Abu Elias: Guarded by Power?

6 October 2010
last update 10 October

Abu Elias was a potentially central figure in the actual bombing of Pan Am 103, a supposed nephew of PFLP-GC founder Ahmed Jibril. Some evidence says he may well have slipped through the police dragnet called Autumn Leaves, ferrying the "fifth device" that may ultimately have gotten onto Pan Am 103. This is largely based on the second-hand account of Marwan Khreesat via an FBI agent (best explanation here), and is open to question. For the sake of exploration, however, I've chosen to proceed as if Khreesat's tale of Abu Elias is true.

In my first post on his post-Lockerbie history ended with the credible allegation that Abu Elias was now living in the United States. Member of Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the South of Scotland, Christine Grahame, revealed this in parliamentary session, citing legal documents secured by Megrahi's defense team. She said he was living under the name Basel Bushnaq, who's listed as residing in Reston Virginia, near the nation's capitol and the monument to the victims of flight 103 at Arlington cemetery.

I still don't know what to do with that allegation, but toss it aside reflexively I cannot. A second post on name analysis suggests nothing concrete, but offers some reason to wonder. Basel, meaning "kingly," is evocative of Abu Elias' original true name, Kaisar (meaning, of course, Caesar). Bushnaq is a legitimate Arabic family name, meaning Bosnian/Bosniac, but coincidentally it's also the only Arabic name with "Bush" in it. The data I've collected on Bushnaq starts suddenly in mid-2001, with nothing before.

I've gathered additional information on Mr. Bushnaq, none of which has forced me to rule out what Ms. Grahame said over there in Scotland. Some of it is personal enough I should continue sitting on it, but some is publicly available and widely seen already. In general, online commentery under his name (or variant BaBushnaq) suggest a background in Syria, a nuanced view of the Baath party, animosities with the Muslim Brotherhood, and no particular religious fervor. This could well be consistent with Abu Elias - a conservative Lebanese Christian working in a mainly Muslim milieu.

In 2008, the Investigative Project on Terrorism captured on audio “jailed former leader of the American Muslim Council (AMC), Abdurahman Alamoudi, expressing his support for Hamas and Hizballah.” Mr. Bushnaq commented, on October 15 2008:

“American system was too good for him. He lived in fancy house in Virginia paid for from contribution money he used to collect from Saudi Arabia and Golf countries. He used all privileges of freedom of speech and movement.
[...] Eventually he could not hide his real mission; influenced by emotional moment, he disclosed his reality in public. [...] I am happy that this episode of crime and terror is over, hope he will learn in jail the minimum amount of decency.” [source]

Just after Megrahi's release from prison on 20 August, 2009, the "Lockerbie bomber" publicly threatened to name the real bomber. On the 23rd, the Sunday Express (Scotland) published an e-mail from an unnamed suspect “X” who had reportedly been Abu Elias. They had asked him if they could publish his name, and Bushnaq responded:

“Sorry, I don’t think that I can help in this case. It is a clear case of either mistaken identity and/or fabrication. I don’t wish my name to be mentioned in any capacity in the press. I am sure you understand the sensitivity of this matter since I have a family and children.”[source]

On September 2 Christine Grahame named this mysterious suspect anyway, in open session. Bushnaq was immediately contacted by Channel 4 News, via his Facebook page, and made a comment that was seen across much of the UK and parts of the world:

"It has been brought to my attention that she has been repeating allegations against my name. I suggest that she stops this unless she has solid legal ground. It is not advisable to (go) recklessly slandering others, especially when this comes from MSP."[source]

One might expect a sudden change of tone from Mr. Bushnaq following this unsettling and unexpected episode. And in fact, the next “comment” I’ve found, from ten days later, is rather peculiar. On September 12, Bushnaq joined a site called “Mepeace,” apparently a Middle East peace-oriented Myspace knock-off, with Arabic and Hebrew lettering. Immediately after joining and thus declaring he was peace, Bushnaq posted the following photo and caption:

Peace must be guarded by power.

As far as I can tell that was his purpose for joining; his meager activity at Mepeace lasted but two days after that. It does have a slightly chilling effect. The same photo has been used since for his Facebook and Twitter avatars at least, where additional clues might reside. (indeed - the post "Bosnian in What Way?" starts there)

Bosnian in What Way?

Abu Elias, Yugoslavia, and the Bosnian
10 October 2010

In my informal investigation into alleged Lockerbie bomber Basel Bushnaq, the first thing that pops out is his unusual family name. It of course means Bosniac (from Bosnia) rendered in Arabic, and here converted back to English in one of several possible ways.

And it's the only Arabic name with Bush in it, and it doesn't appear anywhere I can find prior to June 2001. Basel mentions at Facebook his favorite politicians - top-tier Republicans including Reagan, Palin, and McCain, but excluding any Bushes. Conversely, his bio section lists only one thing - the reason his name makes no such exclusion. For additional detail or realism, he added there:

"Rooted to Lakisic family (prounced Lakjitch) from Mostar, Bosnia. Never been there. My grandfather’s Mosque is well known Landmark in Mostar."

That's it. Nothing about him except that odd name explained. So I look up the family name Lakisic in relation to Mostar. There's a town, Lakišić Kula, 16.5 km from Mostar. [source] There seem to be people of that family name around, at least one living in Mostar. And there's a link centered around a mosque (Basel's grandpa's?) One site I  found quickly, listing Yugoslavian war crimes in Bosnia, mentions over a dozen mosques in Mostar alone either damaged or destroyed. Interestingly one entry said:

"Hadji-Ahmed aga Lakisic Mosque in Mostar, [built] 1650, was heavily damaged in May, 1992." [source]

The conflict that spawned such destruction was of course between Muslim separatists and Serb forces, one of several conflicts that marked the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. One interesting report on this era mentions that "the PFLP-GC had networks and offices in Yugoslavia that also housed HizbAllah operatives," among the facts that made Bosnia, to the authors, "Iran's European springboard." That might have been of relevance as Iran sought to avenge its downed airbus in Europe, 1988. The same report, by Bodiansky and Forrest, also states some of the foreign terrorists engaged in false-flag attacks on Muslim civilians, and heinous ones, designed "to win world sympathy and military intervention." It cites these as beginning in May 1992.

So while that last report is something I can't vouch for, and while Basel says he's never been to Bosnia, it seems entirely possible Abu Elias was. At any rate, we know he was in Yugoslavia. FBI Agent Marshman's report (partial, re-created from transcripts) relates Khreesat's experience with this PFLP-GC bigwig. No exact explanation is read out,  but it seems the double agent's first trip to Yugoslavia, right before his big job in Germany, was to meet with Abu Elias.

"Khreesat did not know the function of Abu Elias in Yugoslavia, nor did he know the purpose of the meeting that was to be held in Yugoslavia."

FBI chief investigator Richard Marquise has presumably read the whole report, and his informative 2006 book SCOTBOM agreed:

In September 1988, Dalkamouni summoned Khreesat to Yugoslavia. ... Khreesat ... recalled they were supposed to meet with Abu Elias, but they never met. ... Elias was supposed to have been in Yugoslavia the previous month, but failed to appear." [SCOTBOM, p 54]

And another verification comes from Pierre Salinger - admittedly not the best source - investigating sometime after the 1991 indictments against the Libyans. It started with an interview he'd done with Khreesat in 1989, where he had been told about Abu Elias. Under questioning at trial in 2000, he said the following:

Q Were you given any information as to where Abu Elias was going to be coming from?
A I don't know where he was from, but at one point, when Marwan Khreesat was in Germany, he was told by -- that Abu Elias was coming to Germany to see him. That's -- Dalkamoni did that. But that didn't work. And so when all these people got arrested -- you remember that?
Q Well, before you go any further, I don't want to explore hearsay.
...
Q Did you subsequently make inquiries in Yugoslavia in connection with Abu Elias.
...
A I made questions in Yugoslavia. I've got papers that were given to the National Security Council and -- by Sandy Berger. That's the most important thing that I gave him. And when these lawyers came to Washington and asked me to get those papers back, they refused to give them.
Q I see. So you say that you recovered certain papers from Yugoslavia which you handed over to the National Security Council?
A Correct.
Q And they still have those papers?
A They still have those papers.

And they were about Abu Elias. These documents have never been found or publicized, but I tend to think they do exist and show, at the very least, that our mysterious fugitive was in Yugoslavia before, and perhaps after Lockerbie. They might even show he was in Bosnia in 1992, around the time the Lakisic mosque in Mostar was bombed, but that clearly is just speculation.

Certainly anywhere along his work in the Yugoslav disintegration, our man could have learned that Bushnaq means Bosnian, which is funny given the former US president's name. He could learn of the town Mostar and a family Likisic, and later somehow relocate to be right by the CIA. A new identity needing a name, another Bush in power, a need to explain his Arabic accent and Syrian background along with his fair looks ... so he says his people were Bosnian. It might just have been too clever to pass up, and it's too late to undo it now. Bad decisions do happen.

Basel to Basil: a Kubaissi Link?

7 October 2010

Now this has just got to be a coincidence, or so I hope, as I'm putting it right out there on the Internet. But it's just so weird and sends a chill down my imaginative spine, that I felt I should share it with others.

Basel Bushnaq is hopefully just amused by now at the false mythology building up around his quiet suburban life. Since being named as former PFLP-GC terrorist fugitive "Abu Elias," aka Khaisar (Kaiser) Haddad, I've re-posted that charge, done a name analysis between the three, and some online commentary analysis. So far it seems possibly consistent to me, but still within the range of likely coincidence. I've certainly seen weirder.

Unfortunately, some of that is attached to this same case. For what I think will be a final bizarre installment in the Bushnaq line, I need to bring his wife into it, or her name anyway. The source I'll cite to start with is openly available at DC blockshopper.com. It's also the earliest reference I've found to Bushnaq himself. On 12 June, 2001, a Washington DC apartment (on M Street SW), owned by the couple Basel A Bushnaq and Raghad Kubaissi, was sold for $89,000. [source]

Basel's cohabitant in all later homes is listed is Raghad K. Bushnaq, suggesting they were married shortly after this sale. It's her maiden name that is the source of the coincidence in question. One site lists 31 people named Kubaisi (single s) living in the United States at some point, but only one Kubaissi – Raghad. [source] This would presumably be zero after the marriage, but for what it's worth, at least one other was here later - Sanad Kubaissi, a young Saudi-American guy, who starred in a US reality TV show about immigrants in 2007-2008. [source]

So her name as rendered is rare in the United States, but the small pool yields one prominent name from the past with a yankee link: Dr. Basil al-Kubaissi, a Palestinian terrorist organizer assassinated by Israeli spies in 1973. He was a US-educated Law professor, and was teaching at the American University in Beirut at the time. A 2005 book by two Israelis described him as “one of Black September’s most secret and ambitious leaders,” but appearing respectable and above suspicion. He specialized in failure, trying to kill Golda Meir twice in the 1960s. Earlier he failed to kill Iraq’s king Hussein in 1956. Afterward, Kubaissi would usually flee to New York. [Bar-Zohar, Michael and Eitan Haber. Masacre in Munich. 2005. pp 156-58. Google books]

Later, Al-Kubaissi joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and became “a trusted lieutenant of Gerorge Habash,” placed “in charge of the arsenal of the [Black September] organization in Europe” The "Mossad" assassins prowling Europe for plotters of the Munich Massacre stumbled upon Kubaissi by a fluke as he dropped into Paris. On the night of April 6 1973, after doing a deal with a local prostitute it's said, the professor was felled in the street by two men, with nine silenced shots. [source - see above]

It's nothing at the moment but curious that Mr. Bushnaq wound up with the approximate first name, and Raghad the last name, of this same prominent terrorist leader - until they married in America. Just by names it’s possible she is actually his daughter, and it can't be ruled out by age - Mrs. Bushnaq is just old enough to have been a baby daughter to Basil, somewhere between one and two years of age, at the time of his death.

As for the PFLP-GC mover Abu Elias in this possibility, this could be consistent if he wound up falling for an American girl named Kubaissi. The professor's daughter or not, he might well take the reminder of an earlier hero of the PFLP clan, and pick a variant of Basil for his new name.

Logical constructions aside, this would be too obvious a thing to do, like Keyser (Kaiser) Söze in The Usual Suspects stringing together "Quartet" and "Skokie, Illinois" in the same non-seqitur. In a movie, it works. In real life? Probably not. This apparent verbal hint must just be another slightly odd thing about Mr. Bushnaq, who probably is clean and a Bosnian from the Mostar Lakisic clan as he says.

Perhaps he was just singled out to be picked on for these random coincidences that could make him seem all sinister. Some things about "Lockerbie bomber" al Megrahi stood out as well, and that doesn't mean it was right to fake evidence and blame him. It wouldn't be right for that innocent man and his defense team to take it out like this on another unusual but innocent bystander, releasing his name to that jabberjaw Christine Grahame. But that must be what's going on here. I hope.

On the other hand, if their darker inklings and mine are even partly true, all I can say to those who are scrambling on the damage control is - please don't kill me. It's a little too open for that by now, isn't it? Just call this one a pan and give him another new life somewhere else. And like that - poof. He's gone.

But really, name games don't usually add up to much, do they?

Where in the World is "Abu Elias"?

March 24 2010
major update April 4
(props to Baz, see comments)
last edits 22 September

The Bomb Man Who Got Away
It's time to consider an amazing allegation I'd glossed over before as too complex. "Abu Elias" was a central and elusive figure in the PFLP-GC cell in Neuss tasked with downing an American airliner. The Neuss bomb-maker, Jordanian double-agent Marwan Khreesat, mentioned "Elias" in interviews with the FBI as essentially the fly in the ointment. Khreesat was supposed to keep live bombs out of terrorist hands, but this PFLP-GC higher-up was sent to inspect his work and then take possession of it and sneak it onto a plane (this is explained in detail elsewhere). One live bomb and "Abu Elias," at least, evaded the German police net just six weeks before the PA103 bombing.

For a while, he was a very wanted man. But then the Libyan villains were indicated instead, and by now, reportedly, "Abu Elias" is living safely in Washington DC with a government job and a desire to keep quiet. Below is a partial compendium of claims I haven't yet (or can't) rigorously verify. Much of this could be wrong but the picture that emerges is too amazing to miss seeing in its entirety.

Version One, 1992 - Khaisar Haddad 
No big surprise, "Abu Elias” was an alias, and and the first alleged true name attached to it was Khaisar Haddad. Most Internet postings of this simply repeat the conclusion of the Aangirfan blog (“Reportedly, Khaisar Haddad, known as Abu Elias, was an agent of the US government…”) [1] Otherwise the sources giving this name are old and of the questionable early 1990s revisionism of Juval Aviv, Lester Coleman, et al.

But these cite a clear external source, a report from Yassar Arafat’s PLO shortly after the indictments of Megrahi and Fhimah. An early mention was  Time magazine’s controversial “Why Did They Die?” cover story, in April 1992. “Last month the Palestine Liberation Organization reported that [the bomb] was built by Khaisar Haddad (a.k.a. Abu Elias).” [2] By this telling, our subject built the bomb that wound up back in his hands, perhaps after being modified by Khreesat, who apparently made the other four himself (as linked above, see this post). Coleman and Goddard discussed this report in Trail of the Octopus:

In an 80-page report leaked to the press on both sides of the Atlantic, the PLO described a number of meetings between Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, the Iranian minister of the interior, Ahmed Jibril of the PFLP-GC and other officials in the late summer of 1988 to plan a revenge attack on an American airliner. According to the PLO's sources, the Toshiba radio-cassette bomb used to destroy Flight 103 had been built by Khaisar Haddad, also known as Abu Elias, a blond, blue-eyed Lebanese Christian member of the PFLP-GC, who passed the completed device on to an Iranian contact in Beirut. [3]

One must wonder if his fair appearance was part of his tool kit for getting past European security. But here Haddad just handed it off in Lebanon, counter to what Khreesat's story suggested. By the book's implausible narrative, the bomb was then slipped into Lebanese-American Khalid Jaafar's luggage using the CIA-protected heroin smuggling system at Frankfurt Airport.

Version Two: Goben to Megrahi
The identity of "Abu Elias" again surfaced at the Zeist trial in 2000 with vague news of the supposed deathbed confessions of PFLP-GC member Mobdi Goben ("Goben Memorandum") This reportedly explains how the enigma sneaked the bomb (directly it seems) into Khalid Jaafar's luggage, using just the system alleged in Trail of the Octopus.  Beyond what the PLO's report said, Goben adds that "Elias" was a close relative of PFLP-GC founder Ahmed Jibril. [4] The defense wanted to explore it further, but Lord Advocate Colin Boyd, who was able to read the memo, blocked this as a "fishing expedition." [5]

The alleged true bomber formed part of Megrahi's 2002 appeal and the second appeal granted in 2007. The second time triggered a report from UK Sunday Express, announcing "Finger of Blame for Lockerbie Pointed at American Citizen." This "Abu Elias" sounds like the Goben version, described as a nephew of Jibril but as of summer 2007 anyway living in America and enjoying "a new identity the Sunday Express cannot divulge." [6]

The charge was repeated again by Megrahi and his legal team on the convict's compassionate release in August 2009. Again it was heralded by a story in the Express headlined "I'll Reveal True Identity of Bomber."

"The man Megrahi believes was Abu Elias now lives in a suburban neighbourhood near Washington’s Dulles airport, just a few miles from the White House and the Lockerbie memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. He even has his own Facebook social network page. ... He is the nephew of Syrian terror warlord Ahmed Jibril ... works as a schools engineer for the US government ..." [7]

The paper's team followed the name given (and hopefully more precise clues) and found him at home in suburban Washington. The man denied any involvement and asked to remain unnamed due to "the sensitivity of this matter," as he put it. But the paper reported "he has connections to at least two international terrorists,” one of which, interestingly, is Mohammed Abu Talb. Both Abus had lived in Sweden and had PFLP-GC links, and Abu Talb was the owner of some Maltese clothes similar to those inside the bomb suitcase, and onetime lead suspect for the Lockerbie bombing.

Besides these and his links to the PFLP-GC, the paper also said the Virginian had unspecified "links to the US intelligence services." He was known to the FBI and interviewed by them in August 1988, the report also says, and gives excerpts of a Megrahi appeal document that states: “The FBI had apparently investigated ‘X’ and knew he was the nephew of Ahmed Jibril ..." [8]

Poof, He's in Bush Land
Like the fictional Keyser Söze in The Usual Suspects it almost seems our Khaisar Haddad (?) walked right out of the 'police station' of suspicion as Keaton (Libya) burned for the crime. "And like that, poof. He's gone," down to the Olive Garden with the missus. On Megrahi’s release Member of Scottish Parliament Christine Grahame, who had met and campaigned for the prisoner, described the suspect as “living safely in Washington," possibly as an "intelligence asset." The man, whose new name she too knows, "must be deeply relieved that Megrahi was forced to drop his appeal and that he will never face justice for this atrocity.” [9]

However, according to the Express, Grahame was “believed to be considering naming the man in the Scottish Parliament chamber.” And two weeks later, she delivered, as this video from Channel 4 News and the official record of Scottish parliament for September 2 shows:

“Why have the US authorities not queried the true identity of Basel Bushnaq alias Abu Elias, a senior figure in the PFLP-GC at the time of the bombing and nephew of Ahmed Jibril, former head of that terrorist organisation? Basel Bushnaq currently resides in Washington DC and is in the employ of the schools division.” [10]

(See the video of her speech within this channel 4 production)

“Bushnaq” is an interesting choice of names, likely made while George W. Bush was president. It’s not the most anonymous choice. (see What's in a Name? for a closer look) More4 News in the UK contacted Mr Bushnaq about the allegations, and he replied, calling Grahame’s charges “reckless slander” and suggested "she stops this unless she has solid legal ground." [11] Speaking to the program, Ms Grahame explained “the name was presented in papers from the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission, again as I said, evidence never seen in a Scottish court,” and will now apparently never be released. Having seen them herself, however, she was confident “the name I have given is a relevant name.” [12]

A different American Basel Bushnaq seems unlikely, as all listings of this unusual name I see give similar details – Basel or Basel A Bushnaq, of Washington DC, Herndon VA, and Franklin TN, age 53 or 54. [13] That’s the kind of variability one should expect within a slapdash record of one person rather than two getting mixed up. There is much left unknown here on how “Abu Elias” really translates to Khaisar Haddad and/or Basel Bushnaq, and Abu Elias' own true role in the bombing remains uncertain. I don’t want to be suckered into a false lead, but presuming he ever existed, Abu Elias got to somewhere, and D.C. makes a certain kind of sense. This could all be a mammoth mix-up as the suspect has said, either by goof or design of the “disinfo/distraction” type. Or it could be a genuine, festering clue of US acquisition and re-branding of the Lockerbie plot. It deserves being sorted out.

If this confusion is easily explained, Mr. Bushnaq, feel free to pop in and help us out – I’d be honored to host the death of a false lead and clear up the suspicion hovering over you if that’s easily enough done. If it is somehow more complex and sensitive than all that, I’ll take that as a sign of something but hold judgment about just what.

---
Sources:
[1] Anonymous. "Reportedly, Khaisar Haddad, known as Abu Elias, was an agent of the US government and carried out the Lockerbie Bombing." Aangirfan. August 23 2009. http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2009/08/reportedly-khaisar-haddad-known-as-abu.html
[2] "Why Did They Dies?" Time. April __ 1992. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,159523,00.html
[3] Trail of the Octopus. Online Posting, Chapter 13
[4]De Braeckeleer, Ludwig. "Dialog of a Vengeance Foretold part 107: The Goben Memorandum." Canada Free Press. October 17 2008. http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/5902
[5,6] Lambie, Derek. “Finger of Blame for Lockerbie Pointed at American Citizen.” Sunday Express. July 8 2007. http://janus.netro42.net/posts/view/12732
[7,8, 9] Borland, Ben. "I'll Reveal True Identity of Bomber." Sunday Express. August 23,2009 http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/122299/-I-ll-reveal-true-identity-of-bomber%20UK%20NEWS
[10] Grahame, Christine (South of Scotland) (SNP). Remarks in Scottish Parliament, Official Report 2 September 2009. Col 19053 http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/officialreports/meetingsparliament/or-09/sor0902-02.htm
[11, 12] More 4 News. “Was Megrahi really the Lockerbie bomber?” 2 September 2009. http://www.channel4.com/news/article.jsp?id=3329697&time=181158
[13] http://www.123people.com/s/basel+bushnaq

What's in a Name?

"Abu Elias" and his Alleged Names
April 13 2010
last edits 4/30

Abu Elias was the terrorist-world code-name of a certain high-ranking member of the PFLP-GC as of late 1988. Though a blond Christian born with blue eyes in Lebanon, he was reportedly the nephew of the dark-haired, nominally Muslim PFLP-GC leader and founder Ahmed Jibril, and working for him in Syria in violent opposition to Israel. “Abu Elias” is also suspected by many (including myself) to be the real Lockerbie bomber, but was never caught after making off with Khreesat’s fifth bomb. The fugitive was eventually forgotten by investigators as some Libyans took the blame, but as explained in another post, he wasn’t forgotten by everyone. “Abu Elias” was reported in 1992 to have the real name of Khaisar Haddad, and to have built that fifth bomb himself, and in 2009 he was mentioned again as being re-named Basel Bushnaq and living safely in Washington DC with a government job.

I’m not sure yet what to do with this knowledge, considering Basel A Bushnaq is still sitting over there and I could easily get his phone number. As I mull it over, or wait for him to step up himself, or for him to start over again with a new town and name, I thought it might be interesting to explore some available information, including the three names that have been attached to the same guy. Who - again - was an expert in airport security, sent by his uncle we hear to make sure the bomb was live and got onto a plane, just two months before success over Lockerbie.

Abu Elias:
Literally, this name means “Father of Elias,” with Abu being a form for ‘father of’ in Arabic, popular among terrorists, and Elias being the Greek rendering for the prophet Elijah. Elijah in Hebrew means “Yahweh is my God,” and Wikipedia says Elias is a common name among Middle Eastern Christians, especially in Lebanon. Elijah/Elias is of course a major, major figure in the Judaic/biblical mythology, and one with no known father. He’s said to be able to raise the dead and work other miracles, classed near Moses among the revered ghosts, and expected to return to Earth to herald Christ’s return and the apocalypse. (Or has returned, if you’re Mormon). Judging by his chosen name, no small ambitions had this one.

Khaisar Haddad:
This name was reported by Arafat's PLO in a 1992 report as the real name of Abu Elias, Lockerbie bomber. The family name ‘Haddad’ means ‘blacksmith,’ and is also the name of a Pre-Islamic Semitic storm god. Wikipedia says the name is held largely by Middle Eastern Christians, and the most common single surname in Lebanon. Sounds like a plausible real family name for a Lebanese Christian.

The given name Khaisar doesn’t appear much, or at all, in Arabic names as far as I’ve been able to find. The same spelling, however, was once a Beluchi word for the Tamarix tree. This I learned from an old book Google's got, explaining how dense growths of such trees was said to have given a name to the Khaisar Lora river in Baluchistan, modern-day Pakistan. (p 33). That's probably not it.

In English and other “Christian” languages, Khaisar of course sounds just like Kaiser, the German variant of Caesar (Russian is Czar). Please note how a person could get used to having a grandiose name that means emperor, king, etc. It also echoes (or is echoed by?) the fictional Keyser Söze, elusive super-villain of The Usual Suspects (1995).

Basel Bushnaq
The latest alleged “family” name held by this guy called “alias Abu Elias” is Bushnaq. If we're looking at the same guy, it's clearly a name of choice, not birth. Otherwise... This seems to be Arabic for “Bosnian,” as per an article on Lofti Bouchnaq, a renowned composer, oud player and singer, born 1954 in Tunis. His family name (with given variants Bushnaq, Boushnak, and Bouchnak) “in Arabic means “Bosnian,” suggesting that his family may have arrived in Tunisia from Europe as slave-soldiers from Bosnia during the period of Ottoman Turkish rule.” So also says the “Bushnak International Union” page at Myspace; “every one of us is a refugee from our dear and beloved countrey [sic] Bosnia.” Basel A. has not popped in yet. I don’t think Khaisar Haddad has any Bosnian ancestry, but it’s possible.

One other unusual feature of this name, importing the foreign “Bushn” from Bosnia, makes it among the very few (or only?) plausible Arabic family name that contains "Bush", when one or another of that family may have overseen Basel A’s assimilation as a Virginian. An honorary nod to his new benefactors? (At Myspace he lists many prominent Republicans as his favorites, but avoids this contrast by excluding the Bushes)

The suspect’s first name “Basel” (as pronounced by its revealor Christine Graham, anyway) is most obviously evocative of the city of just that name in Switzerland – an international hub in a famously neutral country. One site does offer Basel, probably pronounced different, as an “African-Muslim name popular in Sudan, meaning 'brave.'” The name name Basel does pop up with unsure origins in a Google search attached to at least one Palestinian and one Jordanian. I also hear it's fairly common in Syria, where both Abu Elias and Basel Bushnaq (judging from online commentary) have roots. In all, it probably means the same as in Sudan. It would take a brave man to blow up PA103 and then, without state help, take up residence so near the US capitol.

Most importantly for our purposes, Basel is first on Wikipedia’s list of variants on Basil, meaning royal or kingly, from the Greek Vassillos, meaning King. That original spawned names for the herb Basil, the structure Basilica, and people like Czars Vassili I, II, III. and IV of Russia. Thus Basel continues to be a decent replacement if one’s old name had been Kaiser and the new one still had to sound okay in Arabic. There it means courageous.

So ‘emperor blacksmith’ becomes terrorist mover ‘father of Elijah’, and all that carries, then he allegedly starts a new life as ‘brave Bosnian’ and/or ‘kingly vassal of the Kaisers Bush.’ That’s a heck of a lot of reading into it, but there is a compelling psycho-logic to the whole string. It goes on the "hmmmm" pile.

Video: Channel 4 - Lockerbie Claims

Aired September 2 2009
Channel 4 News, UK
Emphasis on MSP Grahame's comments that day about the real Lockerbie bomber , revealing his new identity in the United States. See "Where in the World is Abu Elias?"