Terrorist’s Wife Tells All

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The story of Saraah Olson, who married an Islamic terrorist affiliated with the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, is a disturbing and fascinating look at the inner workings of an Islamic terror cell in Orange County, California. And perhaps the worst part is what happened when she tried to alert the FBI that her husband was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center attack: So I Married a Terrorist …

The first time Saraah Olson called the FBI about her husband was on Feb. 26, 1993. At 12:27 p.m. Eastern time, a truck bomb had exploded inside the garage of New York City’s World Trade Center.

While working on a term paper at her Garden Grove apartment, Olson turned on her television and saw coverage of the explosion, which killed six and wounded 1,042 people. She immediately called her husband, Hisham Diab, an Egyptian immigrant and insurance salesman for MetLife whom she had married two years earlier. She reached Diab at his office in Carson, California.

“They blew up the Trade Center,” Olson told him, her voice frantic with disbelief. “They keep saying, ‘The Arabs did it; the Arabs did it. They are blaming Arabs.’” Olson recalls that her husband didn’t seem the least bit surprised.

He uttered exactly two words. “They should,” he said. Then he hung up the telephone.

Olson had been growing suspicious about her husband for several months, ever since Diab had invited a blind Egyptian cleric to stay in their apartment building for three days while he gave inspirational sermons at the local mosque. The cleric, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, would later be charged in connection with the Trade Center bombing. But more than anything, it was Diab’s apparent lack of surprise and cold reaction to the Trade Center bombing that led Saraah Olson to call the FBI.

“I was like, son of a bitch,” Olson says. “What kind of person would say, ‘they should’ unless they know something they’re not supposed to know?”

Immediately after calling Diab, Olson dialed the number of the Santa Ana office of the FBI. A nice-sounding woman answered the telephone and asked how she could help. “I need to give someone some information,” Olson said. “I don’t know who I should talk to. I married an Arab. He’s Egyptian. He’s a friend of the blind cleric. He has some extreme political beliefs, and I just told my husband they blew up the Trade Center and are blaming Arabs, and he said they should. I just think somebody should look into that.”

As Olson recalls the conversation, the woman thanked her for calling and hung up.

“She didn’t take my name or anything,” Olson recalls.

So Olson called the FBI again. She demanded that the woman write down her name and telephone number. This time, the woman was less friendly.

“We’re not interested in that,” she said.

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Last updated: 2023-04-04 11:11 am PDT
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