Fun fact: Obama recently addressed the Islamic group Louay Safi worked for when he was in America, the ISNA, the group was also an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land terror case.
Via Dallas Morning News:
When the main Syrian opposition group speaks, it is often through a longtime U.S. resident whose ties to Islamist extremists were detailed in a 2010 Dallas Morning News report.
The Syrian-born man, Louay Safi, has made big news twice recently. Last month, at a coalition news conference in Turkey, he accused Syria’s government of using chemical weapons. A few days ago, he called President Barack Obama’s consultation with Congress about attacking Syria a “failure of leadership.”
Safi used to work occasionally on U.S. Army bases, teaching soldiers about his Islamic faith. But as we reported in 2010, he was suspended shortly after the Fort Hood massacre and subjected to a military criminal investigation.
Authorities said these actions stemmed from a complaint about the alleged terrorist connections of Safi’s main employer at the time, the Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA. Thirteen members of Congress asked the Defense Department to “stop any lecturing by Louay Safi or ISNA affiliated speakers.”
Details of the military investigation have never been released publicly. But Safi’s suspension remains in effect, military officials confirmed this week.
Here are some other takeaways from our 2010 report:
1) On a wiretapped 1995 phone call, Safi and a terrorism suspect mocked a U.S. order that banned dealings with foreign terrorist groups. They also said that Jews controlled the White House. The suspect, a Florida professor named Sami al-Arian, later pleaded guilty to conspiracy. Prosecutors named Safi an unindicted co-conspirator in that case.
2) In early 2002, counter-terrorism agents raided the International Institute of Islamic Thought and related entities in the Washington, D.C., area. Safi was research director for the institute, which funded al-Arian. A man who’d worked for one of the institute’s affiliates was later convicted on a terrorism charge.
3) Safi denounced the raids as a “campaign against Islam.” That’s jihadist rhetoric, experts say. Similar language was later used by Fort Hood killer Nidal Hasan and a radical imam he corresponded with before the massacre. (The imam, Anwar al-Awlaki, once led an ISNA-affiliated mosque outside Washington. He left the U.S. after the FBI questioned him about his dealings with some of the 9/11 hijackers. The government later tied al-Awlaki to other al-Qaeda plots and killed him in Yemen.)
4) In 2004, Safi became a top staffer at ISNA, the nation’s largest Muslim group. It was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the government’s largest terrorism financing case: the successful 2008 prosecution of Richardson-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.
HT: Patrick Poole