Bachmann-Clinton Showdown over Blind Sheikh

My article from the September 21, 2012, issue of Front Page Magazine:


Bachmann-Clinton Showdown over Blind Sheikh

By Matthew Vadum

In a dramatic confrontation with a conservative lawmaker on Capitol Hill yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flatly denied that the Obama administration is planning to send the 1993 World Trade Center bomber back to Egypt.

The face-off between Clinton and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) came after The Blaze news website started a firestorm Monday by reporting that a source close to the Obama administration said the Department of State was contemplating returning the “Blind Sheikh,” convicted terrorist Omar Abdel-Rahman, to his homeland “for humanitarian and health reasons.” The embattled Obama administration is currently in full-time damage control mode as the president’s foreign policy aimed at appeasing totalitarian Islamic theocrats collapses.

As FrontPage Magazine exclusively reported earlier this week, Abdel-Rahman’s terrorist group, Jamaa Islamiya, helped to foment last week’s deadly violence against U.S. diplomatic missions in Egypt and Libya.

During a bipartisan closed-door briefing for House members on developments in the Middle East, Clinton was questioned pointedly by Bachmann, who asked if the administration intends to repatriate Abdel-Rahman, a highly placed congressional source told this writer.

Frustrated after the Department of State refused for days to confirm or deny reports about a possible transfer of the Blind Sheikh to Egyptian custody, Bachmann wanted to get Clinton on the record on the issue in front of House members. In an environment described by the source as “tense,” the lawmaker asked Clinton if anyone in any department or agency in the federal government was negotiating, corresponding, or in any way moving forward with plans to expel the terrorist from the United States.

“No,” was Clinton’s terse reply.

Later the same day Clinton gave another classified briefing to members of the Senate. Senators complained that Clinton stonewalled their requests for new information about the attack last week on the U.S. consulate in Libya that claimed the lives of four Americans including the U.S. ambassador.

“That was the most useless, worthless briefing that I have attended in a long time,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). “Believe me, there is more written in every major and minor publication in America about what happened.”

Despite Clinton’s denial, evidence continues to mount that the Obama administration is seriously considering handing over the ailing 74-year-old Blind Sheikh to the Egyptian government. Diabetic since childhood, Abdel-Rahman was formerly a guest of the federal Supermax prison in Colorado. Today he resides in the medical wing of the Butner Federal Correctional Institution in North Carolina.

More proof of secret State Department negotiations came yesterday in the pages of the New York Post. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and an unnamed Obama administration source confirmed that the government is considering sending the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing back to Egypt where he is now a revered figure for attacking the U.S.

King, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, sent a letter to Secretary of State Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder demanding answers.

Releasing “Abdel-Rahman or any terrorist who plots to kill innocent Americans would be seen for what it is — a sign of weakness and lack of resolve by the United States and its President,” King wrote.

“While considerations regarding the blind sheikh’s release would be disturbing in any context, they are particularly alarming given recent events. The 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks was marked by the assassination of America’s ambassador to Libya and an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Egypt. The violence in Egypt has been attributed, in part, to that government’s demands for the blind sheikh’s release.”

The letter was signed by other House leaders including Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), and Armed Services Committee chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.).

The new Muslim Brotherhood-backed president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, considers Abdel-Rahman to be a U.S. political prisoner, and has asked the Obama administration to release him. The Arabic language newspaper al-Arabiya reported more than six months ago that the Obama administration offered to send Abdel-Rahman to Egypt as part of a prisoner swap. Called the “Emir of Jihad” by some, Abdel-Rahman is a spiritual leader to al Qaeda and other militant Islamist groups.

Andrew McCarthy, who led the prosecution team that put Abdel-Rahman behind bars, is worried about the Obama administration’s intentions. “There’s no way to believe anything they say,” he said. “I believe there may already be a nod-and-wink agreement in place.”

On September 10, the day before terrorists assaulted the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, Abdel-Rahman’s terrorist organization demanded the release of the Blind Sheikh and all detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His group, Jamaa Islamiya (also known as al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya or, in English, Islamic Group), works closely with al Qaeda, the group that ultimately succeeded in incinerating New York’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. At least two of the other groups that demanded Abdel-Rahman’s release — Islamic Jihad and the Sunni Group— also have al Qaeda ties.

Releasing the Blind Sheikh?

My article from the September 19, 2012, issue of Front Page Magazine:


Releasing the Blind Sheikh?

By Matthew Vadum

The Obama administration may give a get-out-of-jail-free card to an Islamic terrorist whose group helped to ignite a wave of deadly attacks last week against U.S. diplomatic missions in the Middle East.

The U.S. Department of State “is actively considering negotiations with the Egyptian government for the transfer of custody of Omar Abdel-Rahman, also known as ‘the Blind Sheikh,’ for humanitarian and health reasons,” The Blaze news website reported, citing a confidential source close to the Obama administration.

On September 10, the day before terrorists assaulted the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, Abdel-Rahman’s terrorist organization demanded the release of the Blind Sheikh and all detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His group, Jamaa Islamiya (also known as al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya or, in English, Islamic Group), is linked to al Qaeda. At least two of the other groups that demanded Abdel-Rahman’s release — Islamic Jihad and the Sunni Group— also have al Qaeda ties.

The new Islamist president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, considers Abdel-Rahman to be a U.S. political prisoner, and has asked the Obama administration to release him.

The Arabic language newspaper al-Arabiya reported more than six months ago that the Obama administration offered to send Abdel-Rahman to Egypt as part a prisoner swap. Called the “Emir of Jihad” by some, Abdel-Rahman is a spiritual leader to al Qaeda and other militant Islamist groups. He would almost certainly be hailed on his return to Egypt as a conquering hero for attacking America, the “Great Satan.”

It was unclear at press time if the 74-year-old Abdel-Rahman, convicted of “seditious conspiracy” in 1995 in connection with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, was suffering from any particular medical condition that might justify such a release. Now serving a term of life imprisonment in the United States, early in life he went blind after becoming diabetic.

The Blaze indicates the State Department has “neither confirmed nor denied the report,” but Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, trashed the report. “The assertion that the Blind Sheikh may be transferred to Egypt is utter garbage.” Boyd piled on the rubbish metaphor adding that suggestions that there are “discussions to transfer or release him are absolute garbage and completely false.”

Of course it might be wise to take Boyd’s remarks with a grain of salt. Boyd works for the same Department of Justice that collaborates with the George Soros-funded attack group Media Matters for America to spin news deemed harmful to the Obama administration. Hard-driving investigative journalist Matthew Boyle of the Daily Caller reported yesterday that internal emails from the DoJ show that the pretend media watchdog works with embattled Attorney General Eric Holder’s communications staff “in an attempt to quell news stories about scandals plaguing Holder and America’s top law enforcement agency.”Abdel-Rahman’s terrorist organization, Jamaa Islamiya, is a “radical offshoot” of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Jamaa Islamiya was complicit in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who was reviled among Islamists for making peace with Israel. Abdel-Rahman had issued a religious edict condemning Sadat to death. Jamaa Islamiya also tried to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 1995. To try to force the release of Abdel-Rahman from the U.S., Jamaa Islamiya murdered 62 people in Luxor, Egypt, in 1997.

In 2006 al Qaeda aligned itself with Jamaa Islamiya. At the time Ayman al-Zawahiri, then Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant, said the two groups would form “one line, facing its enemies,” adding, “May God give us victory with his help.”

This past September 10, al-Zawahiri, now in charge of al Qaeda, released a video marking the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. He also called for fresh assaults against U.S. interests in retaliation for the drone-strike killing in June of his Libyan lieutenant, Abu Yahya al-Libi, in Waziristan.

Meanwhile, Abdel-Rahman’s now-disbarred lawyer, Lynne Stewart, also remains in prison. Stewart is serving a decade-long prison term for providing material support for terrorism by illegally passing on a message from Abdel-Rahman.

The communiqué was “the blessing of a return to violence from a terrorist leader,” prosecutor Anthony Barkow said during Stewart’s 2006 trial. In it, the sheikh urged disciples to abandon a ceasefire with the government of Egypt and resume terrorist operations.

Stewart has hailed Muslim fundamentalists as “forces of national liberation.” Americans on the left, “as persons who are committed to the liberation of oppressed people, should fasten on the need for self-determination, and allow people … to do what they need to do to throw off that oppression,” she told Monthly Review, a Marxist publication.

Stewart, a Maoist, has said she supports “violence directed at the institutions which perpetuate capitalism, racism and sexism, and at the people who are the appointed guardians of those institutions.”

Throughout the pre-sentencing process, Stewart argued that no one was actually hurt or killed as a result of the communiqué. The argument, familiar to criminal lawyers, is akin to a bank robber asking for leniency because the bank vault was empty.

Perhaps Stewart will petition President Obama to be transferred to Egypt as well.