Muslim sues secretive US agency over security clearance, wife linked to Islamist orgs

Posted on October 10, 2011 by creeping

via Ex-worker sues secretive US agency, alleging bias – Forbes.com.

FAIRFAX, Va. — A former employee has sued one of the government’s most secretive security agencies, alleging he lost his security clearance because his wife attended an Islamic school and worked for a Muslim charity.

Mahmoud Hegab filed the discrimination lawsuit this week in U.S. District Court in Alexandria against the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency at Fort Belvoir.

The Alexandria resident worked at NGA as a budget analyst with a top secret security clearance. But his clearance was revoked in November after he got married. NGA officials told him they were concerned about his wife’s schooling at the Islamic Saudi Academy, a private school in northern Virginia, according to the lawsuit.

Officials also cited her employment with an Islamic charity, Alexandria-based Islamic Relief USA, as a reason for revoking the clearance, the lawsuit alleges.

Also identified as cause for concern was his wife’s participation in a 2003 anti-war rally in Washington sponsored by the ANSWER coalition, a left-wing group that has worked in conjunction with Palestinian activists at times. NGA also cited her time at George Mason University, when she served as president of a student group called Students for Justice in Palestine.

Officials at NGA – which employs 16,000 workers supplying satellite data and other imagery to the military – did not respond to an email seeking comment. All of its employees are required to have a top secret clearance due to the nature of the agency’s work.

The Islamic Saudi Academy is a Saudi-funded school that has been under scrutiny for many years for its anti-American and anti-Israel textbooks, and has produced a convicted jihadi who plotted to kill George W. Bush. Discover the Networks:

Founded in 1984, the Virginia-based Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) is part of a network of 19 international schools run by the Saudi Arabian government. A bilingual English-Arabic institution situated on two campuses — one (in the town of Fairfax) for pre-kindergarten through first grade, the other (in Alexandria) for grades two through twelve — ISA shares its Internal Revenue Service employer tax ID number with the Saudi Embassy, which owns one of the ISA properties and leases the other. The two ISA campuses have a combined enrollment of approximately 1,000 students, some 28 percent of whom are of Saudi heritage.

ISA is under the direction and influence of the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam. As such, it adheres to the educational model followed in Saudi Arabia, whose government is ISA’s principal funder, and whose official government texts are central to ISA coursework. ISA’s religious curriculum was written by Sheik Saleh al-Fawzan, a senior member of the Saudi Religious Council and the author of numerous textbooks used in Saudi schools. According to Ali al-Ahmed, Executive Director of the Washington-based Saudi Institute (a leading Saudi opposition group), Al-Fawzan has “encouraged war against unbelievers.”

In October 2007 the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an organization established by Congress, issued a press release calling for ISA’s closure pending a thorough USCIRF examination of the school’s textbooks. The release stated that “significant past documented concerns remain about whether what is being taught at the ISA explicitly promotes hate, intolerance and human rights violations, in some cases violence.” But ISA did not comply with requests to make its texts available for review.

…ISA teaches that Jews and Christians are the descendants of apes and swine, respectively; that a Muslim should never establish a close friendship with a non-believer; and that even family members, if they are non-believers, should be abandoned or ignored.

At various times between 2000 and 2002, the ISA website, SaudiAcademy.net, provided links to IslamiCity.com, Islam-QA.com, and Al-Islam.org – websites that commonly issued calls for violent jihad against ”non-believers,” especially Jews. As of August 2008, SaudiAcademy.net contained a link to Arab News.com, a site that lauds both the Islamic Association for Palestine (the former American propaganda wing of Hamas) and Radio Islam (which promotes Mein Kampf and Protocols of the Elders of Zion).

Some notable individuals affiliated with ISA include the following:

• Turki Fasial al Saud: This ISA Board Chairman is also the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States.
• Abdalla I. Al-Shabnan: This ISA Director was arrested in June 2008 because, after he had been informed of the possibility that one of his school’s five-year-old students was being sexually abused, he failed to report the allegation to child-protection authorities as required by law. Al-Shabnan pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of failure to report child abuse and obstruction of justice.
• Susan L. Douglass: A former social studies teacher at ISA, Douglass has authored a number of social studies textbooks for the International Institute of Islamic Thought, which in 2002 was raided by the FBI because of its suspected links to terrorism. A practicing Muslim, Douglass has praised Pakistan’s madrassas (religious schools) as “proud symbols of learning,” even though the U.S. government has identified them as institutions that promote hateful extremism.
• Ahmed Omar Abu Ali: ISA’s valedictorian in 1999, Ali was named “Most Likely to Be a Martyr” by his graduating class. After leaving ISA, he joined an al Qaeda cell in Saudi Arabia and plotted to assassinate President George W. Bush. In February 2005 he was indicted on terrorism charges and eventually was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
• Mohammed Osman Idris and Mohammed Hassan El-Yacoubi: According to an FBI criminal complaint, in December 2001 these two ISA graduates set off for Israel, apparently to carry out a suicide bombing mission. During a search conducted by El Al airport security personnel, El-Yacoubi was found to be in possession of a farewell letter from his younger brother, Abdalmuhssin, who himself had attended ISA. Written in Arabic, the letter contained language discussing an attack that was to be carried out against Israelis, possibly in alliance with Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In August 2002, Mr. Idris was sentenced to four months in jail for lying on a passport application.
• Ismael Selim Elbarasse: Named as a co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial, this former ISA comptroller has been described by the U.S. government as a “high-ranking” Hamas operative who had financial dealings with Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook. In August 2004, Elbarasse was arrested after police had observed his wife videotaping sensitive parts of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay Bridge from his vehicle.
• Abdelrazeg Abdalla: In April 2005, this ISA bus driver lost control of his bus with 34 students aboard; the vehicle careened down a hill and crashed into two cars. After the incident, police discovered that Abdalla’s driver’s license recently had been suspended. Moreover, they learned that Abdalla had accrued seven previous moving violations; that he once had been convicted of kidnapping his estranged wife and three-month-old daughter at knifepoint; and that he had been detained for six months by the Department of Homeland Security on undisclosed charges.

Islamic Relief USA is another terror-linked organization, From DtN:

The aforementioned IRW-USA was incorporated in 1993. In addition to its California headquarters, it also maintains regional offices in Totowa, New Jersey, Washington, D.C. and Plano, Texas. The Registered Agent for its incorporation was Kazbek Soobzokov, the former attorney for terror operative Wajdi Ghunaim, who in 2006 called for violence against Jews, was deported from the United States, and was refused entry into Canada after it was discovered that he was a member of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 1999, IRW’s main office (in England) received $50,000 from a Canadian group that the U.S. Treasury Department called “a bin Laden front.”  According to Moscow’s Obshchaya Gazeta, IRW has collected and funneled millions of dollars to the Chechen terrorist rebels in Russia, who also have ties to al Qaeda.

Critical defense agencies should remove all potential risks from their ranks. Supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, sometimes requires such a purge.

Posted on 10 Oct 11 by creeping sharia