Thanks for the investigative reporting, CL! I’d also like to hear what Bob’s contact in St. Louis has to say if he hears anything.

Sergey posted a link on my original page to Bare Naked Islam which has some comments supposedly by Alsaegh in bad, translated English. Apparently he put Arabic through a translator and copy/pasted the English translation and in some bits, it’s almost impossible to read. However, he mentions there about the men in security guard uniforms. The date of those comments, however, is after Darwish (Sept 29 and 30) and I don’t recall seeing that part in the news reports either.

There are definitely a lot of questions and holes and I’m skeptical, also. The biggest problem for me is the broad daylight bit and Darwish even says “in broad daylight and heavy traffic” with no witnesses? On the other hand, would they be frightened to come forward? Seems they could do so anonymously. Also, that the FBI and police are saying so little and it was not classified as a hate crime which seems so obvious.

On the other side, he doesn’t speak English and could have been mistranslated, why the reports aren’t clear or even contradictory. The bit about going to the hospital without calling the cops could also be a cultural thing. He’s not accustomed to doing so, but when he got to the ER, they’re duty would have been to call.

The other two attack stories make little sense. If someone attacks or threatens you, you remember the date and time pretty much exactly. But again, it could be a translation issue.

You think he’s using the incident to seek asylum?