the way his father was unfairly swept up in the anti-Muslim hysteria following the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. From that point on, the family's life was made a living hell by persecution.
Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary's father, who had been in and out of prison in Egypt and continually tortured there, was a human rights lawyer in Egypt, associated with Amnesty International. He eventually managed to win refugee status in Egypt for himself and his family, and they lived there happily for 5 years.
But the the embassy bombings in 1998 led to the sweeping arrest of innumerable innocent Muslim men. The family's home was tossed by the cops, looking for evidence that the father might somehow be connected to al-Quaida, or to the bombings, and his father was arrested. That first time the father was arrested, he was imprisoned for 5 days and then released, with official acknowledgment that he was innocent of all charges:
The British police found there was no terrorism case to charge Abdul Bary with. . . . (An official letter from the anti-terrorism police at the time stated that after nine months of exhaustive investigation, they found that he and the other Egyptian men arrested with him had no connection with al-Qaida, nor any connection with terrorism in Britain <emphasis added>.)
<snip>
In London Adel's work had focused only on his own country, and he ran an office called International Office for the Defence of the Egyptian People. He put out a newsletter on Egyptian affairs, for which Ragaa, while looking after her children, used to write a weekly women's column.
<snip>
Then after his release, the US started going after him--with no more evidence than the British government had found. But unlike the British government, the US didn't care that there was
no evidence, since the guy was, after all, a Muslim. Six months after being released, he was rearrested in Britain because of US pressure and demands to have him extradited:
The extradition case would put Adel Abdul Bary on trial with a large number of other defendants whose names were added over the years, charged with general conspiracy to kill Americans and with substantive charges in the east African embassy bombings. Ragaa blanked it out – it was all too frightening to think about. The one concrete thing her husband was on trial for was his possession of a fax sent to him – found in his office weeks after the events – about the bombings of the US's East African embassies. (These faxes were everywhere in the Arab areas of London at the time, handed out in places such as outside the Regents Park and other mosques and sent to news organisations across the world.) This fax – along with the al-Qaida defector Jamal Al Fadl's testimony on Egyptian Islamic Jihad's supposed al-Qaida links – was apparently enough for the Americans to jump to the conclusion that Abdul Bary (never named by Al Fadl) had prior knowledge and responsibility in the bombings <emphasis added>.
After 14 years of fighting extradition, he was extradited to the US in fall of 2012. During this whole time, his wife (the ISIS terrorist's mother) was left at home to raise her 6 children by herself--with no money, no help, no companionship, and no English, and suffering from worsening pain and debilitation caused by serious health problems. Meanwhile, of course, she and her children were all continually subjected to anti-Muslim racism.
ISIS is about as evil as a terrorist group can get--probably right up there with Boko Haram. And if Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary is the guy who murdered James Foley, then he is as vicious as the Boko Haram leader who put out that insane video after the kidnapping of those 200 girls from school.
But this is a familiar type of monster--the type created by growing up in a situation where powerful people and institutions make one's life a living hell.
*The sociopaths in our government and their buddies in the British government can proudly say,
"We built that."*
From the time Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary was 8 years old, he has seen his father unjustly arrested, imprisoned, and then extradited to another country (
ours), where he will probably spend the rest of his life in prison. Because of his innocent father's imprisonment, this man and his siblings grew up with nothing--often not even enough money for heat in the winter--and watching their mother's suffering, grief, and hopelessness.
He is filled with explosive rage, and that rage is directed at Britain and the US, so he is eager to inflict as much pain as he can on anyone associated with those two countries. He will
never feel any human sympathy or compassion towards the people he tortures and kills.
It is certain that by the time they reach the point where they become vicious monsters, such people are irredeemable. But we have to remember
how they become so radicalized.
This is blowback. This guy and his ilk do not "hate us for our freedoms." They hate us because our government has destroyed their lives and the lives of the people they love.
They are like abused dogs that have become so vicious that they must be put down because they can't be rehabilitated.
But we should never forget how so many of these terrorists became the monsters they are today. Unless we can find a way to stop our governments from destroying the lives of so many innocent people, we are going to have to deal with an endless supply of
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