I was wrong. Seven years ago, at the Iraq War's start, I wrote a column expressing skepticism about the Bush administration's claim that Adnan Shukrijumah of Miramar was a top terrorist.
Earlier today, reports leaked from the FBI that Shukrijumah has become Osama Bin Laden's top man on global terrorism. Shukrijumah is 34 years old and spent some of his life in Brooklyn -- but far more time here in South Florida.
His dad, Gulshair, whom I interviewed several times over several days in 2003 and who died in 2004, was a translator for Sheik Abdel Rahman, who first bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. Gulshair was a sweet man. The son, however, is said to have planned to bomb the Panama Canal and other places. He is trained in chemistry and spent years in America, so he knows this country better than any other previous leader of the terrorist group.
The revelations thicken Miami's already prodigious tie with terrorism. Don't forget that the 9/11 terrorists lived and trained Hollywood -- as did one of Shukrijumah's close friends from the Al Qaeda training camps, Jose Padilla.
