August 31, 2010
Wishful thinking by AP on dry-run hijackers?
The party line (courtesy of the AP):
The U.S. does not expect to charge the men, a law enforcement official said. The two men arrested in Amsterdam -- both traveling to Yemen -- did not know each other and were not traveling together, a U.S. government official said.
And reality (Detroit News):
Both of the detained men are friends who lived and worked in Dearborn, said Imad Hamad of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. The al Soofi and al Murisi families are prominent within the Yemeni-American community in Dearborn, Hamad said.
Oops, guess Hamad didn't get the White House memo.
As an added bonus, the guy's cousin says he used to travel all the time with his stuff taped together:
Another cousin, Omar Sufi, also told the New York Times that it was usual for al Soofi to travel with items taped together.The New York Times, August 30: Omar Sufi of Detroit, who said he was a cousin of the passenger who boarded in Alabama, said his relative’s actions did not sound unusual. He said that his cousin had most likely been trying to take medication and phones back to his family, and that it was common to bind together items meant for the same recipient. “This is our culture,” he said. He described his cousin as “a nice guy” who worked as a cashier in Alabama and spoke little English.
Priceless!
By Barbarossa at 02:32 PM |
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