The Obama administration's special envoy to the Islamic world has been caught red-faced in a statement he previously denied having made, slamming the indictment of a Palestinian Authority terrorist as a “travesty of justice.” Rashad Hussain, appointed last week by U.S. President Barack Obama as envoy to the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), originally denied a report claiming he had defended a man later convicted of being an accessory to terrorism. Prior to his appointment, Hussain had served as deputy associate counsel to the president. The remarks in question were initially published by the watchdog group, The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report , and through the Cybercast News Service , published by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). Apparent subsequent efforts to remove the evidence reported by Investors Business Daily – an alleged phone call to the Saudi Arabian-backed Washington Report for Middle Eastern Affairs (WRMEA), asking the group to delete his remarks from its website – were unsuccessful. IBD also reported that the comments, made at a 2004 Muslim students conference he attended in Chicago, when he was a student at Yale Law School, were provided to the White House by Politico.com . They included a statement by Hussain claiming that the government had railroaded accused terrorist accessory Sami Al-Arian. Al-Arian, at the time a Florida professor whose daughter had once worked for WRMEA, had rallied Muslims against the U.S., Israel and their allies in a speech at a Cleveland mosque. “Let's damn America, let's damn Israel, let's damn their allies until death,” he reportedly told worshipers from the podium. He was subsequently found to be running an operation in Florida on behalf of a terrorist group, and convicted in a plea bargain deal on a reduced charge of conspiracy to provide material support to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization. The group, listed in the United States as a federally-designated terrorist organization, is classified similarly in the European Union, the UK, Japan, Canada, Australia and Israel. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad group's stated mission is to destroy the State of Israel, and replace it with a Palestinian Islamic state – a goal which it continues to actively pursue. Earlier this month, a senior officer in the terrorist organization was killed in a joint IDF-ISA (Israel Security Agency) operation aimed at preventing a planned suicide bombing near the Karni Crossing with Gaza.
