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American Beheading Suspect’s Mother Apologizes In Video

American Beheading Suspect’s Mother Apologizes In Video

Washington (AFP) — The mother of an American worker suspected of beheading one of several colleagues he had tried to convert to Islam has broken her silence, apologizing in a video posted online.

Alton Nolen, 30, is due to be charged Monday with first-degree murder, as well as assault and battery with a deadly weapon. He may also face federal charges.

It was after being fired from his job at the Vaughan Foods in an Oklahoma City suburb that Nolen went on a frenzied knife rampage Thursday, severing the head of a colleague and wounding another before being shot by his former boss.

“My heart is just so heavy right now,” his mother Joyce Nolen said in the video posted Saturday on Facebook. “That’s not my son.”

The incident came in the wake of a series of beheadings of Western captives by militant fighters in the Middle East and Algeria, but U.S. officials have not confirmed any link to the Oklahoma case. Nolen had recently converted to Islam.

“His family, our hearts bleed right now because what they saying Alton has done,” Nolen’s mother said in the short video statement, sitting next to her daughter Megan.

“I want to apologize to both families — because this is not Alton.”

She said she was hoping that justice will prevail and “the whole story will come out.”

In a separate Facebook entry, Megan Nolen said her brother “has been a great influence to me and has always been a loving and caring person.”

“He has never been a violent person and has never done any physical harm to anyone. Only God knows why what happened took place,” she added.

“I am praying for the families as well as for my brother.”

– Troubling online postings –

On Facebook, Nolen went by the moniker Jah’Keem Yisrael. He posted photographs of the World Trade Center towers going up in smoke during the September 11, 2001 attacks and of graves.

“SHALOM ALHAKEIUM O YE MUSLIMS AND NON-MUSLIMS ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT THE ONES WHO DIED IN FAITH (SERVANTS OF ALLAH SWT) WILL RISE FROM THE DEAD TO BE JUDGED WITH EVERYBODY ON EARTH WHOS STILL LIVING…THE ONES WHO DIED IN SIN WILL REMAIN IN THEIR GRAVES CAUSE THEIR ALREADY IN HELL!!!” he wrote on September 17 in a posting that got five “likes”.

In another post in May disparaging Americans who eat pork, women who don’t cover their hair and gays getting married, he warned that “SHARIA LAW IS COMING!!!!!!”

His account shows he has 1,470 “friends,” many of them women wearing the Muslim veil.

The Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City has stressed that “this unwarranted act does not represent Islam in any shape or form.”

“We condemn, and are 100% against, the heartless & unnecessary act committed by the suspect. We stand for justice.”

Local media quoted the group’s Saad Mohammed as saying other Muslims who attended the same mosque as Nolen considered him “a little odd” and “a little weird”.

But Mohammed also noted that Nolen’s behavior did not raise any red flags, and that he had attended services during which sermons were delivered condemning beheadings such as those committed by Islamic State militants based in Iraq and Syria.

AFP Photo

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Stepmother Of Teen Stowaway Defends Herself In Court

Stepmother Of Teen Stowaway Defends Herself In Court

By Julia Prodis Sulek, San Jose Mercury News

SAN JOSE, Calif.—The same day the father of the 15-year-old stowaway was in Hawaii trying to reunite with his runaway son, another family drama involving the teen’s stepmother unfolded Tuesday in a San Jose courtroom.

The stepmother, who had been accused by her cousin of treating her stepson “like trash,” defended herself in court against another accusation by the same man—that she didn’t properly care for an elderly uncle.

“He’s not being truthful,” Sainab Abdi said of the cousin as she stood outside the courtroom Tuesday. “Don’t believe this guy. This is wrong.”

She said she has been very worried about the teen and feels badly for him.

“He’s my son. I’m in shock,” she said. “I hope he comes home soon.”

For the family of Somali refugees, who fled their war-torn country and lived in a refugee camp before moving to America, it’s been a tough 10 days in their adopted home.

Ever since Yahya Abdi ran away from the family’s Santa Clara home, hopped the fence at Mineta-San Jose International Airport and climbed into the wheel well of the nearest jetliner—which happened to be Hawaii-bound—his family has been under the microscope. Reporters have been camped outside their home since April 10, the day Yahya somehow survived subfreezing temperatures and extreme altitudes in the wheel well before jumping down onto the tarmac of the Maui airport, disoriented and weaving and asking for a bottle of water.

He told officials there he had argued with his father and stepmother and longed to see his birth mother, whom he recently found out is still alive and lives in an Ethiopian refugee camp.

The stepmother’s cousin, Mukhtar Guled—a San Jose insurance agent and security guard—told this newspaper last week that Yahya was unhappy at home because his stepmother, Sainab Abdi, treated his six youngest siblings like “king and queens,” but that Yahya and his older sister and younger brother with a different mother were treated poorly.

On Tuesday, Abdi defended herself, saying Guled had an ulterior motive to make her look like a bad person: He was losing his battle to care for his uncle and be in charge of his affairs—a job that Abdi held until last week and came with $600 a month in government assistance.

Once the teenager ran away, Abdi said in court papers, she said she stopped working for her uncle because the media frenzy kept the family holed up in the house and she couldn’t leave.

Abdi wasn’t named in the case—her brother, Ahmed Abdi, was—but she spoke to the judge anyway, telling him not to believe Guled and that he was making life even more difficult while she and her husband tried to reunite with their teenager.

Guled claimed that Sainab Abdi neglected to take the elderly man to his doctors’ appointments or fill his prescriptions and that his apartment was infested with roaches.

The house has since been cleaned up and he is living there with his sister.

Family Court Judge Aaron Persky dismissed Guled’s petition for conservatorship, saying the elderly uncle appeared in good hands.

Meanwhile, it was unclear when Yahya’s father, Abdulahi Abdi Yusuf, would be able to return home with his son. An e-mail sent to the Hawaii Department of Human Services was not returned. The teenager has been in the agency’s custody since shortly after he was found on the Maui tarmac. His father has said he was being treated for breathing difficulties at a Honolulu hospital.

Shyb via Flickr