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| “ | They were infidels. And they were engaged in activities that spread American policies over the entire world. Your incessant need to own things... material things. Your capitalism rests on the back of third-world countries. No one's hands are clean. No one is innocent. | „ |
| ~ Jamal Abaza justifying the terrorists acts he committed. |
Jamal Abaza, also known as Jind Allah, is the main antagonist of the Criminal Minds episode "Lessons Learned". He is an imprisoned terrorist who masterminds a suicide bombing from inside his prison cell.
He was portrayed by Anthony Azizi, who also portrayed Omar Idris in Lost.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Abaza was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt in a devout Muslim family. An exceptionally bright child, he had the Qu'ran memorized by the age of nine. He grew up to become a cleric, married, and fathered a son, Amir.
In 2003, Amir was killed in an airstrike committed by Hezbollah, but Abaza believed a conspiracy theory blaming the attack on the United States and Israel. He became obsessed with taking revenge against the U.S. government and joined the al-Qaeda offshoot group Militant Islamic Society (MIS), recruiting prisoners into a sleeper cell through his work as a prison imam. In 2006, he was arrested trying to leave the country with a forged Pakistani passport under the name Jind Allah. He was imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay as a "ghost detainee", with no official record of his existence.
"Lessons Learned"[]
When the FBI discovers a device built to disperse anthrax while raiding a meth lab, they suspect an imminent terrorist attack and bring in the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) to interrogate Abaza, whose alias is linked to the device. BAU Supervisory Agent Jason Gideon gets Abaza, who has refused to speak to his abusive CIA interrogators, to engage with him by showing him respect, speaking politely to him and giving him clothes and a prayer mat. Abaza tells Gideon that he saw his family killed in an American airstrike on a bazaar in Egypt when he was eight years old, even though there is no record of such a bombing ever happening.
Meanwhile, Agent Aaron Hotchner leads a SWAT team to a suspected terrorist safe house, only to find it empty. When Gideon tells Abaza about this, Abaza's excited reaction serves as a tell that the safe house is a trap, and Gideon orders them to evacuate. Sure enough, the safe house explodes seconds later, killing a SWAT agent. When Gideon confronts him about the SWAT agent's death, Abaza replies that no American mourned when his son was killed. Agents Emily Prentiss and Spencer Reid realize that Abaza's story about his family dying in a bombing was actually a reference to his son, and Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia finds records of Amir's death and Abaza's real name.
The following day, Gideon shows Abaza a newscast of a terrorist attack that killed thousands and accuses him of perverting Islam to justify mass murder. Believing he has won, Abaza says that the attack will ensure that Americans will never go to a shopping mall opening again, which will harm the U.S. economy. Gideon deduces that Abaza's minions will target the grand opening of a mall at sunset, and so orders the rest of the BAU to find such an event. They ultimately stop a bombing at a mall opening in McLean, Virginia that would have killed thousands of people, including Hotchner's wife and son. Meanwhile, Gideon reveals to Abaza that the newscast about the terrorist attack was staged, leaving him humiliated and enraged.
Trivia[]
- Abaza is inspired by multiple real-life terrorists:
- The late Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American imam and lecturer reported to have maintained affiliations with Al-Qaeda and multiple infamous Islamic extremist terrorists, until being killed killed in a targeted drone strike in 2010.
- José Padilla, a Puerto Rican terrorist, who was arrested in the middle of his flights between the U.S., Middle East, and Asia, detained at Guantanamo Bay, and, contrary to what was demonstrated by the FBI in the episode, denied his rights and tortured for information about a plan to detonate a "dirty bomb".
- The episode the terrorist plot was centered around won the show a Human Rights First Award for its portrayal of humane interrogation techniques.
External Links[]
- Jamal Abaza on the Criminal Minds Wiki
