It looks like we weren’t the only ones to pick up on Courage to Resist’s attempt to cut all known ties with Naser Abdo.
Stephen Webster – from rawstory.com ran a story on the omission of Naser Abdo from Courage to Resist’s website yesterday afternoon as well.
Webster reports he spoke with Jeff Paterson – the project director for Courage to Resist:
Reached by Raw Story, Jeff Paterson, the group’s project director, acknowledged that they had tried to cover up their involvement with the soldier and said they would be issuing a statement in the coming hours.
Further, Paterson indicates further that Abdo showed signs of having mental health issues and was disrespectful to women:
“We’re shocked [at Abdo’s arrest],” Paterson said. “I believe he had some significant mental health issues that became apparent as we worked with him. He had a particular version of Islam that was certainly … He was disrespectful to women. These were the kinds of issues we argued over late last year. It’s not a religious thing, it’s a matter of human decency.”
It’s very convenient for him to say those things now that they are trying to distance themselves from Abdo as much as possible. The alleged beliefs about Abdo didn’t cause the organization to stop supporting Abdo, nor did the fact that he was brought up on child porn charges last month:
“I worked with him last August, in order to help formulate his application as a conscientious objector, then we helped formulate his legal appeals for the objector process,” Paterson said. “Then he got hit with pornography charges on his laptop, at which point we told him that we would help him through the resolution of his objection issues, but he would have to find himself legal defense separate for these criminal matters.”
This all adds up to a lot of unfortunate posturing from an organization that on the surface appeared to be much better than this.