- Archives

Police say he might be a "high ranking Hamas Operative."

The videotape behind the detention of an Annandale man was a vacation video showing the scenery from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and had nothing to do with terror surveillance, the man's daughter said yesterday. Dua'a Elbarasse, 20, daughter of Ismael Selim Elbarasse, said her mother was trying to zoom in on boats in the bay. "We had taped our whole vacation, and we thought the bay looked really nice off the bridge," she said. "This has been completely blown out of proportion." Her comments came as a Maryland Transportation Authority report on Friday's detention revealed that three minutes of the 27-minute videotape contains footage of or from the bridge. The first 24 minutes depict Elbarasse, his wife and three children packing up their vehicle and leaving Broadkill Beach, Del., where they had rented a beach house for several days. It also has footage taken from the Kent Narrows Bridge. Elbarasse is being held on a material witness warrant in connection with a federal case in Chicago, where three men are charged with raising millions of dollars for Hamas. The U.S. government considers Hamas a terrorist group and says the organization has carried out attacks in Israel. [more

] and [more

]