"Strongest among men in enmity to the believers wilt thou find the Jews..." -- Qur'an 5:82. And vice versa.
"Jordanian charged in threat to Jewish school," by Jeff Coen and Jeremy Gorner for the Chicago Breaking News Center, March 20 (thanks to Euwei Choi):
A 25-year-old Jordanian national from the Far North Side was arrested and charged this morning with mailing a threatening letter to a Jewish school in response to the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, according to the FBI. . At a morning federal court appearance, Mohammed Alkaramla was ordered held pending a hearing Tuesday morning....
Eli Azzo, a neighbor and relative of Alkaramla's landlord, said he was surprised to find hear the man was accused of a hate crime.
"He doesn't talk politics or religion, he's a real quiet guy," Azzo said. "I never gauged him that way as that kind of person."
In court, Alkarmla's attorney, Phil Bernstein, said his client had recently graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology and had not been in any trouble with the law before....
"It's a shock to his family and a shock to everybody who knows him," Bernstein said. "There's no indication he harbors any ill will toward anyone of any particular ethnicity or nationality in the city."
Of course! When are friends and family ever not shocked -- shocked! -- by evidence that one among them is a jihadist? We see this again and again and again in such arrests.
Alkarmla is the same man interviewed by federal authorities Feb. 12 when they searched his West Rogers Park apartment in the 6000 block of North Artesian Avenue for evidence related to the vandalism of several synagogues and Jewish schools in Chicago and Lincolnwood.
Those incidents occurred on Jan. 10 in the wake of the Israeli airstrikes and troop incursions in the Gaza Strip.
But the FBI said this morning that he was only arrested in connection with a threatening letter sent to the Ida Crown Jewish Academy, 2828 W. Pratt Blvd., on New Year's Eve.
On the day federal authorities executed the search warrant at the apartment, Rabbi Leonard Matanky, dean of Ida Crown, told the Tribune that the school received a bomb threat Dec. 31....
After the search had been completed and authorities had left on Feb. 12, Alkaramla identified himself and told reporters that he was the target of the investigation. He denied wrongdoing and said he had been singled out by authorities because he is Muslim.
Of course!
When asked why authorities would target him in particular, he said he had asked investigators the same question.
"I'm too busy studying and working to commit [hate crimes]," he said. He indicated that he was attending school to be an engineer.
Too busy to hate! Yeah, sure, that's it!
No comments:
Post a Comment