| Wadih el-Hage | |
|---|---|
| Born | Wadih el-Hage (Arabic: وديع الحاج) July 25, 1960 Sidon, Lebanon |
Wadih el-Hage (Arabic: وديع الحاج, Wadīḥ al-Ḥāja; born July 25, 1960) is a former al-Qaeda member who is serving life imprisonment in the United States for his part in the 1998 United States embassy bombings. He was indicted[1] and arrested in 1998, and convicted on all counts and sentenced[2] to life without parole in 2001. He and some of his codefendants are currently in the supermax prison known as ADX Florence.
Most of the following information comes from a PBS story about el-Hage.[3]
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Wadih el-Hage is also known as "Abd'al Sabur" or "Abdel Saboor",[4] both different transliterations of Abdus Sabur, and "the Manager".
El-Hage was born to a Maronite Christian family in Sidon, Lebanon on 25 July 1960[5] but grew up in Muslim Kuwait, where he converted to Islam. From 1978 he studied urban planning at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. El-Hage interrupted his schooling to travel to Afghanistan via Pakistan to participate in the fighting against the USSR. He was reportedly under Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, an important figure in the early history of al-Qaeda. El-Hage returned to his university in January 1985, graduating in 1986. Married by now, he relocated to Arizona, where he held several low-wage jobs. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1989.
Over the next few years, the el-Hage family travelled repeatedly to Pakistan, initially taking along his mother-in-law and her husband. In an interview with PBS Frontline, el-Hage's mother-in-law said, "I was the matron surgical nurse at an Afghan surgical hospital. Wadih did not actually fight, but acted as an educator. My husband went with Wadih to deliver textbooks and Qur'ans to the young people. It was a Jihad, a fight for Islam."
At an Islamic conference in Oklahoma in December 1989, el-Hage met Mahmud Abouhalima, who was later convicted for his part in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. El-Hage's prosecutors say that Abouhalima told el-Hage to buy a .38 caliber revolver, that he did so, and that El Sayyid Nosair used that revolver to kill Rabbi Meir Kahane.
Prosecutors have also suggested that el-Hage and Jamaat ul-Fuqra were involved in the murder of Dr. Rashad Khalifa on January 31, 1990 in Tucson. They believe that el-Hage knows who killed Khalifa. And even if el-Hage was not himself involved, the prosecution asked why he had not told them what he knew. El-Hage's family says he was not in the country at the time of the murder.
At some later point el-Hage moved with his family to Arlington, Texas. He was called to the Brooklyn charity Alkifah Refugee Center, by the group's office in Tucson, via el-Hage's mosque in Arlington. Family members acknowledge that he was in contact with the Alkifah group, and say that he was called in to mediate a dispute. A week later, the group's leader Mustafa Shalabi was found stabbed to death in an apartment that he shared with Abouhalima. This murder is unsolved. El-Hage's family said that he cried when he heard that Shalabi was dead.
In January 1992, el-Hage was arrested for writing false checks. In the car with him was Marwan Salama, whose phone records show his contact with the conspirators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Shortly thereafter, el-Hage moved his family to Sudan and worked as a secretary for Osama bin Laden, who operated a network of businesses and charities, some of them fronts, in East Africa at the time. El-Hage often travelled to Europe in this capacity. Prosecutors believe that el-Hage became a key aide to Bin Laden. They also believe that he was trying to obtain chemical weapons for the terrorist group. Little public evidence has emerged from Sudan for these claims.
In 1994, his wife April convinced el-Hage to leave Sudan and stop working for Bin Laden's organization there. As his mother in law said, "April would have none of that. She is Muslim, but she is also American, and she wouldn't stand for it." But prosecutors believe that el-Hage continued to work for bin Ladin's organisation in Nairobi, Kenya. In Kenya, he became the director of Help Africa People, a Muslim charity organization, which Kenyan documents say helped control malaria. El-Hage also made money off in the jewelry business. Prosecutors say that el-Hage was in contact in Kenya with Abu Ubaidah al-Banshiri, who was al-Qaeda's #2 member until his death in 1996. The badly wanted al-Qaeda suspect Fazul Abdullah Mohammed moved in and worked at the house as a secretary. A letter,[6] thought to be from Mohammed, suggests el-Hage was the "engineer" of this East African cell. Yet another al-Qaeda member, Mohammed Saddiq Odeh admitted knowing el-Hage in Nairobi, and said that el-Hage attended his wedding.
The Nairobi house was raided on August 21, 1998. El-Hage's address book, captured at the time, contained the following names:
El-Hage himself was questioned two days later upon his return to Nairobi from Afghanistan. El-Hage's family says that he was told to leave Kenya. In September 1997 he returned to Arlington with his family; several accounts say that he sold all of his possessions to fund the trip. However, upon arriving in the United States, he was arrested on September 15, 1998.[9]
Before a Grand Jury, el-Hage denied knowing bin Laden and others accused of the embassy bombings. On 20 September he was arrested for perjury, and has not been free since. The indictment for the bombings themselves was read on 7 October of that year.
Hage, Bureau of Prisons number 42393-054, is in Florence ADMAX USP.[10]