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Been a permanent rift in the family. this indictment alleges there were other reasons because of her knowledge of their terrorist activity. and her plans to talk about those activities? their concerns that she might talk about it. ellen harris wrote a book about this case called guarding the secrets. the prosecution offered zein a deal, that if he pled guilty to murder in the first degree, they would go lighter on maria. and he refused to do so. so he had no interest in saving his own wife. after hearing the tapes and the medical examiner s report, the jury found zein and maria isa guilty. they were both sentenced to death. zein died in prison of natural causes in 1998, before his ....
Dream of. she was a high school athlete, popular, a straight a student and wanted to attend college and become an airline pilot. tina wanted to be american. tina wanted to be independent. she wanted to have a career. she wanted to travel. she wanted to be her own person. her mother and father, zein and maria isa, were immigrants from palestine and ran a grocery store in downtown st. louis. like most immigrants, the palestinians went into the food business. that s a tradition in america. food service is one of the easiest types of businesses to operate. what was especially appealing to the isas and their relatives it was another way to rip off america. they could avoid paying taxes. they would play little games with food stamp fraud, grocery coupons. i mean, zein even said he loved america because there were so ....
prosecutors were convinced she had been murdered in cold blood by her own parents. but they knew a conviction would be difficult. it would be the isas story of self-defense against the opinion of the medical examiner. but soon, investigators got an unexpected break. the fbi admitted they had wire tapped the isas home because of zein s suspected ties to known terrorists. wiretaps were put in under the foreign intelligence surveillance act, known as fisa. fisa allows the fbi to tap you, wiretaps, that run reel to reel, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. isa was not considered important enough to monitor these wiretaps 24 hours a day, so the fbi wasn t sure what was ....
Investigator harry hager with some astonishing news. u.s. intelligence had photographed zein isa attending a meeting with known terrorists in mexico. all had ties to the palestine liberation organization and international terror broker, abu nidal. abu nidal means father of war. abu, father. nidal, war. and he was one of most vicious terrorists around. he s responsible for simultaneous bombings in vienna, rome. over a two-year period, zein isa traveled overseas 14 times to caracas, athens, london, israel, zurich, and madrid. the fbi, among others, were maintaining a watch on middle eastern families, some that might presumably have connections with terrorist cells. the isas were maintaining what might have been a safehouse for one of the middle eastern terrorist groups. so the isa family were well known to u.s. intelligence. as a federal undercover said to me, these people are as organized as the mafia, not nearly as lovable. investigators wondered if ....
Self-defense as her parents claimed. dr. victor levine is an expert on the middle east and says tina s death sounded tragically familiar. zein isa comes from a small town in palestine and he carried with him that whole baggage. every day there are dozens and even hundreds of women who are in some fashion killed for the commission of some crime involving the sexual honor of the family. though dating is common in the united states, it s discouraged in parts of the middle east where arranged marriages are the norm. when a man and his family have daughters, daughters are the purity of these women, of the daughters, then guarantees a marriage. you see, and the delivery of the girl intact, virginally intact, ....