No Link to Extremists in LAX Shootings

The Egyptian immigrant who shot and killed two people at an El Al Airlines ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport last July 4 had no accomplices or ties to extremists, but his rampage constituted an act of terrorism, federal authorities have concluded.

While determining that Hesham Mohamed Hadayet of Irvine was despondent over a failing business and other personal problems, FBI investigators found that he methodically planned his attack at LAX out of anger over Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

Hadayet killed Israeli emigre Jacob Aminov, 46, a diamond importer who lived in North Hollywood, and Victoria Hen, a 25-year-old immigrant from Israel working as a ticket agent for a company under contract with El Al. Hadayet was killed by a security guard for the airline.

Authorities immediately began trying to determine whether Hadayet’s rampage, which occurred on his 41st birthday, was part of an organized plot or whether he acted alone. Officials with the FBI and Justice Department also sought to determine whether it should be classified as terrorism.

“The barrier to calling it a terrorist event earlier than now was that we did not know his motivation,” Los Angeles FBI spokesman Matthew McLaughlin said Friday. “We think we have a very good handle on that now.” The FBI investigation, McLaughlin said, determined that Hadayet “had become more radical in his beliefs” in recent years.

A devout Muslim, Hadayet arrived in the United States in 1992 and requested political asylum, alleging he had encountered discrimination in Egypt for his strong religious beliefs, according to federal immigration documents.

But over time, the FBI investigation found, Hadayet’s views hardened. “He told people close to him that he believed in violent jihad and also believed in the targeting of innocent civilians,” McLaughlin said.

“It appears clear, with El Al being a government-owned Israeli airline, that he was launching an attack against that government.”

In the weeks before the shooting, McLaughlin said, Hadayet liquidated several bank accounts, bought a weapon and sent his family out of the country. His wife and two sons were on vacation in Egypt when he entered the Tom Bradley International Terminal and got in line at the El Al counter, armed with a .45-caliber pistol, a 9-millimeter handgun, a hunting knife and an extra magazine for each of the guns.

Without saying a word and with three or four passengers in front of him, Hadayet fired one round from the .45-caliber handgun toward the El Al sign, authorities said.

Over the next 30 seconds or so, he emptied the gun before being mortally shot by an El Al guard. Still, sources said, Hadayet continued to struggle with the guard and a passenger. Despite widespread speculation he may have carried out the attack as part of an Islamic extremist group, McLaughlin said the FBI found no such links.