Louis Pepe, a Hartford lawyer and friend of Foley's for 35 years, said Foley has been generous to the community and employs 3,000 people at his Apple Rehab nursing homes in Connecticut and Rhode Island.
A former Prisons official said that the 2000 attack on MCC guard Louis Pepe who was stabbed in the eye with a sharpened comb by Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, a former top aide to Osama bin Laden was undoubtedly a factor in the decision to take away al-Masris infamous hooks.