Frank Viviano Writes     Mysterious path from San Jose to Jordanian gallows Amman, Jordan -- No one is more bewildered than Mohammed Hijazi by the strange, circuitous road that carried his Bay Area-born son from San Jose to the shadow of a Middle Eastern gallows, accused of having links to Osama bin Laden. As U.S. and British military forces strike at bin Laden and his Taliban backers in Afghanistan, that grim destination looks ever more final for Hijazi's 32-year-old son, Raed. Raed Hijazi's journey has many unexplained gaps and mysterious passages, from the Afghan-Pakistani frontier to Boston and Jordan, full of the kind of powerful circumstantial evidence and sensational media coverage that would make a fair trial difficult anywhere -- much less in a Jordanian criminal justice system that puts the burden of proof on the accused, rather than on the prosecution. "My boy has never been a radical of any kind, religious or political. My boy is not a terrorist," Hijazi says of his son, who has already been sentenced to hang for his alleged role in a thwarted plot to blow up targets in Jordan on the eve of the millennium. "You want to know what my Raed is?" Mohammed Hijazi asks. "He is a typical American, from an ordinary family that happens to be Muslim." But authorities in Jordan and the United States insist that he was a valued member of bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network and a chief organizer of the plot to kill Western and Israeli tourists. Yesterday, his funds were frozen by the Bush administration. Hijazi's assets were listed among those of 39 individuals and organizations Washington believes have links to terrorist groups.   ANGUISHED PARENT This is a father speaking, a thin, emotionally distraught man of 66 who cannot make sense of the nightmare that has enveloped his family. When he looks at Hijazi, locked in a black-iron defendant's cage at Jordan's State Security Court, he remembers an innocent toddler in San Jose. This is also a San Francisco-educated engineer from a moderate, middle- class Arab world so profoundly shaken by the carnage of Sept. 11 that it refuses to believe -- it cannot allow itself to believe -- that its sons are implicated in the atrocities allegedly carried out by bin Laden operatives in New York and Arlington, Va. Sitting at the dining room table of the family apartment in central Amman, the senior Hijazi describes his own unabashed 40-year love affair with the United States. The fascination with America continued after 1971, when the family relocated to Saudi Arabia, where the elder Hijazi was employed. "We took every vacation in the United States -- back to San Francisco, to L. A., to Disneyland, to Florida," he says. In 1987, Mohammed Hijazi accompanied his son to Northern California to help him find an apartment for the duration of a two-year program in business administration at California State University at Sacramento. After that, the picture becomes cloudy.   PERSONAL JOURNEY Raed Hijazi returned to Jordan briefly in 1990, then vanished for two years -- "maybe he went back to the U.S., but I don't know where," his father says. "Maybe he worked, but I don't know for sure." The portrait of Hijazi that emerges in his father's account of the next years is that of an idealistic dreamer in his early 20s. A young man "who always cared about others, always cared about human rights," Mohammed Hijazi says. But he was unable to find a job, unable to remain settled in one place. He was, in the jargon of his native California, "unable to find himself" -- until 1992, when he set off on a vague three-year mission to assist refugees along the Pakistani border with Afghanistan. The area was the epicenter of al Qaeda's recruitment and training efforts. His father doesn't know the name of the organization for which Hijazi worked, and Hijazi has not publicly disclosed it. Afterward came more wandering, more unemployment and increasing bitterness, especially after Hijazi married and fathered three children in the late 1990s. In 1997, he was driving a taxi in Boston -- as did one or more alleged hijackers of the planes that slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, say FBI investigators. But none of this proves his guilt. Thousands of idealistic Arabs have donated their labor to refugee camps. Thousands more have sought work in the United States, in economic hope and desperation. A period of wandering, far from home and family, is common among uncertain young college graduates almost everywhere.   INSISTENT ON INNOCENCE There is nothing incriminating about the fact that Hijazi, with his untrimmed beard, white skullcap and Koran tightly held in his chained hands at the State Security Court, is visibly a much more devout Muslim today than he was as a youngster. "When he was growing up, the questions we discussed, in terms of Islam, were very ordinary: What does it mean to go to Mecca? What are our duties in assisting the poor?" Mohammed Hijazi says. Now the younger Hijazi sits and waits, insisting on his innocence. "My client denies that he has any connection whatsoever to Osama bin Laden, " says his attorney, Taisir Diab. But in the awful aftermath of Sept. 11, the combination of Afghanistan, a Boston taxi and fervent religion may add up to the likelihood that Hijazi will be hanged. back to index page     back to