Okaz, the same prominent Saudi newspaper, that published photos of Abdul Rahman Ali Issa Al-Salimi Al-Harbi in the hospital after the Boston marathon bombings, is now reporting that the Saudi national was also visited by the first lady of the United States, Michelle Obama during his hospital stay.
Here is a screen shot from the Okaz story:
CBS News in Boston reported that the first lady visited Boston Children’s Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital on Thursday, April 18th:
The First Lady went to Boston Children’s Hospital, where she visited the medical and surgical intensive care unit.
Afterwards, she went next door to Brigham and Women’s Hospital to meet more victims and their families for more than an hour.
The visits were off limits to the media and came on short notice for security reasons.
There were multiple reports that Alharbi was hospitalized at Brigham and Women’s so that would seem corroborate the Okaz report.
Okaz stated further that the first lady also visited the other injured Saudi at the hospital, a female doctor named Nura Khalid Saleh al-Ajaji:
“Michelle Obama visited the two injured Saudis Abdulrahman Ali Essa Al-Salimi Al-Harbi and Nura Khalid Saleh Al-Ajjaji to check on their medical conditions.”
Adding credibility to this report seems to be multiple tweets made by the inner circle of the Al-harbi family:
Now, contrarians to those with concerns about this visit will likely say that the first lady was simply paying visits to all the victims in the hospital, of which Alharbi was one and had been cleared two days earlier.
In light of recent reports that Alharbi was scheduled for deportation on ‘national security grounds’, the first lady’s visit takes on much added significance if those reports are true. We already know that the Alharbi clan consists of multiple Al-Qaeda members. This would seem to bolster the claims of scheduled deportation, not claims to the contrary made by the likes of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, who actually never really answered the question; she just got rankled and blew it off.
With the track record of this administration relative to things like blaming a video for two weeks after the Benghazi attacks, it should have a higher standard to meet and its credibility should be questioned by the American people.
If these reports about Alharbi’s scheduled deportation for such reasons are correct, a visit by the first lady of the United States would indeed be significant in its importance. It would also be a major national security blunder because of the message it would send.
In light of the exponential rise in the number of Saudi students in the U.S. since 2006, what kind of message does the first lady’s visit send to the more nefarious brand of Saudi students?
It would seem the American people should both require and demand full transparency from the administration when it comes to the issue of Alharbi’s alleged scheduled deportation as well as his connections to multiple Al-Qaeda members / leaders through his clan.