BEIRUT, 9 July 2006 — The arrest of Assem Hammoud, the alleged Lebanese mastermind of a terror plot in New York, has shocked family and neighbors who say he was never a religious fanatic. “He is innocent ... and he does not belong to any organization,” his mother, Nabila Qotob, told journalists yesterday before leaving the family home in the Clemenceau neighborhood of downtown Beirut for an unknown destination.
“We are all in shock, and so is his family. Assem loved old sports cars, and going out to party all night. He was never too religious and definitely not a fanatic,” a neighbor, who did not want to give his name, told AFP.
After lengthy surveillance focusing on his use of the Internet, Lebanese authorities arrested Hammoud on April 27 on charges of “forming a gang in order to carry out terrorist acts in the United States,” a Lebanese judicial source said. Hammoud, a 31-year-old economics lecturer at the private Lebanese International University, is being questioned by a military prosecutor.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation said Friday Hammoud was the mastermind of an Al-Qaeda group which had been planning to launch suicide attacks on tunnels connecting New Jersey with New York. Lebanese police said Friday Hammoud has admitted under interrogation to belonging to an “extremist organization” and that he had been “preparing to carry out a big act of terrorism in the United States.”
Hammoud’s bright red 1967 MG was parked yesterday near his family’s newly renovated old apartment building where he lives on the ground floor with his mother. His other car, a navy blue four-wheel-drive, bears a “For Sale” sign giving a telephone number that now rings as out of service.
There was no answer from the intercom at the gate of the building yesterday. “There’s nobody home,” Abu Jean, who owns a grocery opposite the Hammoud family building, told AFP. “His mother bought two gallons of water this morning and took them home. Then, shortly afterward, she went back out and walked down the street. We don’t know where she went or if she is coming back,” he added.
Neighbors said Hammoud lived for several years abroad where he earned a doctorate in economics in Canada. His two brothers are still abroad. His mother, a ceramics artist, began wearing the Islamic veil after the death of her husband in a relatively common local practice. Neighbors insist that she is not a religious fanatic.
“Assem is a good son who took his father every week to Friday prayers at the mosque until he died last year,” said one neighbor. “After that, his mother said that Assem stopped going to the mosque.” Another neighbor, who did not wish to be identified, said Hammoud sometimes wore the Islamic traditional white pants and robe and a small white skullcap.
