From suburban bliss to jihad
El-Goarany a terror mystery
NEW YORK, Dec 14, (AP): From the outside, Samy el-Goarany seemed to have it all.
The son of a successful real estate broker, he lived in a big house with an indoor swimming pool on two acres in New York’s bucolic Hudson Valley. As a teenager, he got into a good college in Manhattan and seemed set to follow his father into real estate.
Then he went off to Syria and joined the Islamic State group.
When he was killed in fighting a year ago, his father told friends his son had died in a car crash, his body so badly burned it couldn’t be recovered. But the true story of el-Goarany’s death remained a secret until October, when federal prosecutors revealed details in a case against an Arizona man accused of aiding IS by recruiting American fighters.
Shocked childhood friends were unable to explain why the skinny, studious history buff they once knew walked away from a promising future to die in the Middle East around the time he would have turned 25.
“I had been close to this guy for the past 10 years, and I honestly wouldn’t have suspected him of joining this deplorable group,” one friend, Peter Kwon, wrote on Facebook. “To find out about this is sad, infuriating, and quite frankly, disturbing.”
In a brief interview outside his home in Greenville, New York, el-Goarany’s father, Mohamed, said his son had been manipulated into traveling to Syria by Ahmed Mohammed el-Gammal, the Avondale, Arizona, man now scheduled to go to trial next month in New York.
“He made him go over there,” Mohamed el-Goarany said.
Federal prosecutors said el-Goarany traveled through Turkey to Islamic State-controlled territory inside Syria in January 2015.
He made the trip, they claim, after communicating online for several months with el-Gammal, who also visited the Queens apartment el-Goarany shared with a younger brother.
Lawyers for el-Gammal suggest he did so willingly.
The government’s own court documents indicate that el-Goarany “was a sophisticated, strong-willed young man who formed his own beliefs and
diculous”, and Russia has denied meddling in the election. (RTRS)
Climate change cannot be ignored:
Scientists must confront climate change deniers and speak up if U.S. President-elect
Panetta
Obama
arranged and financed his own travel,” said el-Gammal’s attorney, Sabrina Shroff. After federal agents arrested el-Gammal the following August, elGoarany appeared in a YouTube video wearing military fatigues and sitting on a mat in a sparsely decorated room to declare that he had come to Syria “out of my own will” and without any assistance. El-Gammal has pleaded not guilty.
Former friends of el-Goarany were reluctant to speak about him, but those who did said they were stunned to learn of the turn his life had taken.
Born in the US, el-Goarany was the
Donald Trump tries to sideline climate research, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is due to say on Wednesday.
“If you see science being ignored or compromised, speak up,” Jewell will tell a meeting of earth and space scientists in San Francisco, according to a draft of the speech seen by Reuters.
Trump has called climate change a hoax and sought to fill his cabinet with oil industry allies like Texas Governor Rick Perry, the Energy Department nominee.
Last week, the Trump team asked the U.S. Department of Energy to supply names of officials who took part in international climate talks - a request that the agency has rejected.
The scientific fact of climate change cannot be ignored no matter who is in the White House, Jewell will say. And she will
son of an Egyptian civil engineer who became a developer and real estate broker in New York after emigrating to the US in the 1980s. He lived in a town of fewer than 5,000 people about a 90-minute drive north of New York City.
Friends at Goshen High School knew Samy was a Muslim, but he was not a proselytizer. Classmate Sean Larkin said the two frequently talked about Islam, Christianity, Judaism and other religions before they graduated in 2008.
“Samy was never shoving Islam down anyone’s throat,” he said.
urge climate experts to publicly defend their work.
“Think about where to raise your voice and then do it,” Jewell will tell a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) - a global association of researchers. “The American people must be able to trust science.” As President Barack Obama’s top steward for public lands, Jewell has helped manage terrain that holds vast reserves of oil, gas and coal.
But over nearly four years in office, Jewell has also warned that burning fossil fuels will irreparably harm the planet.
Jewell will say that national historic sites that she now manages - like the 17th century colonial outpost, Jamestown - could eventually be swallowed by rising seas.
Policymakers must confront climate change realities, Jewell said. (RTRS)