The case of the American student accused of plotting to kill President George Bush gets curiouser and curiouser.
On one side, you have the friends and defense team of 23-year-old American citizen named Ahmed Omar Abu Ali insisting the government was overzealous and there’s nothing to the charges that link him up with Al Qaeda.
On the other side, you see some investigation by blogs that suggest a strong Saudi tie. If continued scrutiny of this case reveals a strong Saudi tie it would mean the 911 carnage and alleged planned murder of Bush originated largely from citizens of one U.S.-allied country. A few facts to recap the case:
An American student who was imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for the last 20 months was returned to the United States and accused by the Justice Department on Tuesday of plotting with members of Al Qaeda in 2003 to assassinate President Bush.
In an indictment unsealed in federal court in Alexandria, Va., the student, a 23-year-old American citizen named Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, is charged with providing material support for terrorism. Mr. Abu Ali is accused of training with Al Qaeda overseas and wanting to “become a planner of terrorist operations” like Mohammed Atta or Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, two Qaeda leaders central to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The indictment’s accusations rely mainly on the testimony of several unnamed co-conspirators. While American officials said they took the threat seriously, the indictment suggests that any plot to assassinate Mr. Bush did not move beyond the discussion stages among extremists in Saudi Arabia, and Mr. Abu Ali was not charged under the federal statute on assassinations.
That’s significant — he wasn’t charged under federal statutes. And more:
Friends of Mr. Abu Ali and defense lawyers denied that he was part of any terrorist plot and accused the Justice Department of an overzealous prosecution. They said that Mr. Abu Ali, a valedictorian at an Islamic high school in suburban Washington, was the victim of torture at the hands of the Saudis after his arrest there in June 2003, an assertion that a federal judge in Washington appeared to validate in a recent ruling in a lawsuit brought by Mr. Abu Ali’s family to force his release.
So does it end there? HARDLY.
The Jawa Report is doing some original reporting and is apparently finding some details left out of mainstream press reporting:
The connection between indicted terrorist Ahmed Omar Abu Ali and the Saudi government grow deeper with each new revelation. Abu Ali was indicted in a federal court today on six charges linking him with an al Qaeda plot to assassinate the President of the United States.
While an American citizen by birth, his father Omar Abu Ali is a naturalized US citizen but works as a systems analyst at the Royal Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington, DC. Further, the web page of the school attended by Ahmed Omar Abu Ali indicates that admissions priority is given to the children of Saudi diplomats…
I have written the Saudi Embassy and asked two questions.
1) Does Mr. Omar Abu Ali carry diplomatic credentials?
2) Does Mr. Omar Abu Ali carry a valid Saudi Arabian passport, making him a dual citizen?
Another blogger who has been doing putting out lots of new details about the son of a Saudi Embassy employee being indicted in a plot to kill Bush is Wizbang’s Kevin Aylward, who has concluded Ali was probably converted to radical Islam on American soil…but provides more info on the Saudi connection. The Jawa Report and Wizbang have, in effect, worked together to bring more details to light — yet another indication of the journalist power of blogs (this would be called “team reporting” on newspapers).
Read both of their posts in full. (NOTE: We ran a short item in Around The ‘Sphere on this but thought it is worth a longer post)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.