LOS ANGELES : Arab Group’s Director Quits to Return to Mideast
The Southern California regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Nazih Bayda, has resigned for personal reasons, and plans to resume his career as a petroleum engineer by taking a job in the Persian Gulf sheikdom of Abu Dhabi, it was announced Thursday.
Bayda, 35, played a key role in protesting interviews of prominent Arab Americans by the FBI at the beginning of the Gulf War in 1991. A previous regional director of the Anti-Discrimination Committee, Alex Odeh, was murdered 1985.
Bayda said that damage at his San Fernando Valley home from the Jan. 17 earthquake had led to his family’s decision to leave Los Angeles. His performance at the Anti-Discrimination Committee, where he had been regional director for six years, won praise from Don Boustany, the group’s Los Angeles-area president.
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