Al-Zawahri in Lodi in the 1990s

Just about a year ago,
I set out on the road,
Seeking my fame and fortune,
Looking for a pot of gold.
Things got bad, and things got worse,
I guess you will know the tune.
Oh ! Lord, Stuck in Lodi again.

Having never been to Lodi, California, I have no idea if the bars there have karaoke machines with the Creedence Clearwater Revival song "Lodi" loaded in it. If they did, a bearded pediatrician sipping kiddie-cocktails named Ayman al-Zawahri just may have been crooning that tune.

Big hat tip to Third Wave Dave.

From the Los Angeles (free registration may be required) Times:

Naseem Khan, a convenience store manager turned government informant, said he told the FBI in late 2001 that he spotted Zawahiri at a Lodi mosque in 1998 and 1999.

"Every time I would go to the mosque, [Zawahiri] would be coming or going," Khan said, according to the Sacramento Bee on Monday on its website. Khan, who said he lived in Lodi at the time, testified that he spoke to Zawahiri, but never had a conversation with him.

"He would quietly come to the mosque and leave," Khan said.

The former mosque president denies it, however.

As Wikipedia states, the erstwhile pediatrician was clearly a terror-plotter back then:

In 1996, he was considered the most credible threat and a highly lethal terrorist who could strike against the USA. A warning issued at the time specified suicide bombing as the likely form of attack. In late 1996 he was detained in Russia for six months by the FSB after he apparently tried to recruit jihadists in Chechnya. According to the FSB spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko, "He had four passports, in four different names and nationalities. We checked him out in every country, but they could not confirm him. We could not keep him forever, so we took him to the Azerbaijani border and let him go." In 1997 he was held responsible for the massacre of around sixty foreign tourists in the Egyptian town of Luxor, for which he was sentenced to death in absentia in 1999 by an Egyptian military tribunal.

On February 23, 1998, he issued a joint fatwa with Osama bin Laden under the title "World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders", an important step in broadening their conflicts to a global scale.

Uh, if this is true, how the heck did he get in this country. And of all places to live, why Lodi?

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