RSS

Tag Archives: FBI setup

Jalil Abdul Muntaqim: Political Prisoner Since 1971

22 May

Jalil Muntaqim has spent forty one of his sixty years locked behind bars, paying a heavy price for his participation in the Black Liberation Movement, a struggle he has never abandoned, even behind bars.

A Youth of Concious 

Jalil, born on October 18, 1951, in Oakland, California, grew up in a family environment imbued with an awareness of the political battles of the day, of the history of Black people in amerika and the struggle for freedom that has been waged on this continent for centuries. As he has explained,

My mother taught us [my sister and I] that we are African. She made that a very important lesson for us; she said, “You are African, don’t let anybody call you anything other than that.” … In our house we used to have pictures of H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X – so these individuals, these were our icons in the household …

In the 1960s Jalil attended high school in San Jose, California, where he earned a scholarship to an advanced high school math and science program. He also received a summer scholarship for a San Jose State College math and engineering course. Jalil participated in NAACP youth organizing during the civil rights movement. In high school, he became a leading member of the Black Student Union, often touring in “speak-outs” with the BSU Chairman of San Jose State and City College.

As he has stated in the documentary Jalil Muntaqim: A Voice for Liberation:

The assassination of Martin Luther King, that’s one thing that impacted me. The other thing that really impacted me was the 1968 Olympics when John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their fists in protest – that was significant. John Carlos used to be one of my math tutors, so the culture, the African culture and the politics and the time, the struggle that was going on, the civil rights movement that was going on at that time, being a part of that and being impressed by that – and then, on the other hand seeing the Black Panther Party taking this other stroke after the death of Martin Luther King – after his assassination I began to realize that maybe this non-violent protest thing in not going to be all that there’s going to be in order to make real changes in this country.

The Dark Day

Two months shy of his 20th birthday, Jalil was captured along with Albert “Nuh” Washington in a midnight shoot-out with San Francisco police. When Jalil was arrested, he was a high school graduate and employed as a social worker.

Read the rest of this entry »

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on May 22, 2012 in Biographies, Campaigns

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Federal Terrorism Investigations Resemble Raunchy Reality TV

12 Apr

Here’s an indecent question: Under what conditions might a husband cheat on his wife?

Imagine if a major television network created a reality show designed to answer this question. Bringing together weeks of planning, heavy surveillance, psychological profiles of the target, and a cast of young, alluring undercover agents, the show would put unwitting husbands to the ultimate test of spousal loyalty.

After being conned for weeks, some of the men would likely capitulate and take that fateful step toward betrayal. With the hook set, the lights would flash on, a banner would drop from the ceiling revealing the deception, and the show’s host, Johnnie Cochran, would climb through a window to offer his legal services in the forthcoming divorce. Perhaps the show would air as a spinoff of MTV’s gotcha program “Punk’d.”

While this idea may seem farfetched, an analogous scheme is being cooked up and served on a regular basis by the FBI in its campaign against terrorism.

According to a recent study, since 9/11, the majority of criminal convictions in high-profile terror cases in the United States relied on sting operations and informants. In some of these cases, legal experts have raised concerns over whether the agents crossed the line into entrapment, using enticements to lure penniless men and sometimes teenagers into highly sophisticated plots they never could have handled (or even dreamed of) on their own.

Entrapment is a legal defense against criminal liability when it can be shown that the person would not have committed the crime but for the inducements of the government agents. The FBI argues that these sting operations do not amount to entrapment because the people they target are predisposed to commit the offenses given the opportunity.

Legal scholars have argued that the FBI gets away with tempting people into committing crimes because the courts focus more on the defendant’s subjective “disposition” than they do on the means of persuasion or inducements provided by agents.

One defendant in a recent case, Hemant Lakhani, agreed to sell missiles to an undercover FBI agent who was posing as a terrorist. When it became clear that Mr. Lakhani had no access to such weapons, another undercover agent sold him a fake version of the arms so that he could, in turn, make the illegal sale. During the transaction, incidentally, Lakhani appeared to test the weapon by placing it on his shoulder pointed in the wrong direction. His entrapment defense failed and he received a 47-year prison sentence.

In another sting operation, the defendant, James Cromitie, was a poor African-American who had allegedly converted to Islam in prison. He agreed to carry out an attack after being offered $250,000, other valuable enticements, and weapons by the FBI’s undercover informant. The judge on the case, Manhattan Federal Judge Colleen McMahon called the defendants “thugs for hire, pure and simple.” She described Mr. Cromitie as “incapable of committing an act of terrorism on his own,” saying a “zealous” government had “created acts of terrorism out of his fantasies…and then made those fantasies come true.“

But before a jury, Cromitie’s entrapment defense, like all the others in the decade following 9/11, also failed. The ruling prompted legal experts to suggest that juries may be weighting these cases differently than other entrapment cases, given the dramatic events of 9/11 and the constant media spotlight on terrorism.

As in many of the previous cases, one of the FBI’s latest stings involved an isolated, impoverished young man. On Feb. 17, prompted by undercover officers posing as Al Qaeda members and offering the latest in high-yield explosives, Amine El Khalifi made his way to an attack site in Washington, D.C. before being swarmed by the authorities. If the previous pattern holds, he will now spend the rest of his life in prison.

Our point here is not to forgive Mr. Khalifi but rather to suggest that his behavior is not only a product of his personal disposition but also his social circumstances and the FBI’s sting operation in particular.

We recognize that the task of detecting and interrupting terrorist activities is difficult, dangerous, and at times requires sophisticated undercover operations to prevent atrocities from occurring. But the roots of terrorism – distrust, anger, and hatred – end up growing stronger in the environment the FBI is creating. Duping disgruntled citizens to act out criminally using means-justify-the-ends enticements in fact fosters the distrust and sense of injustice that breeds terrorism.

We want the US government to recognize what social scientists call “the power of the situation” to influence terrorist behavior and to stop contributing to creating it. To be frank, our hopes for this suggestion are not high. Most Americans are carrying too much emotional and historical baggage to summon even one word of situational understanding for a terrorist act.

But what about the would-be philanderers on the reality show? Without forgiving their behavior, wouldn’t most Americans at least acknowledge the extraordinary nature of the situation, and recognize that many of these cheaters would still be faithful husbands had it not been for the crafty, well-organized, sexually spectacular forces behind the deception?

If the answer is yes, a similar moral calculus must be used to evaluate the Khalifi case, the FBI’s role in creating this outcome, and the virtue of continuing these counterterrorism operations.

The success of an entrapment defense should not depend on the nature of the would-be crime, but on the nature of the FBI’s actions. Ruling in favor of a defendant like Khalifi may seem counterintuitive to any jurists wishing to protect Americans. But that’s exactly what these jurists should do if they wish to define and protect the civil liberties and freedoms that keep them safe.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on April 12, 2012 in News Items

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Brother Muhammad Hussain Sentenced to Twenty-Five Years For Part in FBI Plot

07 Apr

At a 7 January arraignment, Muhammad Hussain (Antonio Martinez) initially entered a plea of not guilty, only to change his plea a year later. In an agreement to face up to 25 years for attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, the government agreed to waive charges of attempted murder of federal employees.

This past Friday, April 6, Hussain renounced any ties to terrorism and expressed regret for participating in an elaborate FBI-orchestrated ’terror plot’ wherein he was recruited by an FBI informant in 2010. While the vehicle bomb and ‘plot’, supplied by the FBI, were fake, the hefty charges and two-year-long ordeal he has undergone have been dramatically real.

The government lead ‘attack’, which was, paradoxically, simultaneously both a danger to the public, averted by the vigilant counter terrorism units, as well as a tightly controlled and choreographed charade, sought to target a Catonsville Military Recruitment Centre.

Muhammad was targeted for entrapment by US government agencies due to his online vocality and his use of Facebook, in particular, has been cited as the source of his government-goaded radicalisation. Such posts as one made in September of 2010: ‘the sword is cummin the reign of oppression is about 2 cease.’ have been said by the state to be a glorification of jihad and thus made him a prime target for FBI agent provocateurs.

Big Brother is indeed watching; federal agents regularly monitor social-networking sites and other webpages and otherwise benign internet activity for hints of ‘unrest’, making undercover contact with political dissidents and those critical of US foreign or domestic policy, and, increasingly, supplying the suspects with phony taxpayer-funded weaponry after months of state-sponsored radicalisation to carry out government-engineered plots.

In Muhammad’s case, an undercover agent passed himself off as an ‘Afghan brother’ and provided a dummy vehicle bomb that he was goaded into utilising after attempting to backout when he heard about an eerily similar situation which had occurred in Oregon. These patterns of FBI precipitated events are well documented and are often lacking in deviation from a standard elementary pattern.

Muhammad is among a handful of Maryland residents accused of using the Internet to develop and spread violent beliefs, offer terrorist services and recruit like-minded volunteers for so-called jihad. This is despite the fact that it is, in fact government employed individuals, often criminal informants, that sought out the suspects and in some cases, despite the fact that no actual crimes, sans solicitation by paid provocateurs, have or had actually occurred.

In other cases, a former Army private from Laurel was federally charged this year with attempting to aid a foreign terrorist organization after a website supposedly drew him to radical Islam. And an Ellicott City teen is due at a Philadelphia federal court this month for a change-of-plea hearing related to allegations that he conspired to help terrorists. The boy, Mohammad Hassan Khalid, is accused of raising money online to fund jihad in South Asia and Europe; he previously pleaded not guilty.

In court Friday, Martinez’s attorney, Deputy Federal Public Defender Joseph A. Balter, suggested that the bomb plot could have been avoided if agents had counseled Martinez against it, rather than encouraging him during the investigation. Balter previously argued that the FBI entrapped his client, but Muhammad agreed to drop those claims during his plea hearing this winter.

U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz said it was ‘not the job of the FBI or law enforcement authorities to try and lead moderation. That’s the responsibility of the rest of us, including the Muslim community.’  A judgement which strangely implies that it is in fact the duty of the FBI and law enforcement to incite individuals to acts of violence, provide them with weapons, training (spiritual, ideological or logistical) in the course of ‘investigations’ that read more like well-rehearsed seductions and state-sponsored indoctrination programs.

Balter said at the hearing that Muhammad was raised with a strong religious background but struggled with his conscience and discipline as an adolescent, experimenting with alcohol, drugs and meaningless relationships. He attended Laurel High School but never graduated and was convicted of a 2008 theft in Montgomery County. He was also charged with armed robbery there in 2006, though the outcome of that case isn’t clear.

When Martinez found Islam, it helped him stop many destructive behaviors, Balter said. On his Facebook account, Martinez described himself as ‘just a yung brotha from the wrong side of the tracks who embraced Islam.‘

In the summer of 2010, he married a young college student, according to posts on the social networking site. Soon afterward, he appears to have developed more radical views of Islam, which his wife did not seem to support.

In jail, Martinez reflected on his choices and came to understand they were misguided and “simply wrong,” Balter said.

‘He absolutely shudders at the thought of what could have happened, the defense team has frankly been moved by what we have seen, the progress of Mr. Hussain.‘

Martinez also spoke during the hearing, with more than a half-dozen family members and friends looking on. He began by praising Allah, then took responsibility for the attempted attack, saying he believed it was the right thing to do to protect his religion.

He expressed love for humanity and professed a new way of thinking that refuted his old, violent views.

‘I believed it was the right thing to do to protect my religion, but the reality of the situation, is that it was not, and this is something I now know. I sincerely apologize for my treacherous actions and behavior, We should not confuse the methodology of al-Qaida for the perfect way of life that is Islam… I renounce [the misguidance] of terrorism.’

Further adding that he was grateful no one was hurt, he also denounced violent groups such as al-Qaida as “in fact, not jihad.“ He called the “real Islam” a “mission of peace” and a religion that no one in the courtroom should be afraid of.

Judge Motz reminded Martinez of the “power of words” and urged him to use his to “teach others that terrorism and jihad is not that way. The fact that we are a tolerant people does not mean that we are a weak people. … We will take what action we deem appropriate to protect ourselves” Motz warned. “I hope what you have come to realize remains true in your life.”

Muhammad hugged Balter and appeared at peace after the hearing, a big smile on his face.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on April 7, 2012 in News Items

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Las Víctimas de la Inquisición estadounidense

01 Mar
The following testimony, entitled “Victims of the American Inquisition” written by Zachary Chesser, is a microcosmic documentation of America’s naked and larger aggression against the religion of Islam in what Chesser terms the ‘American Inquisition.’ Since the intensification of this most recent inquisition, the global Muslim community has suffered a ruthless assault on legal rights and basic humanity, which in various arenas have been superficially designated as everything from geopolitical interests to heretical rhetoric. What Chesser exposes through details regarding his case and subsequent incarceration, is a pattern of federally sanctioned religious persecution and corrosive civil rights violations reflective of American foreign policy, shockingly common in so-called terrorism cases. He recounts how his religious beliefs designated him as a target for government surveillance, how this surveillance in turn became a means of distortion and manipulation, culminating in his incarceration and the deliberate alienation of his family, particularly the religiously charged, custodial kidnapping of his son.
_______________________________________________________________

En el nombre de Alá, el Compasivo, el Misericordioso:

Mi nombre es Abu Talha al-Zacarías Amriiki (legalmente “Zachary Adám Chesser “), y lo que sigue no es para tomarse a la ligera. Si se va a saber cuánto estas palabras pueden afectar a mí ya mi familia, entonces la gravedad de este mensaje no se puede escapar. Estoy escribiendo esto con el fin de que nadie debe caer en las mismas trampas y errores como yo, para establecer la prueba para los que dudan, y para rectificar los errores determinados. Tal vez mi ignorancia de la naturaleza de mi situación era una excusa para mí, pero si no, entonces le pido a Dios que me perdone. Sin embargo, después de mí, no creo que nadie va a tener una excusa en estos asuntos si estos eventos se manifiestan a ellos.

Esta es mi historia, y dentro de ella son fragmentos de las historias de muchos otros. Es sólo una relación de lo que yo sé que es verdad a lo mejor de mi capacidad, y estoy seguro de que lo que permanece oculto para mí es mucho peor que la que se hizo claro para mí, pero lo que sí está claro es suficiente para un persona de comprensión. Por lo tanto, que estas páginas se registran en los anales de la historia en los capítulos reservados a la Inquisición estadounidense.

En cuanto a lo que sigue …  Read the rest of this entry »

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on March 1, 2012 in Campaigns, Letters from Zachary Adam Chesser, News Items, Risala

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Victims of the American Inquisition

20 Feb
The following testimony, entitled “Victims of the American Inquisition” written by Zachary Chesser, is a microcosmic documentation of America’s naked and larger aggression against the religion of Islam in what Chesser terms the ‘American Inquisition.’ Since the intensification of this most recent inquisition, the global Muslim community has suffered a ruthless assault on legal rights and basic humanity, which in various arenas have been superficially designated as everything from geopolitical interests to heretical rhetoric. What Chesser exposes through details regarding his case and subsequent incarceration, is a pattern of federally sanctioned religious persecution and corrosive civil rights violations reflective of American foreign policy, shockingly common in so-called terrorism cases. He recounts how his religious beliefs designated him as a target for government surveillance, how this surveillance in turn became a means of distortion and manipulation, culminating in his incarceration and the deliberate alienation of his family, particularly the religiously charged, custodial kidnapping of his son.
_______________________________________________________________

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful:

My name is Abu Talhah Zakariyya al-Amriiki (legally “Zachary Adam Chesser”), and what follows is not to be taken lightly. If you were to know how much these words can affect me and my family, then the gravity of this message would not escape you. I am writing this in order that nobody should fall into the same traps and mistakes as I did, to establish proof for those who doubt, and to rectify certain wrongs. Perhaps my ignorance of the nature of my situation was an excuse for me, but if not, then I ask Allah to forgive me. However, after me, I do not think that anyone will have an excuse in these matters if these events are manifested unto them.

This is my story, and within it are pieces of the stories of many others. It is only a relation of what I know to be true to the best of my ability, and I am sure that what remains hidden from me is far worse than that which was made clear to me, but that which is clear is enough for a person of understanding. Therefore, let these pages be recorded in the annals of history under the chapters reserved for the American Inquisition.

As for what follows…  Read the rest of this entry »

 
2 Comments

Posted by on February 20, 2012 in Campaigns, Letters from Zachary Adam Chesser, News Items, Risala

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Jesse Curtis Morton: February 17, 2012* (Solitary Confinement: A First-Hand Reflection on Domestic Torture in a Time of Terror)

20 Feb

 

They locked me in this room, Alone, by myself, just me –
With no one to talk to except for the walls, or the face in the mirror I see.
So I sit, listen, and watch
the television in my head
Not a notion to move nor a second spared
I record everything that is said –
Absence of Kindness, Distinct Memories of Pain
Caused by the things that they took away
So I’m holding my breath,until they let me out
But I’m afraid of what might happen the next time I breathe.

I wrote that poem when I was 17.  These days I am living it; all over again.  Then it was a proverbial prison.  I was a conscious youth inside one of the most dangerous institutions of America:  the public high school.  Today, 16 years later, I am in another – the U.S.prison system where I am but one of a growing number of Muslim Americans who dared to speak out.  Today I am a pretrial federal inmate housed in solitary confinement and in conditions that best resemble those of Guantanamo Bay.

Trust me I am not alone.  In 1994, my junior year of high school, the U.S. Justice Department announced that the prison population had reached one million.  By 2009, that number had more than doubled to 2.3 million with 5 million more on probation or parole.  U.S. citizens now represent only 5% of the global population but account for 25% of the world’s prisoners.  Additionally,1 in15 Americans is in “extreme poverty” with 48% of Americans labeled “in poverty” or “working poor”, but a recent Gallup poll documented that the percentage of Americans that realize the levels of poverty are so high, has dramatically decreased.  These two seemingly distinct sets of statistics suggest something more sinister is going on.

The civil rights era included prison protests like the Attica riots of 1971 and paved a way for productive reform, but today talk of human rights tends to cover a manipulative compromise with the power elite and diverts attention away from structural cause.  Generally prisoners today have enhanced rights and services but like the starving people fed by NGO’s in Africa or refugee camps in Afghanistan, such rights and philanthropy are counterproductive where they allow society to ignore the root causes of such appalling levels of crime, punishment, hunger or war.  These contradictions become apparent with regard to civil liberties in a time of confrontation, when the citizen is reduced to an object of propaganda about domestic enemies in order to maintain public support for wars abroad.

The authors of the American constitution unanimously resented any sacrifice of civil liberties in the name of national security, but the reaction to 9/11, the immediate passage of the Patriot Act and a new approach to law enforcement the Bush Administration called a “preventative paradigm” ushered in an order of sustained national liberty sacrifice.  These changes disproportionately affected American Muslims, however while “terrorists” abroad were “disappeared”, water boarded and held without charges at Guantanamo Bay, the courts approved warrantless wiretapping, ethnic profiling, blacksite rendition and preventative detention targeting Muslims on America’s shores.  Wartime propaganda alongside a wave of arrests utilizing entrapment, where undercover agents encourage fund, and coerce potential terrorist attacks, have helped to sustain support.  Recent polling documents that two-thirds of Americans support sacrificing some privacy and freedoms in the fight against terrorism. Read the rest of this entry »

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on February 20, 2012 in Letters from Jesse Curtis Morton, Risala

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Shkumbin Sherifi and Nevine Aly Elshiekh’s Payment of Legal Fees Allegedly to Decapitate FBI Informants

13 Feb

A pair of FBI informants, a woman posing as a hitman’s assistant, and a convict collected money from the accused to allegedly assassinate three FBI informants who testified at the ‘NC7′ trial last year.

Twenty-one year old Shkumbin Sherifi is the younger brother of twenty-seven year old Hysen Sherifi, the Kosovar-Albanian sentenced earlier this year to 45 years in prison for a terror related conviction in North Carolina.

Fourty-six year old Nevine Aly Elshiekh, a teacher for developmentally delayed children, has headed the special education program at Sterling Montessori Academy and Charter School in Morrisville for nine years.

Shkumbin Sherifi

Young and openly critical of the government’s persecution of Muslims, Shkumbin was outspoken about the innocence of his brother and actively campaigned for his release in politically and religiously charged demonstrations and music.

“Muslims after the September 11 attacks were targeted,” Shkumbin Sherifi said in a video uploaded to YouTube the day of his arrest. “For Muslims, it’s guilty until proven innocent.“

He also recorded rap songs in English and Albanian under the stage name Beme. His lyrics recount the sectarian violence in his homeland, after which tens of thousands of Albanian Kosovars, including the Sherifis, ended up as refugees in the United States, Germany and other western nations:

“Bombs dropping four in the morning, tanks blowing, windows shaking, my momma’s fainting,” Shkumbin Sherifi raps to a heavy beat. “I was a kid. Hey, what could I do? … Guerrilla warfare, yeah, we fight back. But NATO don’t like that. We fight for each other.“ Like many other artists Shkumbin used the medium of hip-hop and rap to explore and express himself regarding both his personal experiences as well as societal events. Hyperbole and fictionalised events are often used in the medium as Shkumbin, himself mentions in regards to the rapper Eminem, who had several songs about murdering his wife despite it being understood simply as an artist expressing themselves through their work.

State court records show his only prior brush with the law was in 2006 while still a teenager, when he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for resisting a public officer. Relatives have declined repeated interview requests. However, an older sister, Hylja Sherifi, testified at a 27 January court hearing that Shkumbin is the  primary caregiver to their father, who has terminal lung cancer.

Nevine Aly Elshiekh

Nevine Elshiekh, a family friend of one of the defendants, frequently made the two-hour trip to New Bern to attend the monthlong trial, which began shortly after the 10th anniversary of the 11 September attacks. She meticulously documented the testimony and was a part of the active Muslim community that showed their solidarity and support for the entrapped trio.

“I think Islam has been on trial,” commented Elshiekh after the sentences were read out. The college educated dog-lover is well-respected by her neighbors and has never had even a speeding ticket, much less a criminal history.

Family members and friends find it impossible to reconcile that caring woman with the zealot federal prosecutors claim hired a hitman. Her father, an Egyptian who moved his family to the U.S. more than fourty years ago, told The Associated Press the charges don’t add up.

“We don’t believe it,” said Aly Elshiekh, 80, a retired professor at North Carolina State University. “She loves special-ed kids and has dedicated her life to helping kids with disabilities.” Her father, a U.S. citizen since 1974, said he trusts the U.S. justice system. ”She will be treated fairly,” Aly Elshiekh said.

She has also served as a teacher at a religious school that is part of the Islamic Association of Raleigh, the city’s largest mosque. Imran Aukhil, a spokesman for the mosque, did not respond to requests for comment. Members of the congregation were among about thirty people who attended court hearings in Wilmington to show support.

Read the rest of this entry »

 
1 Comment

Posted by on February 13, 2012 in News Items

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Alicia McCollum Candidly Discusses Newburgh 4 with CagePrisoners

20 Dec

An exclusive interview by Aviva Stahl


Tell me a little bit about David was like growing up.

(In Alicia McCollum’s words): [Beginning cut off] David grew up without a father… this family is run by women, not men.   We don’t have male role models for the young men in our family… There’s like fifteen nephews. The women, we do the best we can with what we got.

How do you think that affected [David]?

I believe all young men, especially… people of colour, need a strong role model. When you look at the 1940s and 50s, how the family unit stayed together, and how fathers stayed in their lives back then and showed the men what it is to work and to be responsible and planted positive seeds in their life… You don’t see that in the culture anymore, in our culture, in African American culture anymore. So it’s women who are in the forefront, holding everything down, taking care of the household, without a male figure. And you look at the difference between this generation now, and then when the drugs and the crack era hit our community… When you look at the dividedness around the male figures, that piece is missing. When you watch grandpa, you watch granddad, you watch your father have a work history… when you don’t see that anymore, in our culture, and you see very few. And that plays a hell of a role on our men growing up.

Could you tell me about [David’s] conversion to Islam?

Well, David was introduced to Islam when he went to Newburgh. His grandmother has been in the Muslim community for years. David was introduced when he was about eight. He was introduced to it but he never really took it seriously, he went and became a drug dealer. When he got incarcerated, I think he took it up. Most men, when they become incarcerated, they don’t want to join gangs, so a lot of them go to the Islamic in prison, because it’s peaceful, and they’re going to watch your back….

Most men, when they do go to jail and become Muslims, while they’re in there, when they come home it’s a different tune. It’s because they wanted to be protected by Muslims when they were in there, while they were incarcerated. But for David, he was introduced was he was eight. He believes in it, he considers himself a Muslim, and I believe him. He came home and said he was a Muslim, and I said, “Okay”. We’ve never had a discussion about Muslim versus Christianity, or my god versus his god, we never had discussions on that magnitude.  Read the rest of this entry »

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on December 20, 2011 in Collateral Damage

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

FBI ‘Shooting Star Witness’ in Ferdaus Case ‘Shooting Up’ During Sting

18 Nov

Integrity of Investigation Questioned in Newest FBI Manufactured Terror Plot

The dramatic arrest of a man in Massachusetts accused of plotting to crash explosive-filled miniature airplanes into the US Capitol and the Pentagon has sparked fresh concerns that the FBI might be using entrapment techniques aimed at Muslims inAmerica.

Rezwan Ferdaus, a 26-year-oldUScitizen and physics graduate who lived at home with his parents inAshland, nearBoston, was the target of an FBI sting in which he bought a miniature aircraft that he planned to outfit as a flying bomb.

Ferdaus, who is being held without bail, was indicted by a federal grand jury inBostonin September. The six-count indictment – which also covered his alleged efforts to provide support and resources for al-Qaida groups attacking US troops abroad – said he “planned to commit acts of violence against the United States” with the goal of “decapitating” the nation’s military center “and killing as many ‘kafirs’ [non-believers] as possible.” His detention hearing was 3 October.

The detention hearing put the FBI under the spotlight, where questions of how involved their agents and convicted-criminal “co-operating witness” were in planning and moving along the plot were raised. While Magistrate Judge Timothy Hillman had yet to decide, whether or not to grant the prosecutions request for pretrial dentition, which in most terrorism cases can last for years, recent case history suggests that when he does, the strong odds are he will rule in favour of the government prosecutors who want to keep Ferdaus behind bars until the trail’s end.

While the government painted Ferdaus as a self made terrorist mastermind, making remote detonators, contriving elaborate plans involving remote controlled C-4 laden planes, orchestrating coordinated attacks with caches of AK-47s and scouting targets in Washington D.C the defense paints a much different picture of the heavy lidded physics student.  Read the rest of this entry »

 
1 Comment

Posted by on November 18, 2011 in News Items

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

FBI’s Fairytale Fabrications Flavor Fort Dix Five Case

18 Nov

It all began with dropping off a video at a branch of Circuit City. A group of Muslim friends living in and around the suburban New Jersey town of Cherry Hill had just come back from a trip to the nearby Poconos Mountains in Pennsylvania.

They had gone skiing, played paintball, ridden horses and fired guns at a public shooting range, all of which they had filmed. The group included the four Duka brothers, Dritan, Shain, Eljvir and Burim, children of Albanian illegal immigrants, but who had grown up in America. The Duka men, devout Muslims with bushy beards, wanted to make copies of the film on DVDs to give others on the trip.

Unknown to them, the young Circuit City clerk they dealt with in January 2006 was disturbed by the part of their holiday video showing the Dukas firing weapons, especially when he heard cries of “Allahu Akbar” and “Jihad”. He went to the police.

That single action triggered a massive FBI surveillance operation that lasted more than a year and saw two FBI informants sent to befriend the men on the tape. It ended with dramatic arrests and claims of a terrorist plot to attack the nearby Fort Dix army base.

Five men – including Dritan, Shain and Eljvir Duka – ended up with hefty jail sentences and are now known as the Fort Dix Five. Sitting in the Cherry Hill home he shares with his parents, Burim Duka thinks of the Poconos, the trip to Circuit City and where it all led.  Read the rest of this entry »

 
6 Comments

Posted by on November 18, 2011 in News Items

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

← Older posts
 
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 246 other followers