Hussam Ayloush, the executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which purports to speak for American Muslims, spent part of Christmas Day tweeting that he had hoped more people had died in the previous night’s Russian plane crash into the Black Sea.
He then backpedaled on his offensive comments.
Ayloush, whose Twitter bio lists him as a “Human rights and civil rights activist. Community organizer. CAIR-LA Exec Director. Son. Husband Father of 5,” tweeted Sunday morning, “I’m sad about the crashed Russian military jet. The TU-154 could have carried up to 180 military personnel instead of just 92!”
As Fox News reported about the crash, the 92 dead included military musicians and a choir headed to Syria to perform on Christmas:
A Russian plane headed to an air base in Syria with 92 people aboard, including members of a well-known military choir, crashed into the Black Sea on Sunday minutes after taking off from the resort city of Sochi, Russia’s Defense Ministry said.
There was no indication anyone survived the crash of the Tu-154, which belonged to the Defense Ministry and was taking the Alexandrov Ensemble to a New Year’s concert at the Hemeimeem air base in Syria’s coastal province of Latakia. Crews recovered several bodies and ships, helicopters and drones were searching the area for more.
Ayloush has since removed the tweet, but it was captured by several Twitter users, who expressed shock and disgust.
Ayloush admitted to the offensive tweet, then suggested he had not known who died in the crash. He thought his initial tweet made specific references to things like the model of the plane that crashed.
Recently, Russian military and some Iranian forces helped the Syrian government oust a rebel coalition known as the “Army of Conquest” from East Aleppo in Syria. The Saudia Arabian-backed Army of Conquest is primarily made up of Sunni jihadists, such as al-Nusra.
Ayloush is no stranger to controversy, nor has he restricted his foreign policy critiques to Russia. As Breitbart News reported last year, he said that the United States was “partially” responsible for the terrorist massacre in San Bernardino, California, which left 14 dead and dozens wounded. At that time, Ayloush told CNN, “Let’s not forget that some of our own foreign policy, as Americans, as the West, have fueled that extremism.”
CAIR has been declared a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates and was named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-funding operation.
Follow Breitbart News investigative reporter and Citizen Journalism School founder Lee Stranahan on Twitter at @Stranahan.
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