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adnan el Shukrijumah, McMaster University

Is McMaster University graduate Ciro Vitolo, FBI's most wanted adnan el Shukrijumah?

By Judi McLeod
Tuesday, May 2, 2006

The first three photos above are FBI pictures of adnan "Jaafaral the Pilot" G. El Shukrijumah, described by Time Magazine as "an accomplished arab Guyanese bombmaker and commercial pilot". (Time Magazine, august 23, 2004). The fourth photo on the right is a picture identified in the McMaster University 1998 Engineer and Physics graduating class as graduate Ciro Vitolo.

If Ciro Vitolo is not Osama bin Laden field commander adnan El Shukrijumah, then it's his twin.

Canadian Online Director Services 411.ca lists only two persons in Canada with the surname Vitolo. One is a first name beginning with the letter `G'. and the other an `S'.

The name Ciro Vitolo appears nowhere on the Worldwide Internet. Nor does it appear anywhere in the thousands of articles carried in faculty or student newspapers.

a check of the name on Lexis Nexis turned up empty.

a mention of a Ciro Vitolo and his photograph turned up in a September 24, 2005 Joe Warmington Night Scrawler column in the Toronto Sun… "I've run out of space but I want to point out to the prime minister that limo drivers like Ciro Vitolo and independent cabbies like Mike Tranquada can't continue to make it with gas prices this high. Leadership is needed," Warmington wrote.

Brian Thompson of Canada Free Press attended the Toronto Sun library yesterday to view the photo. It was not the picture Thompson was looking for. The picture that appeared in Warmington's column, Thompson discovered, was that of a much older man.

Indeed, the only person otherwise identified as Ciro Vitolo is the one who's the dead ringer for adnan El Shukrijumah at McMaster University, whose picture was photographed in a glass framed picture of the 1998 graduating class, in the hallway of the third floor in McMaster University's John Hodgkin's engineering building.

If the Ciro Vitolo El Shukrijuma look-alike truly walks among us, and if it is just a coincidence that he looks just like the terrorist on the FBI suspected terror list, check in with CFP for a prompt and abject apology.

El Shukrijumah, who thanks in part to author Paul L. Williams, will be featured on this Saturday night's america's Most Wanted, television show, has a $5-million bounty riding on his head.

Chameleon like, El Shukrijumah, with his black hair and eyes and dark, Mediterranean complexion, could pose as a member of any number of nationalities. Perhaps his best recognizable feature is his small stature. El Shukrijumah stands only 5'3" to 5'6", and weighs about 132 pounds.

an FBI alert points out, "El Shukrijumah occasionally wears a beard. He has a pronounced nose and is asthmatic. El Shukrijumah speaks English and carries a Guyanese passport, but may attempt to enter the United States with a Saudi, Canadian, or Trinidadian passport."

The Washington Times reported on October 17, 2003 that El Shukrijumah posed as a student at McMaster while trying to obtain radioactive material from the school's small nuclear reactor.

"at McMaster University, where the al Qaeda agents may gave registered under fictitious names, Shukrijumah and friends wasted no time in gaining access to the nuclear reactor and stealing more than 180 pounds of nuclear material for the creation of radiological bombs," Paul L. Williams wrote in his book, The Dunces of Doomsday.

McMaster officially rebuts reports of the nuclear theft attempt.

It would be impossible to carry 180 pounds of material away from our nuclear reactor," a McMaster spokesman told Canada Free Press yesterday. "It's laughable because that only happens in Hollywood movies."

and as for El Shukrijumah having posed at McMaster as a student?

"We have no indication that the individual has ever been a student, nor has he ever been seen around any of our facilities," Chris Heysel, director of nuclear operations and facilities at McMaster, told the National Post in 2003. "We have come across no evidence to substantiate any of the information in the media report and we have every confidence in the security and safety surrounding the facility."

Dave Tucker, a health physicist who manages radiation safety for the university, said there is no indication that any nuclear material is unaccounted for. "There is a very small number of people who have access to our nuclear facilities and we know who they are and we know that (Mr. El Shukrijumah) isn't one of them. There are few enough that we know personally the people who have unescorted access to the reactor," he said.

If, as Tucker says, "a very small number of people" have (unescorted) access "to our nuclear facilities and we know that (Mr. El Shukrijumah) isn't one of them", how about Ciro Vitolo?

It would be helpful to know if McMaster University has a forwarding address for El Shukrijumah but student information of that nature can be kept confidential.

Shouldn't security trump university bureaucracy?

Their denial of having seen El Shukrijumah around any of their facilities notwithstanding, Canada Free Press has two questions for McMaster officials.

Have any McMaster officials bothered to compare the FBI El Shukrijumah file photos with that of Ciro Vitolo's photograph on display on the third floor of the John Hodgkin's engineering building?

Can McMaster brass assure authorities looking for him that adnan "Jafar the Pilot" G. El Shukrijumah, (alias adnan G. El Shukri Jumah, abu arif, Ja'far al-Tayar, Jaffar al-Tayyar, Jafar Tayar, Jaafar al-Tayyar) is not in fact the Ciro Vitolo of their photograph?

Lives could depend on it.

Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com


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