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Texas Terrorist Romeo, Khalid, Recounts Love for His American Juliet, Sarah

Posted on | February 24, 2011 | 14 Comments

The story of Texas college student Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, a Saudi national accused of plotting terrorist attacks, took a startling turn this evening when it was learned that Aldawsari had written of his infatuation with his university “language partner,” Sarah Rice Stender.

Eric Dondero discovered a May 2009 diary on what is believed to be Aldawsari’s personal blog, in which he wrote that he was in love with Stender and prayed to Allah that she could be converted to Islam (Aldawsari’s grammar and spelling uncorrected):

I met my language partner Sarah Rice Stender and she was nice and pretty, so I like her so much. Me and my friend Adbullrahman Alhamdi were with her today for out first meeting with her and she asked us to discuss about a topic, yet she likes to talk about religioun so we did. I think she has a good point about Islam and she is knowing better about this great faith and religioun.
I am reading this day a lot of my prophet mohammed ( peace be to upon him ) to build my knowledge about my religioun and about him…
I am falling in love of her…..
She is goregeous that I cann’t forget her just right away…
I am asking Allah the great to covert her to Islam and marry me.

Dondero’s discovery of the May 2009 post on Aldawsari’s blog followed identification of the Saudi student’s online activity by Bryan Preston of Pajamas Media.

UPDATE: Aldawsari (or al-Dawsari) was reportedly a student at Southern Plains College, a community college 30 miles west of Lubbock, where Aldawsari reportedly lived. The New York Times:

According to an affidavit filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the student, Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, indicated in online research and in a journal that he was considering attacking the Dallas residence of former President George W. Bush as well as hydroelectric dams, nuclear power plants, nightclubs and the homes of soldiers who were formerly stationed at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Mr. Aldawsari, a business major at South Plains College in Lubbock, Tex., is in the United States legally on a student visa, the bureau said. He came to the government’s attention on Feb. 1, when a North Carolina supply company reported that he had tried to order five liters of a chemical that can be used to make an explosive.
A subsequent investigation found that he had already obtained large supplies of the other two chemicals needed for the explosive compound — trinitrophenol or TNP — in December, court documents said.

The government’s accusation that Aldawsari turn to terrorism contrasts sharply with his earlier blog entries. As Preston notes at PJM, Aldawsari wrote:

This is an opportunity to be in the US to achieve my dream that I am working very hard and I am doing my best to catch it, that dream is mainly and simply to be an employee in google which is not impossible to achieve even if it is hard…

So he went from wanting to work for Google to wanting to kill President Bush? Or was his blog (part in English, part in Arabic) part of an elaborate ruse to hide his actual intent? Here’s an Associated Press video report about Aldawsari’s arrest.

For more background and commentary check the first Memeorandum thread, and the second Memeorandum thread.

UPDATE II
Eric Dondero adds another update to his original post confirming that Aldawsari and Stender have a Tennessee connection.

Category: Eric Dondero, Islam, Terrorism, Texas

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