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Financial Problems with El Al Could Be LA Shooter's Motive: Family
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| The building where Hedayat's family lives in
Cairo. |
CAIRO, July 6 (IslamOnline & News agencies) - While the U.S. and Israel were split over whether the attack on an El Al check-in desk on Thursday was an act of terrorism or a random act of murder, the family of the Egyptian gunman believed to have carried out the shooting said Saturday that financial problems with the Israeli airline could be behind the incident.
"Egyptian security services affirmed Friday to the father of (suspected gunman) Hisham Mohammed Hadayet that the incident was due to financial problems with El Al," cousin Emad al-Omda told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Al-Omda said that the Israeli airline was late in paying for two limousines that it rented from Hadayet's service.
"We are sure that he had no connection with extremist organizations. He is a pious Muslim but he is not at all extremist. The proof of this is that he agreed to work with the Israeli company El Al," Omda said.
In a separately related development, FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) agents searched his flat in Irvine, California, and took away his car, his computer and boxes filled with documents and books, according to Times online web site.
On Friday, tension was developing between the U.S. and Israel over the attack, with Israel taking a noticeably harder line. Officials in Tel Aviv said that any deliberate attack against an Israeli citizen constituted an act of terrorism, whether or not it was carried out by an organized group.
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| Hedayat uncle, Hassan Mostafa
Mahfouz |
A source close to Shimon Peres, the Israeli Foreign Minister, said that Peres’s granddaughter was in the terminal at the time of the attack.
Ephraim Sneh, the Israeli Transport Minister, said: “We are assuming it was a terrorist attack until it is proven otherwise.” He added that the latest information from the U.S. “has not pushed us away from the [assumption] it was terrorism”.
Yuval Rotem, Israel’s Consul General, said that the shooting was similar to previous attacks against El Al. In 1985, terrorists killed 17 people at an airline counter in Rome. “Given this history, we presume that it may be, and would appear to be a terrorist attack,” he said.
The family of one of the victims bitterly criticized the U.S. Government for not classifying the killings as a terror attack. Relatives of Miss Hen, who worked for El Al for two months when she was killed, said in a statement: “Vicky’s grieving family and relatives oppose the Government’s initial statement that this was not an act of terror. This was a murder, we believe, and was an act that was carried out by a terrorist against Israelis on American soil.”
However, Washington and U.S. law enforcement officials were leery of putting a terror label on the incident.
"There is no evidence, no indication at this time, that this is terrorists," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Friday.
Fleicher's comments were later echoed by an FBI spokesman who said investigators had not uncovered anything to suggest that the man, 41-year-old Hadayet, had any connection to terrorist groups or harbored anti-Israel views.
On Thursday, Hadayet opened fire at the check-in counter of Israel's national airline El Al killing a female clerk and a middle-aged man, before being shot dead himself by an El Al security agent, the FBI said.
The shooting prompted criticism of airport security, supposed to be at its highest level on July 4 (U.S. National Independence Day). However, it did little to protect ticket counters and check-in areas.
Al-Omda said that Hadayet went to the United States in 1992 "to improve his level of life" and hoped to obtain U.S. nationality with the help of his paternal uncle, physical therapist Ahmed Hadayet, a longtime resident of the United States.
"His uncle helped him to work and to take the green card after his arrival in 1992 and he was supposed to take U.S. nationality this year," said Omda, a businessman in the city of Tanta north of Cairo.
The family was not able to contact Hadayet's uncle in the United States. "We have tried to call him to find out more about the incident but his mobile phone did not answer yesterday," Omda said.
Hadayet was not on file with the Egyptian security services, a police source told AFP without specifying further.
Married and father of two boys, aged 12 and 6, Hadayet, who obtained a degree in commerce from Cairo's Ain Shams university, comes from a middle class Egyptian family containing several senior officers in the armed forces.
His father, Mohammed Ali Hadayet, was a former brigadier in the Egyptian air defense who participated in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, members of his family said.
The late Salah Hadayet, a cousin of his father, was a former Minister of Scientific Research and a member of the Free Officers movement, which overthrew the Egyptian monarchy in 1952.
Hadayet's family wants to bury him in Cairo.
"We are in contact with the [Egyptian] Ministry of Foreign Affairs to recover his body but we want first that the truth is established because we are sure that he could not be a murderer," Omda added.
Egyptian police continue to block access to the family's home in a six-story apartment building in the Cairo neighborhood of Abbasiya, an AFP correspondent said.
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