AL-HAYAT==>LAX GUNMAN MAY HAVE MET WITH BIN LADEN DEPUTY
Undaunted Infidel
By Zohar Blumenkrantz and Benny Landau, Ha'aretz Correspondents,
Ha'aretz Service and agencies
Authorities are investigating whether Hesham Mohammed Hadayet, the
Egyptian who gunned down two people at Los Angeles International Airport
last Thursday, met in the United States with Osama bin Laden's deputy, an
Arabic paper reported at the weekend.
The London-based Al-Hayat said that authorities were checking whether
Hadayet had met with Ayman Al-Zawahiri in 1995 and again in 1998, while the
latter was head of the Al-Jihad organization in Egypt.
Al-Zawahiri, who visited California in 1998, went on to become bin
Laden's right-hand man. His current whereabouts are unknown.
Hadayet, 41, was shot dead by an El Al security official soon after
opening fire on the crowd of people queuing at the ticket counter of
Israel's national carrier. (Click here for sequence of events during
shooting.)
The U.S. government had started deportation proceedings in 1996
against Hadayet but he gained U.S. residency the following year when his
wife received a valid visa, officials said Saturday.
It wasn't clear what caused the Immigration and Naturalization Service
to reject Hadayet's first petition for residency and begin the deportation
process, INS spokesman Francisco Arcaute said.
A year later, in 1997, Hadayet was granted permanent resident status
because his wife, Hala, had become a permanent resident, Arcaute said. The
INS allows foreign nationals to work and live in the United States if they
have a relative who is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.
Hadayet's uncle, Hassan Mostaffa Mahfouz, told The Associated Press in
Egypt that Hadayet was happy in the United States and had only about a year
remaining before he qualified for U.S. citizenship.
"I don't believe what happened," Mahfouz said.
The two people killed in the attack at El Al's ticket counter at Los
Angeles International Airport were identified as Ya'akov Aminov, 47, and El
Al stewardess Vicky Chen, both of them residents of Los Angeles, Israel
Radio reported Friday morning. (Click here for more on the victims.)
Egypt FM surprised at furor over El Al shooting
Egypt's foreign minister expressed surprise Saturday at the furor over
a deadly attack by an Egyptian national at Los Angeles airport, saying the
motives were still unclear and similar incidents occurred frequently.
Egypt's official Middle East News Agency (MENA) said Egyptian Foreign
Minister Ahmed Maher told reporters in Cairo that such incidents occur
repeatedly in the United States and other countries and said he was
surprised by the exaggeration of this event in particular.
"Until now, nobody knows the motives behind this incident. We have to
await the outcome of the current investigations so that we can review them,"
MENA quoted Maher as saying.
Egypt's semi-official al-Ahram daily said Saturday that local security
authorities had no information on record about Hadayet and there was no
evidence he had any links to extremist activities when he lived in Egypt.
Ex-employee tells NY Times: Hadayet 'had hate for Israel'
In an interview to The New York Times published Saturday, a former
employee of Hadayet that he "often heard his boss express virulent
anti-Israeli sentiments."
Hadayet "had hate for Israel, for sure," Syrian-born Abdul Zahab told
The New York Times. "He told me that the Israelis tried to destroy the
Egyptian nation and the Egyptian population by sending prostitutes with AIDS
to Egypt. He said that the two biggest drug dealers in New York are
Israeli."
The FBI said Friday it had no indication suggesting that the attack
was an act of terrorism, but said the gunman's motive was still unclear.
(Click here for a look inside El Al security.)
"He was not on any FBI or FAA watch list," FBI agent Richard Garcia
told a news conference. He added that authorities still had several days
work to do "to determine whether this person acted in an act of terrorism."
"We have not determined whether he had any anti-Israeli views," Garcia
said, adding that it was still "very difficult to determine the exact
motive" for the shooting.
The FBI said earlier that Hadayet apparently was not connected to any
terror organizations, and probably acted on his own.
