who first took in Hosam in California, blames Hosam’s father. Hosam was struggling with depression and psychological problems and never should have left Jordan. “I would not leave my child in any city” without family support, he said.
Maher Smadi rues that decision. “What I regret the most is sending him to the U.S.,” he said. “I apologize on behalf of my son to the Americans. My family, my relatives and I have never been supporters of terrorism. We denounce all forms of terrorism.”
He has no idea what will happen now. A few days ago, he got his first call from one of Hosam’s public defenders. Richard Anderson, the chief federal public defender in Dallas, told him that he had talked to Hosam for three hours. The language barrier made it hard for the two men to communicate.
But the lawyer said one thing that Maher Smadi understood clearly.
It was a message from Hosam.
“Dad, I love you.”
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