Community | November 18, 2009 | 0 comments

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Isolated U.S. College Days

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The professed mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is expected to arrive in New York for trial by the end of the year. But it won't be his first trip to America. He has been here before, as a college student in the early 1980s.

Mohammed's first real taste of America came at a small two-year Baptist school called Chowan College in 1983. Nestled among the cotton fields of Murfreesboro, N.C., Mohammed arrived hoping his time at Chowan would become a springboard to an American education.

Back in the 1980s, all Chowan students — and that would have included Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — were obliged to study Christianity extensively. That meant prayers, singing and biblical instruction in addition to regular classes. It was an odd requirement for the son of an imam who had been a member of an Islamic group, Muslim Brotherhood, since he was 16.

Dr. Garth Faile was Mohammed's freshman chemistry teacher. He's a soft-spoken man from Alabama who has been teaching at Chowan for nearly 40 years. Faile, wearing a tie that shows the elements in the periodic table, pulls out an old blue grade book and finds his former student.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120516152
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