Word: abouhalima
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...pregnant in 1984, she had an abortion against her husband's will. Soon thereafter, Soika arrived home early after spending nine weeks at a health clinic for treatment of stress. When she opened the door, she found a 21-year-old woman named Marianne Weber staying in the apartment. Abouhalima suggested that the three live together as one happy family, but Soika refused. They divorced in February 1985, after Abouhalima had married Weber in a Muslim ceremony at the Islamic Center...
Despite Soika's resentment, she still refers to Abouhalima as her husband and keeps his surname on the doorbell of her current home. She is angry, yet still incredulous about his alleged involvement in the bombing. "The electric chair would be too good for him," she says, on the verge of tears. "I don't know how he can sleep at night after what he did. He prays five times a day and then does this? He's made a mockery of his religion. I can't grasp it. It doesn't fit with my image...
...many, the Afghan war was a transforming experience. "I haven't met one person who was sorry he went," says Ahmed Sattar, a director of a Brooklyn mosque where Abouhalima and other defendants prayed. "Most of them left America as ordinary men and came back so devout and so proud. The war reminded them of the glorious old days, many hundreds of years ago, when Muslims were fighting the infidel...
...Abouhalima's training site was the frontier city of Peshawar in Pakistan, near the Afghan border, where the major mujahedin parties had their headquarters and where more than 50 Arab relief agencies and unofficial groups had offices. The mujahedin received an estimated $3.5 billion in financial support from the CIA as well, which bankrolled training for the Muslim warriors in the use of explosives and modern weapons. Abouhalima settled in one of the many transit houses known as the House of Friends, where young Arabs were often crammed four to a room...
...their Afghan brothers, who sensed that the volunteers had a wider agenda. Even so, their zeal in combat amazed even the fearless Afghans. "The Arabs were crazy fighters, charging into any fire," recalls Ahmed Muwafak Zaidan, a Syrian writer who covered the war. An Egyptian scholar in Pakistan remembers Abouhalima and conspiracy defendant Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali as "very good commanders who fought in various provinces" of Afghanistan...