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| Arabia |
| Martyrs Prefer Porsches Over Lexus Two to One |
| 2004-07-11 |
| EFL The gunman drove a Lexus. Young and well-educated, Sami al-Mutairi parked his royal blue luxury sedan behind a roadside sand berm and waited. He knew that carloads of American troops traveled the dusty road. Prosecutors say he cradled an AK-47 assault rifle in his hands. Al-Mutairi, 25, was from a large middle-class family, part of a major tribe in this gilded Persian Gulf state. He had a good government job as a social worker, and in college he had been known as an outspoken member of the liberal students group on the manicured campus of Kuwait University. But shortly after he graduated in June 2001, something changed. He became more stridently religious and began echoing the ideology of another wealthy Arab: Osama bin Laden. In time, al-Mutairi’s once-vocal resentment of restrictive Arab culture transformed into a zealous rejection of the West’s policies toward Muslims. In October 2001, he set off for Afghanistan but was turned back by Iranian authorities and returned home, fuming. As al-Mutairi waited on the sun-soaked morning of Jan. 21, 2003, a silver SUV approached. He gripped his rifle and aimed. The slight man with the thick beard opened fire, prosecutors say, killing a U.S. Army contractor in the passenger seat and seriously wounding another American worker beside him. The gunman--now in a Kuwaiti prison serving a life sentence for the shooting, though he maintains he is innocent--had become the third middle-class young man from this oil-rich U.S. ally to pick up a gun against Americans in just four months. It may be possible to understand how extremism brews in a squalid Palestinian refugee camp, but what accounts for the scions of middle-class Kuwaiti families who are choosing violence and martyrdom over a future in a nation with free education, abundant oil wealth and a four-hour workday? "They are the five-star terrorists," said Sami al-Faraj, an independent Kuwaiti defense analyst. "What makes someone who lives in a country of luxury choose to do that?" In October 2002, two Kuwaiti men who had fought in Afghanistan opened fire on Marines training on an island, killing one U.S. serviceman and wounding another. Investigators said the gunmen, Anas al-Kandari and Jassem al-Hajiri, who died in a shootout with Marines, had returned to Kuwait intending to establish a cell of Al Qaeda that could attack U.S.- and foreign-linked targets here. The gunmen--one of whom had recently bought a Porsche--left a will, portraying their attack against the Marines as retribution for the suffering of Palestinians. |
| Posted by:Zpaz |