Update April 20, 2008: Jerry Gordon over at the ACT blog has done more work on this story here.
What did I say the other day, we are turning into the immigrant crime blog. Here is a story from Texas (Hat tip: Infinicat) about a Lebanese man’s body being found in a lake, hands and legs bound and tape across his eyes. Austin police believe it was a suicide. Can you see it now, Riad Hamad bound and hobbling, eyes covered, to waters edge and throwing himself in!
Austin police said Thursday that they are leaning toward a ruling of suicide in the death of a middle school teacher and activist whose body was found Wednesday in Lady Bird Lake with his hands and legs bound and tape over his eyes.
There must be a lot more to this story.
She (Debbie Russell of the ACLU) said in the e-mail that Hamad had recently been under investigation by the FBI — federal officials confirmed the investigation — and described him as “NOT a terrorist but a peaceworker.” Hamad was serving as an official for the Austin chapter of the Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund.
I checked to see if the Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund was listed on the Guidestar website for non-profit groups and couldn’t find them. In fact their website doesn’t mention their status as a 501(c)3 charitable organization. I don’t think you can just put up a website, solicit funds for your cause (Palestinian “refugees” in this case), send it abroad and not tell the IRS what you are doing.
He was described as a nice guy by friends and family.
The family’s statement described him as a “peace activist who worked tirelessly on behalf of those less fortunate than him and was loved and admired by many members of the local, as well as international community.”
Kind of funny though, don’t you think, that he was fired by a Junior College and then hired as a Middle School teacher.
Hamad had taught at Austin Community College but was fired in June 1998 after officials said he violated the school’s nondiscrimination policy by making “sexist and off-colored jokes” in class, school officials said.
Judy has written before how Palestinians have been kept in camps for over a half century and none of their Arab brothers take them in (aren’t Muslims supposed to be charitiable to fellow Muslims). We hear all the noise from the United Nations about how important it is to resettle refugees who have been in camps for 20 years in other parts of the world.
Heck on the Iraqi displaced persons, the UN and the NGO’s are screaming bloody murder about how hundreds of thousands of Iraqis must be resettled after only a couple of years.
Why isn’t the UN getting busy resettling the Palestinians to say Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Egypt, etc?
It is increasingly obvious that the Palestinians are kept in camps to put political pressure on Israel and allow the likes of Riad Hamad to continue raising money for the “children”.
NOTE: See “crimes” category to your left for other posts on crimes involving refugees and immigrants.