BUCKHANNON — Additional controversial remarks have surfaced of Buckhannon City Council Candidate Asad Derya Khan (D) expressing that members of the Islamic faith should also be recognized as victims, just as the families who lost their loved ones during the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.
According to the documentation provided by two separate sources, Khan also posted a statistic with his remark, claiming that the American government murdered 1,774,547 innocent Afghans, Iraqis, and Pakistanis as a response to the terrorist attack. He reportedly attributed this victimization to the “bigotry of America.”
“Myself, my family, and my friends are still dealing with racism and hatred to this day,” Khan stated. “We forget that the disaster that occurred was not only the people that were in 9/11 itself and the ones grieving because of their lost loved ones, but also the Muslims that still deal with all the bigotry of America today because of 19 men with mental issues. We will never forget, especially everyone that the horror still lives on.”
Then, Khan shared a statistic with the post, claiming that the American government murdered innocent people as a response to the World Trade Center attack.
“R.I.P The 2,976 American people that lost their lives on 9/11 and R.I.P. the 48,644 Afgan and 1,690,903 Iraqi and 35,000 Pakistani people that paid the ultimate price for a crime they did not commit.”
This statistic was provided, using innuendo, to claim that Middle Eastern Islamic countries lost more innocent lives at the hands of the American government than American lives lost on September 11, 2001.
On December 22, 2011, Politico reported that retired Pakistani Lt. Gen. Asad Durrani expressed it was “more probable” than not that his country’s government knew of the late Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s location. As noted by the Jamestown Foundation, evidence emerged “that elements within the Pakistani military harbored Osama bin Laden with the knowledge of former army chief General Pervez Musharraf and possibly current Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani.”
On September 11, 2019, the D.C. based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) recollected how Iraqi media outlets covered the 2001 terrorist attacks.
#Iraqi News Bulletin On September 11, 2001: The Heart Of Evil Has Been Struck; Whoever Carried Out The Attack Had Had Enough Of Hostile American Policy (Archival) #911Anniversaryhttps://t.co/mljJFr1qCm pic.twitter.com/x3rqlZ6FMV
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) September 11, 2019
Until 2003, Iraq was recognized as a state sponsor of terrorism.
As documented by the Associated Press, in 2001, Palestinians also celebrated the terrorist attacks at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, IL.
Khan’s remarks were obtained exclusively by Mountaineer Journal, as Khan deactivated his personal Facebook account (creating a new one), prior to his run for Buckhannon City Council.