WhatFinger


Rewards for Justice, Adnan el Shukrijumah, Zacarias Moussaoui

Legal loophole keeps “next Mohammad Atta” at large


Judi McLeod image

By Doug Hagmann —— Bio and Archives January 28, 2008

Comments | Print This | Subscribe | Email Us

When Clarence (Clancy) Prevost, was rewarded $5 million in an unpublicized closed-door ceremony in Washington last week, Adnan el Shukrijumah was likely counting his lucky stars. “Secretly authorized” by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last fall, the handsome reward from the State department’s “Rewards for Justice” program is the first and only one to date to a U.S. citizen related to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Created in 1984, Rewards for Justice has paid rewards to roughly 50 people. Not only can Adnan el Shukrijumah read, he can read in English. That news must be a comfort to the man who is second only to Osama bin Laden on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist List. Prevost’s controversial $5 million payday stems from his being one of three persons to have flagged the government about flying student Zacarias Moussaoui’s strange desire to learn to fly a Boeing 747 with no flying background. The “hinky” feelings of his flying instructors were well founded. Moussaoui ultimately confessed to being the “20th hijacker” and was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2006. What, you might well ask, has this got to do with the elusive el Shukrijuamah, nicknamed by the brotherhood “Jafar, the Pilot”? Just ask bestselling Day of Islam author Dr. Paul L. Williams, who has never given up on the search for Adnan el Shukrijumah. Just like Moussaoui, there’s a $5 million bounty on el Shukrijumah’s head--but one no one is likely to ever collect. It comes down to what to do with a bagged tiger when no one is giving you the key to the cage. Catching the long at large Adnan el Shukrijumah is fading because of a legal loophole authorities have done nothing to close. “The Justice Department has placed a $5 million reward for any information leading to Adnan’s apprehension, and the same bounty for each of his alleged accomplices: Amer el-Maati, Jaber A. Elbaneh, Anas al-Liby and Abderraouf Jdey,” says Williams. “But if you assemble a team of bounty hunters and manage to collar Adnan el-Shukrijumah and his terrorist cronies, you will be hard-pressed to turn them over to law enforcement officials, let alone collect the aggregate $25 million,” says Williams. “The U.S. Department of Justice, even after posting rewards, setting up hotlines, and issuing BOLOs (“Be-on-the-Lookout” alerts) has failed to issue criminal warrants for their arrest. This means that the bounty hunters would have to leave Adnan and his friends strapped to lawn chairs, since members of state and local police departments remain without authorization to detain or question them, let alone take them into custody.” For all of the controversy surrounding Prevost’s $5 million reward, Moussaoui languishes in prison, while el Shukrijumah remains free and at large. “After his arrest, Moussaoui sat in jail for 3 ½ weeks on an immigration violation, saying little to investigators before hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or crashed in a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11.” (Associated Press).”The Minneapolis FBI agents who responded to the tips were unable to persuade their superiors in Washington to seek a national security warrant to search Moussaoui’s belongings and laptop computer. “He told jurors he was to have piloted a fifth plane on Sept. 11 and fly it into the White House.” Nor is the elusive Adnan el Shukrijumah a small fish in the world of international terrorism. FBI Director Robert Mueller and former Attorney General John Ashcroft have called Adnan el Shukrijumah “the next Mohammed Atta”, who represents “a clear and imminent danger to all Americans.” That the U.S. Department of Justice has failed to issue a criminal warrant for the arrest of “the next Mohammed Atta” is as mind boggling as it is chilling. “Adnan el Shukrijumah has allegedly worked with Mohammad Atta and the other 9/11 operatives; he has allegedly masterminded a plan to launch a nuclear attack on American soil; he has allegedly attended leading al Qaeda gatherings, including the Waziristan Summit of 2004; he has allegedly conspired with Jose Padilla and others to blow up bridges and infrastructures in New York City; and the search for his present whereabouts is allegedly littered with corpses, including that of prominent Guyanese businessman Farouk Razak,” says Williams. “Obtaining the necessary warrants would constitute the perfunctory matter of submitting a request to a federal judiciary. But this basic procedural step was not undertaken by the U.S. Attorney General, the FBI director, or any other official within the Justice Department.” How is this oversight possible? “Federal law enforcement officials insist that the issuance of a BOLO (Be-on-the-Lookout) and a warrant for Adnan as a material witness is all that is required to collar Adnan,” says Williams. “They point out that suspected terrorists, under the guidelines of the Patriot Act, need not be fugitives who have been indicted by grand juries in U.S. District Courts. This is all well and good if Adnan is cornered within the U.S. But, if he is sitting in a café in Canada or Mexico, neither the BOLO nor the warrant as a material witness will be sufficient to take him into custody and to extradite him for questioning by the FBI or Homeland Security.” “A material witness warrant has no weight at all in Canada,” explains James Brown, a retired RCMP official. “Our law enforcement officials cannot do anything unless there is a criminal offense that is extraditable.” Even though Shukrijumah’s face has appeared on the front pages of newspapers, including this one, and almost every televised news outlet throughout the United States and Canada, possibilities for nabbing him seem to have petered out. But the elusive Adnan el Shukrijumah will be one of the main topics at America’s Truth Forum and Basics Project Terrorism Symposium, to be held at the Lonesome Dove Ranch on Feb. 2. Authorities may be ignoring the loophole that allows the next Mohammed Atta to remain at large, but bestselling author Paul Williams continues to keep him up on the public radar screen.



Judi McLeod Doug Hagmann -- Bio and Archives | Comments

Copyright © Canada Free Press

RSS Feed for Judi McLeod
Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years’ experience in the print media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared on Rush Limbaugh, Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com.

Older articles by Judi McLeod


Sponsored