El Shukrijumah’s Irish Nightmare

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The first person I thought about when elusive al Qaeda terrorist Adnan El Shukrijumah resurfaced in the news was author/columnist Paul L. Williams. I knew that Williams would be all but drowned out by the “me, me, me’s” of those websites who would make it prime news that they had written about the bounty-on-his head terrorist first, rather than the news that matters most, why after all these years has the FBI not been able to capture him?

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The first time I heard the name El Shukrijumah was from the lips of Williams, who, in his own way, is an expert on the man who is said to have taken over jihad for the evil Osama bin Laden. Although Williams and I sort of went, (Al and Tipper like), our separate ways, there is no doubt that no one has done more to try to find the still on the loose El Shukrijumah. For this personally and costly pursuit, Williams got no thanks and sometimes even ridicule for staying on the terrorist’s track. Williams, the author of Day of Islam, didn’t just track the elusive El Shukrijumah from the safety of the pages of a book, but went out on the road to dangerous places where he thought the jihadist could be lurking. On a tipoff from Williams, CFP wrote back on June 6, 2007 that the high-flying, ever-elusive Adnan Gulshair El-Shukrijumah now had warts. “One of his biggest warts is Russell DeFreitas, the authority described “sad sack” and then suspected wannabe terrorist behind the badly bungled John F. Kennedy Airport plot. “While average guy, could-be-anybody looks have made him the Artful Dodger of the world of International Terrorism, El Shukrijumah has had his legendary mystique seriously shaken. Officials have told ABCNews.com that they heard repeated references to “Adnan” during extensive wiretaps conducted on the suspects’ telephone calls, including calls to Guyana and Trinidad”. It was Williams' voice in the wilderness that first zeroed in on El Shukrijumah as “Osama bin Laden’s point man, whose mission it is to nuke seven American cities” and who warned authorities in countless unanswered letters that he was no longer a one-man cell. El Shukrijumah, who is said to have attended flight schools in Florida and Norma, Oklahoma, along with Mohammad Atta and other 9/11 operatives, became a highly skilled commercial jet pilot. “Jafer the Pilot” is one of his more recognized nicknames. It was also Paul Williams, who pointed out that nondescript in both face and figure, El Shukrijumah, never needed expensive time out for plastic surgery as he fits in most anywhere. With a $5-million FBI bounty on his head El Shukrijumah has made a career of playing the phantom. In no matter what guise or which of the several passports he happens to be using, El Shukrijumah is, among other things, the quintessential illegal alien. It was Williams who reminded authorities that the only thing he can’t fake is the asthma from which he is said to suffer. It is mysterious how El Shukrijumah’s name now comes crashing into news headlines again, and given the circumstances that the Washington Post now claims that Shukrijumah “is among the top candidates to be al Qaida’s next head of external operations.” It must be the fighting Irish in him that kept Paul Williams against all odds on “Shuki’s (his personal nickname) track. Meanwhile, no matter where Jafer the Pilot is holed up, he gets no peace from Williams and can’t help but get that niggling prickling at the back of his neck about raised Irish dander that never goes away.