U.S. officials now believe Diab, who left the U.S. permanently in 2001, is alive somewhere in Pakistan or Egypt. They also believe Deek was murdered in Pakistan sometime in 2005. In April of that year, Tawfiq says he received a telephone call from his older brother, Adel, in Jordan, saying that Khalil's wife told him her husband was dead. He says he confirmed the news with Khalil's widow, but he never asked her how his brother died.
"To me, he is dead—murdered, killed, I don't know," Tawfiq told the Weekly last year. "This is what she says. If she says this, why do I not believe it? What do I say? She's a liar?"
Saraah Olson and her daughter, Ala. Photo by John Gilhooley
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Olson claims Tawfiq is wrong about his brother's death. "I know Khalil's still alive," she says. "The FBI thinks he's dead, but not the CIA. Maybe to Tawfiq, he's dead, but he's not." While she acknowledges that Tawfiq never shared her husband's extreme religious or political views, she doesn't buy his claim that he never had reason to suspect Khalil of harboring terrorist sympathies. "Tawfiq is playing the martyr and doing a really good job of it," she says. "But he did not separate himself from them."
Thanks to his brother, Tawfiq has been visited repeatedly by the FBI—first after Khalil's arrest in 1999 and once again on Sept. 11, 2001. Each time, he says, the agents asked him if he knew of any terrorist attacks against the U.S., and each time, he said no. In September 2004, Tawfiq received yet another visit from the FBI, this time because Olson had just appeared in "Al-Qaeda Wedding," an ABC News segment alleging that Diab, Deek and Gadahn were members of a terrorist cell in Anaheim. "I was just a stepping stone to a green card," Olson told viewers. "I married a terrorist."
Also appearing on that segment was Bundajki, who traveled to New York with Olson and vividly recounted the time Gadahn attacked him at the mosque. It was Bundajki who, in conversations with FBI officials and the media, first identified the mysterious "Azzam the American" as none other than Gadahn.
In an interview last year, Tawfiq told the Weekly his wife called him at work shortly before the "Al-Qaeda Wedding" segment aired, saying that a camera crew was in front of their building. He hadn't seen Olson or Diab in years but attended their wedding and says he never had any indication that his brother, Diab or Gadahn—whom he never remembers seeing in the building—were part of a secret terrorist cell.
"They were our neighbors," he said. "This lady [Olson] made up a lot of things. There is a problem with this lady." Asked to comment for this story, Tawfiq refused. "This has been going on for 10 years," he said. "I want to get out of this."
Much has been made of Diab, Deek and Gadahn's membership in Charity Without Borders, which only lost its charter with the state of California after 9/11. The FBI refused to comment for this story, citing its ongoing investigation of Gadahn, who is wanted for treason. Garreth Lacy, a spokesperson for the California Department of Justice, which investigated Charity Without Borders, was equally mum. "Charity Without Borders' registration has been revoked, and our office has closed its investigation," he says. "But I do not have further comments on this matter at this time."
One person who does have an opinion on the matter is Rafat Qahoush, listed on the charity's paperwork as its secretary. Qahoush is a nursing professor in Garden Grove. His training school provides battlefield medical training to the Jordanian government and other pro-Western clients in the Middle East—hardly the pursuit of someone seeking to undermine America's allies in the war on terror.
Qahoush says he wasn't that active in the charity and recalls that Khalil Deek was never around—he always seemed to be out of the country. He only knew Gadahn in passing, as an American who tended to stand out at the mosque. He says he doubts Charity Without Borders ever raised enough money to send overseas, much less support terrorist activities.
"Most of the costs went to print [literature] and distribute sunscreens for cars that said, 'Recycle Your Oil,'" he says. "I'm not sure they made more than $2,000 or $3,000 out of the project." Qahoush adds that he's never been questioned by the FBI or the California Department of Justice about the charity. He also believes Olson is simply a disgruntled ex-wife. "I think she wants to [say these things] because she wants revenge," he says.
Bundajki counters Olson's claim that Charity Without Borders distributed radical literature inside the mosque. "It was one of the organizations that was collecting medicine, clothing and whatever donations that would come to the mosque and would send it to Chechnya, Kosovo, these war-torn Muslim countries," he says. "I honestly do not think they had anything to do with Al-Qaeda whatsoever."
Bundakji argues that after 9/11, many Americans seem to believe that anyone who opposes the Israeli government or who sought to defend Muslims from attack in places like Bosnia or Chechnya were terrorists. "If that's what it means to be a terrorist, then I am one, although I am the most peaceful man on Earth," he says. He points out that since Olson does not read or write Arabic, she cannot say with certainty what the charity's literature said in that language.
