(Coral Springs, FL) This past Monday, January 16th, Mayor Pam Iorio attended an event in which she shared the stage with Ahmed Bedier, the Spokesman of the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Director of CAIR's Tampa office. The event was a memorial honoring the memory of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., held at the Beulah Baptist Church in Tampa. Iorio and Bedier were also photographed, earlier in the day, with their arms around each other at the Tampa Organization of Black Affairs (TOBA) 26th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Breakfast.

CAIR was created, in 1994, with seed money from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), a "charity" that was shut down by the United States government, following the attacks on 9/11, for raising millions of dollars for the Hamas terrorist organization. The Chairman of HLF, Ghassan Elashi, prior to his conviction, was a CAIR official. CAIR's parent organization, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), was founded by the number two leader in Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook.

Ahmed Bedier, just a month before Monday's events, stated that, prior to 1995, there was "nothing immoral" about Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

This is not Pam Iorio's first involvement with CAIR. In October of 2005, Mayor Iorio issued a proclamation naming October 1st "CAIR Day."

Joe Kaufman, Chairman of Americans Against Hate (AAH), stated, "It is beyond reproach that a sitting Mayor of a major American city would have any interaction with a leader of an organization with ties to terrorism. To do such at an event honoring the late great Martin Luther King only works to mar Dr. King's good name. We call on Mayor Iorio to refuse her participation in any future events that would have a CAIR representative as its speaker. We call on Mayor Iorio to shun this organization, not create proclamations in its name!"

Joe Kaufman is available for interview. E-mail: joe4rep@gate.net.

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Source: AAH