Unsolicited packages from Saudi embassy trigger scare in Vegas

Friday, Jan. 18, 2002 | 6:48 a.m.

LAS VEGAS - A Saudi Arabian mailer designed to educate American schoolchildren about Islam instead triggered terrorist scares at three Las Vegas schools, officials said Friday.

A Saudi embassy official in Washington said the packages containing a videotape, a booklet and a book were sent to 5,000 randomly selected schools nationwide to promote tolerance and understanding.

"We just hoped the schools would consider showing them to their students," said Sherry Cooper, secretary to Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan in Washington, D.C.

"They sent it out to calm fears," said Special Agent Gayle Jacobs, spokeswoman for the FBI office in Las Vegas. "Here, it appears to have had the opposite effect."

The FBI and Clark County School District police were summoned to two Las Vegas high schools and a middle school Thursday after principals reported receiving unsolicited brown padded manila envelopes mailed in Washington with the return address "The Sultan of Saudi Arabia."

The schools weren't evacuated, but the materials were confiscated.

"We don't normally get mail from foreign embassies," said Ken Bedrosian, principal of 2,600-student Cimarron-Memorial High School. "And it just looked strange, with a metered tape postmark. It raised some concerns, so we took precautions."

"They didn't call and say they were sending these things," said Pat Nelson, spokeswoman for the school district, the nation's sixth-largest. "They just sort of appeared."

Cooper said Friday that she sent the packages to about half the schools picked from a list of 9,600 schools that an embassy employee provided.

"It was a public affairs thing," Cooper told The Associated Press by telephone. "Due to the recent publicity, a lot of innocent Muslims have been under attack. This was to try to promote understanding and tolerance."

She referred to efforts to stem a backlash against Islam and Muslims after some airline hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were linked to Saudi Arabia.

Cooper said each package contained a letter from the ambassador to the principal, a videotape of a PBS documentary titled "Islam: Empire of Faith," a brochure titled "Understanding Islam and the Muslims," and a book by author Karen Armstrong titled "Islam."

She said some other schools around the nation called the embassy to check the origin of the mailings after she sent them last week. Some responded with thank-you letters.

Bedrosian said that after the items are returned by law enforcement authorities, teachers will be allowed to incorporate them into their curriculums.