New Jersey Cops Above The Law?

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PASSAIC COUNTY - WAYNE TOWNSHIP / N.J. COPS ABOVE THE LAW?

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A convoy comprised of Passaic County, N.J. sheriff's officers and Wayne Township, N.J. police officers was returning from a Hurricane Katrina relief mission. The caravan of 22 county emergency vehicles was speeding north through Virginia on Interstate 81 on the morning of Sept. 18, having spent the past week in the slimy devastation of New Orleans.

The Convoy was moving at nearly 100 mph with its red lights flashing, Virginia State Police said.

In Virginia, it's illegal for emergency vehicles to flash their lights unless they are responding to an actual emergency.

Passaic County, N.J. Cops Hot After Va. Traffic Stop

Thursday, September 29, 2005

~ By RICHARD COWEN
STAFF WRITER

To Passaic County's sheriff, it was a mission of mercy getting a slap in the face. To Virginia cops, it was a case of stopping disaster before it happened.

A convoy of Passaic County police officers was returning from a Hurricane Katrina relief mission. The caravan of 22 county emergency vehicles was speeding north through Virginia on Interstate 81 on the morning of Sept. 18, having spent the past week in the slimy devastation of New Orleans.

The convoy was moving at nearly 100 mph with its red lights flashing, Virginia State Police said.

What??? -- Who??? -- ME Speeding???

In Virginia, it's illegal for emergency vehicles to flash their lights unless they are responding to an actual emergency. Forced to pull off to the shoulder, many alarmed motorists called the state police, who dispatched an Augusta County sheriff's officer to stop the convoy.

State police say they stopped the convoy because it was traveling too fast on a stretch of road that is known to be dangerous for its twists and turns.

"This was a courtesy stop," said Corinne Geller, a spokeswoman for the Virginia State Police. "We were letting them know they were endangering their lives and the lives of others."

No summonses were issued, but the incident ruffled police feathers in both jurisdictions. Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale said Wednesday his force had the right to zoom up the interstate with lights flashing because a federal emergency had been declared.

"The president had declared a national disaster," Speziale said. "And federal law holds that the interstate highway system is to be used in the time of an emergency. That's what they were doing."

Speziale, who was in New Jersey on the day of the incident, later called the Augusta County's sheriff's deputy who made the stop and berated him, calling him a "disgrace." Virginia State Police taped the phone call and then released a transcript of Speziale's remarks to the local newspaper, The News Virginian.

"If you think that's not a disgrace, you should take that badge off your shirt and throw it in the garbage," Speziale said. "This is unacceptable, and I'll tell you what, I hope to get the opportunity to show you the same courtesy up here in New Jersey."

"I guess we're not very popular in New Jersey," said Augusta County Sheriff Randy Fisher. "But we're not above the law. I shudder to think what might have happened."

Speziale acknowledged that his men were in a hurry to get home - although he disputed that they were doing 100 mph. He said some men had become ill from the filthy conditions; at the same time, the Passaic County contingent wanted to bring the equipment home so they could hand it over to another wave of relief volunteers who would jump on board and head back to the Gulf Coast, he said.

"I'm not apologizing to anyone," Speziale said Wednesday. "I stand behind what our men did, putting their lives on the line for others. This whole thing is very trivial in the grand scheme of things."

E-mail: cowen@northjersey.com

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Copyright © 2005 North Jersey Media Group Inc.

Comment from Michael L Owens / Alicia Petska

Topic: NJ Cops Get Pulled Over In Virginia

By Michael L. Owens and Alicia Petska
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE

A speeding New Jersey police convoy should not have been warned to slow down here, their superiors say, despite numerous 911 calls from motorists claiming they were forced off Interstate 81.

An incensed New Jersey sheriff called an Augusta County deputy a "disgrace" for pulling over officers returning home from a Hurricane Katrina relief mission Sept. 18.

Augusta Sheriff Randy Fisher and the Virginia State Police defend the stop because the New Jersey officers were traveling 95 mph with their lights flashing.

Virginia law requires an emergency before officers can speed and activate their lightbars. Instead of a warning, the speeding officers could have gotten citations.

"It was causing a dangerous situation, and basically we had to do something," Fisher said. "People were pulling off to the left and people were pulling off to the right getting out of the way of these guys."

Virginia State Police said they logged "numerous" 911 calls early Sept. 18 from motorists complaining about marked cars from the Passaic County Sheriff's Office and Wayne Police Department driving dangerously near Weyers Cave.

With Virginia State Police troopers busy working other cases, only Augusta County Deputy Mike Roane was available to answer the call. Roane diffused a potential disaster, Fisher said, after clocking the convoy's lead car at 95 mph.

"Five or six of them did not stop, they just continued northbound," the Augusta sheriff added. "I think they were in a hurry to get home."

Roane ordered the officers - whom Fisher described as belligerent - in the remaining six cars to cut off their lightbars and slow down. A Virginia trooper telephoned their New Jersey departments requesting that the homeward-bound officers slow down.

"There was no emergency situation they were responding to in Virginia that we know of," Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said.

That same day, Virginia troopers patrolling the commonwealth's southwestern interstate roads pulled over a roughly 80-car convoy of New York police homebound from Katrina relief, Geller said. That group stuck to the speed limit, though troopers asked them to stay out of the left lane.

The news of the Augusta County stop incensed Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale, who, in a taped telephone conversation with Roane, lambasted the deputy for stopping his officers.

"If you think that that's not a disgrace, you should take that badge off your shirt and throw it in the garbage," Speziale said. "This is unacceptable, and I'll tell you what, I hope I get the opportunity to show you the same courtesy up here in New Jersey."

Speziale told Roane "law enforcement is all about supporting each other" and said he was reporting the Augusta County stop to the National Sheriffs' Association.

Speziale ended the call after cutting short Roane's attempt to detail the incident. "I don't talk to deputies," the New Jersey sheriff said.

Other officials from the New Jersey departments remain indignant that its officers were ordered to slow down.

"We make no excuses," Passaic County Sheriff's spokesman Bill Maer told The News Virginian on Tuesday. "They'd been working 'round the clock [in a hurricane-devastated New Orleans]. They were coming back with equipment that needed to get back. In our opinion, they acted appropriately. We take offense at the way they were treated."

A Wayne Police official seemed angered when The News Virginian called about the incident last week.

"So what, we're not going to talk about the good these people are doing, you're just going to look for something bad," Capt. Paul Ireland replied.

Fisher, instead of phoning Speziale, drafted him a letter detailing the stop, defending Roane's actions, and arguing that the New Jersey officers were "unprofessional."

Passaic County, in the meantime, plans to send more volunteers to New Orleans, but not through Augusta County.

"We're going to avoid Virginia at all cost - we're clearly not welcome there," Maer said. "Maybe Virginia should learn from our example."

Michael L. Owens and Alicia Petska are staff writers at The News Virginian in Waynesboro.

Comment from Michael L Owens

CONVOY STOP SPARKS DEBATE
(NJ Cops Stopped In VA)

Culpepper (VA) Star Exponent ^
10/5/05
Michael L. Owens

New Jersey Sheriff Jerry Speziale - labeling Virginia law enforcement as distrustful - remains adamant that his officers should have received a free pass to cruise along local roads at nearly 100 mph.

Speziale's call to Augusta County Sheriff Randy Fisher on Thursday was more cordial than his fiery diatribe against a county deputy almost two weeks ago. Yet the only compromise that Fisher and the Passaic County sheriff could reach left them at a standstill.

"We ended up agreeing to disagree" Fisher said. Even with Fisher's claims that a deputy clocked the New Jersey convoy traveling the Weyers Cave stretch of Interstate 81 at 95 mph, Speziale's office demands proof.

"The Virginia authorities never produced any documentation, any radar, any evidence," Passaic County Sheriff's spokesman Bill Maer said. "All we have is their word, and we have not found them to be very truthful in the past, so we have no reason to believe them now."

Replied Fisher: "I've got my officer's testimony, and I've got about 10 people that have e-mailed me about the thing."

The Augusta County deputy's surveillance camera, normally used to record potentially hostile situations, was turned off during the stop, The News Virginian has learned.

"He didn't think he'd need it - it was a group of police officers," Fisher said.

The Augusta County stop, as well as a similar stop hours earlier of a New York Police Department convoy by Virginia State Police in southwest Virginia, has touched off a firestorm of debate and criticism among the East Coast law enforcement community.

"It's the chatter on the Internet," said Frank Ferreyra, head of the New York State Fraternal Order of Police. "Some of it is true, some of it is not true."

Nearly 100 e-mails and telephone calls have inundated the Augusta County Sheriff's Office since a Sept. 28 article in The News Virginian detailed the event.

The Virginia State Police reports receiving almost double that amount. Most of the mail and phone messages have been supportive of the sheriff's office and state police, they said.

Not everyone has sided with Virginia law enforcement, however. "It's created a lot of ill will in the law enforcement community," said Joseph Occhipinti, executive director of the National Police Defense Foundation. "We don't need war between the Virginia law enforcement and the Northern law enforcement."

Some police, basing their rationale on a code of professional courtesy called the Thin Blue Line, argue that local deputies and state police should have ignored the convoy.

This code backs the share of support received at the Passaic County Sheriff's Office.

"I think most, 80 percent of people, see it for what it's worth -- and realize that Virginia authorities acted inappropriately and unprofessionally," Maer said.

It was on Sept. 18 that Augusta County Sheriff's Deputy Mike Roane spotted a convoy of New Jersey officers - from Passaic County and the Wayne Township Police Department - in police cruisers returning home from a Hurricane Katrina relief mission.

Virginia State Police had received multiple 911 calls from I-81 motorists complaining the convoy, with as many as 13 cars, had forced them off the road. Roane was dispatched because a trooper was not available.

Roane managed to stop five or six cruisers, while the rest continued down the interstate. He asked them to cut off their emergency lights and to slow down.

Virginia law bans police cruisers from topping the speed limit and using lights unless responding to an emergency.

That stop earned Roane a rebuke over the telephone later that day from Speziale.

"If you think that that's not a disgrace, you should take that badge off your shirt and throw it in the garbage," Speziale said in a taped conversation with Roane. "This is unacceptable, and I'll tell you what, I hope I get the opportunity to show you the same courtesy up here in New Jersey."

Yet it's another stop that day that has sparked much of the ongoing debate in police Internet chat rooms. It surrounds an Internet-circulated picture of a Virginia State Police trooper speaking with members of the NYPD.

The caption erroneously claims that the photo was snapped on Sept. 18, within seconds of the trooper stopping a convoy on its way home from New Orleans.

The photo actually depicts a Sept. 5 event that had a state trooper checking on an NYPD convoy that had stopped in Caroline County while en route to New Orleans, reports the Virginia State Police as well as an officer claiming via e-mail to be a member of the convoy.

Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller provided The News Virginian an e-mail from the convoy member. The officer has not responded to requests for an interview.

"That Troopers [sic] only concern was that we were OK and even stopped traffic on the highway to let all our vehicles back out onto the highway," the officer wrote. "He then proceeded to the front of the caravan and gave us an escort as far as he could."

It was the New York convoy's return trip through Virginia that elicited 911 calls from motorists complaining of a roughly 80-car convoy driving under the speed limit. That group did not have its emergency lights flashing.

"The trooper who stopped us just asked that we stay in the right lane and not use our emergency lights," wrote the officer claiming to be in the convoy. "It wasn't a big deal and don't forget that outside of the great state of New York we had no power as police officers, we were just American citizens traveling on an interstate."

Not everyone views the event as an innocent stop, however. "I think the public needs to get over themselves and say, they are returning officers from three weeks in the worst conditions and they just want to get home to their families," N.Y. Fraternal Order of Police head Ferreyra said. "So they were hogging the left lane - whoop-de-do."

Many of the officers joining the debate in police chat rooms point to the lack of an escort for the convoys on the part of the Virginia State Police.

"Why was Virginia the only state that failed to provide a police escort?" Occhipinti asked, arguing the convoys were vulnerable to possible terrorists attacks.

Officials that sent the Passaic County convoy notified the Federal Emergency Management Agency of their trip. It was FEMA's job to notify other jurisdictions, Maer said.

Officials at New York Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly's office refused to answer News Virginian inquiries concerning protocol for the New Orleans trip without a written request. They have not yet responded to a faxed inquiry.

But FEMA, if indeed contacted by Passaic County Sheriff's Office and the New York Police Department, failed to notify Virginia State Police, said Geller.

"We were not notified of the procession coming or going until we started receiving [911] calls," she said.

A police escort along I-81 would have required coordination among four different Virginia State Police jurisdictions for a trip spanning 325 miles.

Escorts weren't requested when a convoy of Virginia State Police, Virginia Game and Inland Fisheries, Henrico and Chesterfield counties left two weeks ago on a Hurricane Katrina relief mission, Geller noted.

And they won't ask for an escort when a second contingent of volunteers heads to Mississippi on Tuesday.

"We respect the laws of the other states we are going through,"she said.

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Bilking New Jersey Taxpayers

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NEW JERSEY / TAXES AND PUBLIC EDUCATION

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Gordon Bishop On the Issues

Bilking N.J. Taxpayers For $Billion$ In Support Of Public Education -- Where Has All The Money Gone?

It began with the state sales tax in 1966, followed by the state lottery in 1969, the state income tax in 1975, and casino gambling in 1979.

New Jersey government has passed tax after tax after tax since 1966 to support one of the most expensive public education systems in the nation.

Yet New Jersey's property taxes remain the highest in the nation. Where are all these tax dollars going?

WHERE HAVE ALL THE $BILLIONS GONE FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION?
[ Click On Title To View Article Source ]

New Jersey government has passed tax after tax after tax since 1966 to support public education.

It began with the state sales tax in 1966, followed by the state lottery in 1969, the state income tax in 1975, and casino gambling in 1979.

Hundreds of billions of dollars have been raised by these sources of taxation over the past half-century.

Yet property taxes continue to rise by an average 6 percent a year.

So where does all the money go?

Local school districts account for 60 to 65 percent of the approximately $17 billion collected in property taxes each year. And most of that goes for salaries and benefits for the members of the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), perhaps the most powerful union in the Garden State.

The State Legislature is responsible for making sure that public education is funded, one-way or another.

Our 120 state legislators have failed to come up with an equitable formula for funding public education. Instead, they let each school district and municipality raise property taxes, the burden falling on homeowners and businesses that pay property taxes.

The solution? Our impotent legislators are looking for a Constitutional Convention to resolve New Jersey's property tax crisis.

In other words, let the taxpaying voters decide whether they want a Constitutional Convention to come up with a solution that will please all of the special interests, from the NJEA and business community, to senior citizens and minority groups.

Since no one wants to pay more taxes for one of the most expensive school systems in America, a Constitutional Convention could turn out to be a showdown among the special interests.

One way out is for New Jersey's 566 municipal mayors to lead the way with Town Hall taxpayer meetings throughout the state. Let the property taxpayers come up with an agenda that represents their interests since they are picking up the bill for public education in New Jersey.

I tend to trust my local mayor than my state legislators sitting in Trenton. These legislators have responded to the problem since 1966 with more and more taxes that fall into a bottomless money pit.

What is needed now is rational restraint -- holding the line on educational costs.

It seems property taxes -- or school taxes, specifically -- have become the "third rail" in our corrupt political process in New Jersey.

No matter who's Governor or who's our Senators and Assembly Members, the budgets keep ballooning year after year after year. Government is out of control. It is spending and taxing beyond the ability of taxpayers to pay for all of the special interests.

America was born in a Tax Revolution in 1776. It didn't take long for this Constitutional Republic to pile up mountains of debt generated largely by the special interests.

New Jersey's mayors can begin by listening to their property taxpayers -- not the "What's in it for me? -- special interests.

Tax reform begins with the elimination of wasteful spending and a road map for consolidating New Jersey's more than 600 school districts and 566 municipalities into an efficient, effective public service machine.

Corporations do it every day. It's called "downsizing."

Why can't government "downsize" like Corporate America does to remain competitive? Economically, it comes down to survival.

The reason downsizing hasn't happened in government is obvious: As long as taxpayers keep paying, government will keep spending.

Let the Constitutional Convention for Property Tax Reform begin at the grassroots level in every Town Hall, led by the mayors who live with and know what their constituents need -- namely, reigning in runaway school taxes.

The mayors and their hometown taxpayers can make it happen.

The Legislature and the courts have failed to do it over the past half-century.

Now it's the mayors' turn to do it with those who pay the school taxes.

(Gordon Bishop, a national award winning author, historian and syndicated columnist, is New Jersey's first "Journalist-of-the-Year" -- 1986 / New Jersey Press Association.)

Copyright 2002-2005 by Newsbull.

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Jihad In New Jersey

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NEW JERSEY / PASSAIC COUNTY / PATERSON / JIHAD IN NEW JERSEY

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Protecting The Radical, Anti-Christian, Muslim Community ...

More Government Cover-Up / Media Bias ...

What the AP conveniently ignored, however, was the F.B.I.'s knowledge of suspected radical activity in northern New Jersey's Muslim community ... Yet no one was ever charged or arrested.

Jersey Jihadists

~ Joel Mowbray (archive)
February 2, 2005

When a family of Egyptian immigrants was murdered in Jersey City [New Jersey] recently, the media's response was to wring its hands about anti-Muslim bias. But the truth is more complicated, and reveals the media's own bias -- against America.

Anti-Muslim bias had nothing to do with the killing of the Armanious family; they were Coptic Christians. It wasn't the religion of the victims that concerned the press; it was the religion of the suspected murderers.

Over the weekend, the Associated Press wrote of the "dirty looks and shouted slurs" directed at Muslims in Jersey City following the slaughter of an Egyptian Christian man, his wife, and two young daughters, which many reports attribute to local radical Islamists upset about something the man wrote in an Internet chat room.

The AP followed in predictable fashion:

The strife is particularly distressing in light of efforts the area's Muslim community made to reach out to other faiths and strengthen ties after the 9/11 attacks.

What the AP conveniently ignored, however, was known and suspected radical activity in northern New Jersey's Muslim community.

The former imam at the El Tawheed Islamic Center of Jersey City, Alaa Al-Sadawi, was convicted in July 2003 of attempting to smuggle more than $650,000 in cash to the terrorist Global Relief Fund in Egypt in April 2002.

One of Al-Sadawi's former mosque-goers was convicted last March of murdering in the name of Islam. Alim Hassan, then 31, killed his pregnant wife, her mother, and her sister on July 30, 2002. He reportedly stabbed the women more than 20 times each because they refused to convert to Islam. According to reports, Hassan prayed regularly at El-Tawheed.

Al-Sadawi and Hassan were hardly the first Muslims in the area, though, to appear on authorities' radar.

Mohamed El-Mezain , the former imam at the nearby Islamic Center of Passaic County, which has close relations with El-Tawheed, worked with the Paterson-based mosque to raise funds for Hamas in the mid-1990s, according to an FBI memo drafted in November 2001 by the FBI's assistant director of counterterrorism Dale Watson. El-Mezain, who is no longer affiliated with the Islamic Center, was never charged or arrested.

The FBI document, which served as the basis for the U.S. government shutting down the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in December 2001, cited a "reliable" source in noting that "during a speech at the Islamic Center of Passaic County (ICPC) in November, 1994, Mohammad El-Mezain, the HLFRD's current Director of Endowments and former Chairman of the HLFRD Board, admitted that some of the money collected by the ICPC and the HLFRD goes to Hamas or Hamas activities in Israel. El-Mezain also defended Hamas and the activities carried out by Hamas."

El-Mezain also openly raised funds for Hamas, according to the FBI memo. After a speech at a Muslim rally in Southern California in the mid-90's in which the keynote speaker urged attendees to "exterminate" and "finish off the Israelis," El-Mezain asked for contributions and told the crowd that $1.8 million had been raised for Hamas in 1994 alone, according to the memo.

Radicalism at ICPC hardly seems to have subsided. The mosque in February 2003 hosted a lecture by Abdelhaleem Ashqar, long after he was identified by the FBI memo as a prominent Hamas figure.

Investigators in Jersey City have yet to announce the motive for the murder of the Armanious family. But if it turns out that the murder or murders were religiously-motivated Muslims, with whom will the media sympathize: those grieving for the victims or those who attend the same hate-filled mosques as the murderers? Is there any doubt?

©2005 Joel Mowbray

Contact Joel Mowbray | Read Mowbray's biography

Joel Mowbray's controversial book!

Dangerous Diplomacy:

How the State Department Threatens America's Security

Read the book that made Pat Robertson want to "nuke" the State Department! Fighting to send arms to Saddam, resisting post-9/11 attempts to toughen visa requirements, actively fighting against American parents trying to recover their abducted American children from places like Saudi Arabia -- amazingly enough, this is the record of the U.S. State Department. Joel Mowbray's explosive expose tells it all!!

Comment from Jihad Watch

More information on the Jersey City murders

An informed source close to the investigation of the murders of the Coptic family in New Jersey has given me some more information:

The police and prosecutor are "very scared" of this case. The Muslim community in Jersey City is putting enormous pressure on City Hall to softpedal the case. Says my source: "They [police and prosecutor] want this case to go away quickly because of that."

Both press and prosecutor are hampered by general ignorance of Islamic teaching on proselytizing and conversion, and of how jihadists operate.

Of course, my problem with the police and prosecutor's reaction is that if this really was a Sharia-inspired killing, they are opening the door to more of the same if they do not handle this case carefully and thoroughly.

My source went to the Armanious house after the murders. The house does not appear to be of a wealthy family, and does not stand out in the poor neighborhood where it is located; this makes it more difficult to sustain the notion that the primary motive was robbery. My source saw that there was no sign of forced entry.

There are indications that Sylvia, the 15-year-old, innocently let one of the perpetrators know where she lived.

2005-02-02 22:31:07

Comment from Gary Bauer's American Values

Jerry Falwell, Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson and the Rev. Jerry Vines (former President of the Southern Baptist Convention) are all being put through the media "meat grinder" for daring to speak critically of Islam.

Falwell in particular is taking it on the chin. News articles in recent days have accused him of causing Muslim riots in India, a bigger vote in Pakistan for radical Islamic political parties and a backlash against the U.S. in other Muslim nations.

My response: Hogwash! The statements made by all of these Christian leaders are mild compared to the vicious hate rhetoric that is used in thousands of mosques and religious schools across the Middle East, including the West Bank, Africa and Asia.

Muslim children by the tens of thousands are being taught that Jews are monkeys, i.e., sub human, and that Allah, through his prophet Mohammad, demands the blood of infidels, i.e., you and me!

When Muslim Palestinian suicide bombers kill innocent Israeli civilians, the knee-jerk reaction in the media and among some apologists for radical Islam is to blame the policies of Ariel Sharon or Israeli settlements or you just fill in the blank. When planes crashed into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center towers, the apologists said it was the fault of U.S. foreign policy. Now when mobs fill the streets of India or bombs go off in Indonesia, we are supposed to believe it is Jerry Falwell's fault.

Jerry Falwell isn't the problem. Jihadism is. Moreover, it is precisely this kind of radical/murderous/suicidal behavior that proves his point.

How much longer must we wait to hear "moderate" Muslim leaders say to these satanic killers, "Not in our name"? I challenge our media elites: Take a look at what is being promoted by many Islamic leaders around the world and then answer the question, "Who is spreading hate?"

2005-02-02 22:48:13

Comment from AgapePress

Is the Media Downplaying Possible Muslim Connection to New Jersey Murders?

By Chad Groening and Jody Brown February 2, 2005

(AgapePress) - An Israeli author and lecturer says he is aggravated that the American news media has once again chosen to ignore a major story because it paints the religion of Islam in a bad light.

The bodies of a Coptic Christian family were found in their New Jersey home on January 14. Hossam Armanious, an immigrant from Egypt, his wife and their two daughters had been bound and gagged, and their throats slashed. While authorities have not determined if the murders are tied to Islamic radicals, they do report that Armanious had received a death threat from a Muslim through the Internet chat room known as barsomyat.com. The family had reportedly received threats not to speak out against Islam on the Internet chat room.

Before being shut down by the company hosting it, the website reportedly featured photographs of the Coptic Christian couple, referring to the husband as a "filthy dog" and Amal Garas as "his filthy wife," says the New York Sun. That newspaper quotes one website member writing that "they got what they deserved for their actions in America."

According to various news reports, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is now investigating the website. And WorldNetDaily reports that, according to eyewitnesses who saw the bodies at the funeral home, the injuries to the victims' throats are consistent with the executions by radical Islamists shown on the Arab satellite channel al-Jazeera.

Victor Mordecai is an Israeli Middle East expert whose wife is Egyptian. He says the New Jersey family paid the price for telling the truth.

"When you say [something critical] to a Moslem, he's going to slit your throat -- and that's what the Moslems said to [the Armanious family] on the Internet," Mordecai says. "He said if you keep talking like this in the [Internet] chat rooms, we're going to slaughter you like how chickens are slaughtered -- meaning with their throats slit. And that's exactly what happened to this poor family in New Jersey."

Mordecai says even though many Coptic Christians have fled the persecution of the Islamic majority in Egypt and have immigrated to America, the persecution does not stop.

"[T]he persecution doesn't end because they are in contact [with Muslims], usually at workplaces every day, and the Moslems are relentless," he says. "They will not allow a Coptic Christian even to be a Christian in America, even though this is the United States of America. In other words, the bottom line of the Moslems is to convert everyone to Islam."

And there is another aspect of the brutal murder that deeply bothers the Middle East expert.

"What really, really aggravates me is that the media will focus on O.J. Simpson and his case for two years [and] it will focus on Laci Peterson," he notes, "but when you have Moslems doing the slitting of the throats and killing, then nobody wants to talk about it because it's not politically correct."

According to WorldNetDaily, earlier reports of the family's jewelry being taken by their assailants were false, thereby discounting the possibility that robbery was a motive in the killings. Associated Press says one of the motives being considered is "religious animosity."

© 2005 AgapePress all rights reserved.

2005-02-03 14:49:17

Comment from Tom Troncone / NorthJersey.Com

Web Site Probed In Family's Deaths

Tuesday, February 1, 2005

By TOM TRONCONE STAFF WRITER / NorthJersey.Com

The FBI is investigating a radical Islamic Web site that posted photos and information about people who use an Internet chat room frequented by a Jersey City man whose family was murdered Jan. 14.

The Web site, barsomyat.com, contained detailed information about some users of the PalTalk.com chat service whom the site's members accuse of being outspoken critics of Islam, according to published reports.

An FBI spokesman confirmed Monday that federal investigators are probing whether the site - which is run by a Jordanian - played any role in the murders of Hossam Armanious, 47, his wife, Amal Garas, 37, and their daughters, Sylvia, 15, and Monica, 8. The family was discovered bound and stabbed to death in their Jersey City Heights home.

Hossam Armanious was an active participant in PalTalk.com discussions, using the nickname "I Love Jesus," according to friends. Armanious, a Coptic Orthodox Christian from Egypt, would often engage in heated debates with Muslims in the site's religious chat rooms, and family members have speculated that the murders stemmed from these discussions and his attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity.

"We are aware of that site, and we are looking at it," FBI spokesman John Conway said. "It's an interesting site to say the least. ... It's unknown to anybody right now what credence to put into this."

It also is not known whether any photos of Hossam Armanious or other personal information were posted on the site prior to the murders. Users of the PalTalk service communicate via instant messaging, voice and, often, Web cams. Members of the barsomyat.com site apparently scanned the chat rooms to identify opponents.

The information was then posted with photos of the person. In one case, according to The New York Sun, a barsomyat.com post about a Christian man included his PalTalk nickname, photograph, real name and the city in which he lives, all hacked from his home computer.

Before the site was taken down Monday by its Minnesota hosting company, it contained photos of Hossam Armanious and Amal Garas. It called Armanious a "filthy dog" and Garas "his filthy wife," according to the paper. A screenshot of barsomyat.com was posted on another Web site, Jihadwatch.com.

"They were slaughtered along with their children as a punishment from the heavens to those who curse the most divine of all who were created," one member of barsomyat.com is quoted as writing.

Several Muslim community leaders said on Monday that they were unaware of the existence of the Web site and denounced it when told about the content.

"It is very sick," said Mohamed El Filali, spokesman for the Islamic Center of Passaic County. "Nobody should be harmed because of a person's opinion."

Authorities have not zeroed in on a motive in the quadruple homicide. Several possibilities exist, including a financial motive or a vendetta from the family's Egyptian homeland.

Each family member's bound body was found in a different room of the Oakland Avenue home. Each bled to death from stab wounds to the neck and had other knife wounds.

Money was taken from Armanious' wallet, Garas' purse had been emptied, and someone had rifled through drawers. However, a "significant" amount of jewelry was left untouched, authorities said.

The absence of money in the home and the presence of jewelry have sparked debate about a possible robbery gone bad. There was no forced entry into the home. And no religious symbols were desecrated, including tattoos each Armanious family member had on his or her wrists.

Conway, a violent crimes investigator, said the FBI is "heavily involved" in the Armanious investigation and has been looking into the PalTalk connection since early in the investigation.

He acknowledged it was "hard to imagine anything else but the murders being fueled by a dispute," but said agents were exploring the gamut of possibilities.

Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said he was not familiar with the site, but that his investigators working with the FBI were likely aware of it.

He said the key factor in determining whether the site played a role in the killings would be pinpointing when information about Armanious was posted.

"If it was posted after the homicide, that makes the whole issue somewhat moot," DeFazio said. "But if it was posted prior to the homicide it would give it some more credence."

DeFazio said that without any definitive connection to any violence, the postings on the site are just words.

"There is a lot of hate talk that is propagated that is not dispositive of the motive," DeFazio said. "This site has not been the only site indicating they support what happened to this family."

The site was registered on Nov. 7 to VizaWeb Inc., a hosting company in Woodbury, Minn. Rick Mueller, one of the owners of VizaWeb, would not release the name of his customer, other than to say it was a person living in Jordan.

Mueller removed the site soon after learning of its content. The banner on the site while it was active showed a lamb with its throat being slit and a cross with a red "X" through it.

"We started hearing about this [Monday]," he said. "We took the site off-line as we look into the content. If what we are hearing is true, we will not put it back up. ... We obviously do not support its content."

FBI and Hudson County investigators are examining the bedroom computer of Sylvia and Monica, which prosecutors said was the only computer in the modest two-family home.

E-mail: troncone@northjersey.com

2005-02-03 15:09:53

Comment from JihadWatch.Org

New Details On The New Jersey Murders

A close friend of Hossam Armanious and relatives of the family murdered in New Jersey have revealed the following:

Shortly after the murders, members of the Egyptian consulate went to visit the family to encourage them to keep quiet. And many family members have obeyed, saying nothing to reporters or anyone else. However, two family members and another Copt viewed the bodies at the funeral home. One of these eyewitnesses said that he clearly saw that the family members had not suffered "stab wounds to the throat," as the prosecutor's report states, but rather the following:

A. Both adults, Hossam and Amal, had a horizontal slit across the throat. Below the slit, on the left, right and middle of the throat were three holes, big enough so that one could place a finger in each hole. According to the eyewitness, it was as if the assailant(s) took a knife and turned it repeatedly in a circular fashion, as if to screw holes into the victims' necks.

B. The two young girls, Sylvia (15) and Monica (8), also had a horizontal slits in their throats, along with two holes bored below the slits, one on the right and one on the left sides of their necks. The holes were similar to those on their parents' necks.

C. The eyewitness said although the bodies of the victims were all covered, he was able to see the arms of the little girl Monica. Although the tattoo of the cross inside Monica's wrist was not defaced, he saw that her wrists were cut. He was not able to see the wrists of the other victims to see if the crosses on their wrists were defaced.

D. Though the family wants to reserve judgment until the results of the case are released, they did say that the way the four family members were bound and gagged and the way their throats were slit with holes carved is similar to executions that are shown on al-Jazeera. The American public is not aware of this because the details of the executions are not often described in news accounts.

Amal Garas's father said that (contrary to many news reports and CAIR's press release) none of the family's jewelry was taken, and that Amal owned some quite expensive pieces that were not touched. At the time of her murder, Amal was wearing a ring worth $3,500 that was not taken.

Garas's father also has been speaking with the detectives and the prosecutor on the case. He was told that the results of the autopsy would not be ready until March 14. However, an inside source in one of New Jersey's police departments said that the results of autopsy and toxicology reports are known within 48 hours after the bodies are discovered. This source has worked on such cases for many years. He said that the department knows the results, but as in similar cases intends to wait a month or two before they release them to the family. During that time long reports are written to cross the t's and dot the i's for the family, but the final results are not much different from what is discovered within the first 48 hours. So all of the press reports about waiting for the prosecutor's findings on the autopsies are nonsense. Though the investigators are looking at Sylvia's computer and other evidence, the findings on the autopsy for the most part are already in.

A reporter who is closely following this case said that this delay was because the police and prosecutor want this case to go away. They want things to cool down. That's why they set the autopsy date as March 14, two months after the murders.

It is still possible that this wasn't a Muslim hate crime. The problem is that investigators have not taken the necessary steps to ensure a fair review of the evidence. There are too many holes here, too many inconsistencies in the official story. Too many obvious tasks have not been done: an Armanious family friend with whom I spoke, who gave me names and motives of possible perpetrators, is still waiting for a call from investigators.

Investigators seem to be following dead ends more assiduously than live leads. A Muslim has told police in Jersey City that there is an Islamic custom in Egypt: a life for a life. He said that is what may have happened in this case. Some news reports are referring to this when they say they're looking into the family's activities in Egypt before they came to the U.S. in 1997. Said prosecutor Edward DeFazio, "It could be that it's a vendetta that might go back to the old country. We're going to try to look into that." However, those close to Hossam Armanious maintain that he didn't have any enemies, and certainly never took anyone's life in Egypt or here; nor did anyone in his family.

This background information may illuminate why this investigation has been so curiously lacking:

There are a number of clergy in the Coptic community who are in bed with the Egyptian government. Some even act as agents for the Mubarak regime. Coptic clergy who won't cooperate are often exiled into the Egyptian desert, where they live a very difficult life.

Many Coptic women have been kidnapped by Muslims. Some of these women are being kidnapped with the help of the compromised clergy. The priest hears a girl's confession and then passes on information he hears there to Muslim kidnappers, who decide which girls they want to take. Many of these women are forced to marry Muslim men and are never seen again.

A number of Muslims have infiltrated the Coptic community, pretending to be Christians in order to gather information. Jersey City has a large number of Copts. Some of this infiltration has taken place there; some of the Coptic clergy there are also compromised. However, most Copts trust their clergy wholeheartedly, making it easy for the moles to operate.

What do those compromised clergymen want? The answer possibly has to do with a fact revealed by a number of other sources, including one within a New Jersey police department: the Egyptian government is pressuring the police and prosecutor to make this case disappear. Where are the mainstream media reporters contacting the Egyptian consulate to find out whether or not this is true?

2005-02-03 15:24:55

Comment from Gary Bauer's American Values

The Saudi Hate Machine

A new 89-page report by Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom on the involvement of the Saudi Arabian government in promoting hate in the United States - yes, right here at home - is causing quite a stir among Washington policy makers. The report examined over two hundred mosques in the U.S. All of the documents were "disseminated, published or otherwise generated" by the government of Saudi Arabia. What researchers found in document after document was a virulent Wahhabi ideology that promotes hatred and bigotry.

The documents teach Muslims that it is their duty to hate Christians and Jews; they denounce democracy as un-Islamic; and argue that it is a Muslim's duty to eliminate the nation of Israel. And this putrid brew of hate is readily available in mosques and Islamic centers around the country - courtesy of our Saudi "ally."

By the way, here is an encouraging note. The study was undertaken after many U.S. Muslims requested the Center for Religious Freedom's help in exposing the extremist agenda being subsidized by the Saudi government. (You can get more information by visiting http://www.freedomhouse.org, then click on the link for Center for Religious Freedom.)

2005-02-03 18:54:07

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