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AMP Report – August 8, 2007
Arizona mosque targeted in acid bomb attack
A pop bottle bomb hurled outside a Glendale mosque in Phenix, Arizona, landed close to an Islamic religious leader involved in a high-profile lawsuit against Tempe-based US Airways.
Glendale police spokesman Sgt. Jim Toomey said the incident occurred 1 a.m. on August 8, 2007 outside the Albanian American Islamic Center at 67th Avenue and Greenway Road when Imam Didmar Faja, head of the center, and another mosque official were standing outside the mosque. The bottle, which contained chemicals, exploded 20 to 25 feet away. No one was hurt, and there were no other eyewitnesses.
Toomey said investigators are treating the incident as a possible hate crime, although it could be a case of mischief.
Imam Didmar Faja is one of six Muslim clerics known as the "Flying Imams" who are bringing a suit against US Airways alleging discrimination after they were removed from a Minneapolis to Phoenix flight last November.
The imams were ordered off the aircraft and were briefly detained by authorities after some passengers and crew became alarmed at what they believed was suspicious behavior.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations said that the imams and their attorney had received death threats stemming from the lawsuit, and urged Glendale police to consider that as a possible line of inquiry in their investigation.
"We appreciate the professional response of local law enforcement authorities and urge the FBI to add its resources to the investigation," council spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said.
A local CAIR official said the imam had recently received death threats. "Muslims have been targets after 9/11 here in Arizona and nationwide," said Mohammed Abuhannoud, civil rights director at the Arizona chapter. "It's difficult to believe it's a coincidence that someone threw something at that location at that time."
Glendale police spokesman Sgt. Jim Toomey said that the attack was one of six similar incidents involving the soda-bottle device in the Glendale area over a three-day period, but the other five did not appear to have a religious link.
"Until we know (the reason), we are going to assume that (the mosque attack) was religiously motivated," he added.
In the days after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the Phoenix valley area was the scene of a widely reported hate crime in which a Phoenix man shot dead a Sikh outside his gasoline station.
The victim, Balbir Singh Sodhi, was one of several Sikhs attacked in the United States after apparently being mistaken as possible supporters of Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, believed to be behind the attacks.
While Arizona does not have a hate crimes statute, longer sentences can be imposed if a bias against the victim's ethnicity, religion, sexuality or disability is shown to have motivated an attack. (Arizona Republic /East Valley Tribune/Reuters)
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