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Home Front: WoT
Doctor faces terror charges in Palm Beach
2005-05-30
West Boca · A 50-year-old doctor was arrested Saturday morning on a federal terrorism charge. Dr. Rafiq Abdus Sabir was charged with conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. He was being held in the Palm Beach County Jail waiting to appear in U.S. District Court.

U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Charles Miller in Washington, D.C., declined to comment on the charge against Sabir. FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela also declined to comment. Spokesmen from the Department of Homeland Security could not be reached for comment, despite an attempt by phone.
"None of us will say any more!"
The charge Sabir faces is from a 1996 law making it a crime for anyone in the United States to knowingly aid terrorist organizations. The maximum sentence for conviction is 15 years in prison.

The charge against Sabir was posted on the Palm Beach County Jail's Web site after he was booked at 1:26 p.m., but later was removed from the Web site on orders of the FBI. "My boss, Maj. Christopher Kneisley, made it very clear to me the FBI and the other federal agencies didn't want this information to be released," said Sgt. Konstandinos Patzanakidis, a jail official. "We're going to do whatever they want us to do."

FBI agents swarmed Sabir's home at about 7 a.m., neighbor Dan Kozan said. A woman who answered the door at his home in the gated Villa San Remo community west of Boca Raton on Saturday afternoon said only, "There's nothing to talk about."
"I will say no more!"
Dr. Daniel McBride, spokesman for the Islamic Center of Boca Raton and a friend of Sabir, said Sabir works in the emergency rooms of two hospitals in Palm Beach County. "That's absurd," McBride said of the charge against Sabir. "He is a quality guy and a quality physician. He's all about helping others. That's why he became a doctor.

"It would shock me beyond belief if [the allegation] was true."
Prepare to be shocked.
Sabir graduated from City College of New York with a bachelor's degree in biology and in 1981 graduated from Columbia University's medical school with a specialty in emergency medicine, according to Florida state records and Columbia's alumni Web site. He practiced in the New York City area in the 1980s and '90s before moving to Florida. Sabir received his Florida driver's license in 2002 and his medical license in 2003.
Article doesn't say if he's American born but he sure is American trained. Columbia's a very respectable med school.
Posted by:Steve White

#10  Got the Holy Grail of Comments, there, CS?
Posted by: .com   2005-05-30 21:51  

#9  I Want Him Dead.
Posted by: Crineper Speresh7329   2005-05-30 21:47  

#8  To paraphrase Walter Hagen:

"I don't want to be a doctor, I want to live like one."

Swish - keep your head down!
Posted by: Jack is Back!   2005-05-30 15:34  

#7  With that kinda money I coulda been a Doctor!
Posted by: Master Love   2005-05-30 14:47  

#6  Steve, you're forgetting expenses for shipping medical supplies to Afghanistan and Chechenya.
Posted by: Carl in N.H.   2005-05-30 14:12  

#5  WT6418, thanks for the link.

500K in med school loans? Something smells rotten. VERY rotten.

My employer has a med school. Tuition is about 34K a year; add another 5-6K a year for incidental expenses. Add another 10 to 12K a year to live like a student. If you borrowed every single penny (and you could), you'd owe about 200K coming out. That's a whole lot of money, it forces itself into career decisions --

-- and it's less than half of what this guy supposedly owes. For an additional 300K (75K a year) I could live like a prince as a med student.

It's barely possible that if he borrowed money from the HEAL program (Health Education Assistance Loan), which charges interest at market rates, and then made no payments and let the charges compound, that you could owe 500K, but the program doesn't let that happen -- once you graduate from med school they hand you a payment schedule.

Something smells about the money. Follow the money.
Posted by: Steve White   2005-05-30 13:05  

#4  I coulda had a purdy good 10 year run from 18-28 with half a million.
Posted by: Shipman   2005-05-30 12:43  

#3  (50-year-old) Sabir, who was educated at City College and Columbia University's medical school and owes $500,000 in student loans

Day-yum ! I think I see why jihad seemed like a good life choice to him.

Posted by: Carl in N.H.   2005-05-30 10:14  

#2  Nobody ever picks up that, in these cases, the guys are all normal on the outside, and America-loathing fanatics on the inside. "But he's such a nice guy!" they shout as the feds lead him off. Here's a thought: maybe they know how to keep cool and not blow their cover? Jeez...every single time we get one of these, it's the same way. And yet nobody ever pauses to think that maybe it's a pattern.
Posted by: gromky   2005-05-30 08:56  

#1  This article with photo says Sabir is US-born, converted from Catholicism in high school. His ex-wife had nothing but good things to say about him. She neglected to say why she is no longer married to him.
Posted by: Whutch Threth6418   2005-05-30 06:16  

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