Thursday, October 06, 2005

More on Joel Hinrichs

 
He had a ticket to the game, but was turned away because he didn’t want his pack searched.

From the Counterterrorism Blog:
     There are some interesting video updates on the possible suicide bomber from the local Oklahoma press (all courtesy of News 9 in Oklahoma City).
A first report states that Joel Hinrichs may have tried to enter the football stadium from two different gates. He reportedly had a ticket to the game. The most concrete piece of information in the report comes from a student who says that a security guard working gate security told him that a young man with a backpack had tried to enter the stadium. When the guard tried to search the backpack, he says that the man wearing the backpack sprinted away. This is not a usual occurrence at Oklahoma University football games; the clear implication is that it may have been Hinrichs who sprinted off.
Also this:
     A third report provides a brief look at how Hinrichs was transformed from a National Merit Scholar to a “suicide bomber” (if that is indeed what he was). The report states that, just prior to his death, Hinrichs had spent much of his time at the Norman mosque that Zacarias Moussaoui attended. The report states that the bomb that killed Hinrichs contained TATP. The report also states that in the search of Hinrichs’s house and car, agents found an airline ticket to Algeria which was “linked” to Hinrichs’s Pakistani roommate. The reporter didn’t specify whether this was a one-way ticket, but did say that this discovery raises the question of whether others beside Hinrichs were involved.
I have a favorite quote from the local reports. An Oklahoma University student, explaining why he thought there was more to Hinrichs’s death than the OU administration would admit, said, “You don’t just blow yourself up next to 85,000 people for no reason.”
Indeed. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

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