Terror suspect’s father fired from mosque

THE FATHER of suspected Al Qaeda operative Adnan El Skukrijumah has been fired from the mosque where he preaches in Florida. His son, branded a terror suspect and the subject of a worldwide FBI search, has disappeared. Now a respected Islamic holy man’s position at a Miramar mosque is gone, too.

“They fired me,” Gulshair El Shukrijumah said on Tuesday. “I can’t sleep at night anymore.” Mosque leaders say they do not suspect El Shukrijumah, 73, of terrorism. But they say their community is nervous about publicity over federal investigators accusing his 27-year-old son, Adnan of possibly coordinating al-Qaeda’s next attack against America.
“In light of what happened he was asked to step down,” said Trinidadian board member Abzal Hosein. “We want to let people know at no time we have  any affiliation with terrorists.”

As Gulshair El Shukrijumah nervously awaited a follow-up meeting with mosque directors Tuesday, he retraced elements of his religious career, which included 20 years of missionary work for the Saudi government. In 1995 he retired after 10 years leading a Brooklyn mosque where at least one suspect from the first World Trade Centre bombing in 1993 prayed. El Shukrijumah said he testified in a trial in which Abdul Rasheed was convicted of plotting to blow up the United Nations and the Holland Tunnel. El Shukrijumah said he understood that Rasheed, prosecuted under his legal name of Clement Hampton-El, had fought in Afghanistan to “help his brothers, the Muslims.” “He was prepared to give his life for that, and that does not mean  he was involved in any acts of terror,” El Shukrijumah said. “But I do not know.”

When he retired, El’Shukrijumah sent for his wife and six children in Saudi Arabia and moved to Florida. On Fridays, 50 to 100 people congregate at the small Al Hijrah  mosque on SW 27th St in Miramar, but the simple white building was empty most of Tuesday. Mosque leaders said they would continue to extend a small stipend  and charity to the family. Gulshair says the board asked him to serve as Imam, or spiritual leader, three years ago. He took two months to decide, uncomfortable with the idea that the leadership would want him to promote Trinidad. He is a Guyanese native more interested in spreading Islam. Most of Al-Hijrah’s 100 to 200 congregants are Trinidadians, members said. A group of nine or 10 Trinidadian friends founded the Caribbean American Islamic Association about a decade ago, said Hosein. A few years ago they bought a building next to the El Shukrijumah home. “After getting to know him and the experience and knowledge he had of Islam, we didn’t want that to go to waste. And what was more important, he was living next door.”

The FBI has said that during a meeting at the Miramar mosque a young convicted terror plotter, Imran Mandhai, tried to recruit Adnan El Shukrijumah to a scheme to induce anarchy by blowing up a Florida power plant. Federal authorities said El Shukrijumah refused, guessing correctly that he was being monitored by an FBI informant. Gulshair El Shukrijumah said he does not think the meeting took place at the mosque, but Hosein said FBI investigators must know what they are talking about. Adnan El ‘Shukrijumah’s family insists that the young man who left for Trinidad to pursue the import-export business in May 2001 is not  affiliated with terrorists. They say that he wanted to help his financially strapped father and that he would never want to harm a country where his family lives.