July 1989: FBI Monitors Future Bombers Weapons Training Sessions; Fail to Follow Up -
FBI agents photograph Islamic radicals shooting weapons at the Calverton Shooting Range, on Long Island, New York. The group is secretly monitored as they shoot AK-47 assault rifles, semiautomatic handguns, and revolvers for four successive weekends. The use of weapons such as AK-47’s are illegal in the US, but this shooting range is known to be unusually permissive. ALI MOHAMED is apparently not at the range but has been training the five men there: El Sayyid Nosair, Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammed Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, and Clement Rodney Hampton-El. NOSAIR WILL ASSASSINATE RABBI MEIR KAHANE ONE YEAR LATER (see November 5, 1990), and THE OTHERS except for Hampton-El WILL BE CONVICTED OF THE 1993 WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMBING (see February 26, 1993), while Hampton-El will be convicted for a role in the “Landmarks” bombing plot (see June 24, 1993).
Some FBI agents have been assigned to watch some Middle Eastern men who are frequenting the Al-Kifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn. Each weekend, Mohamed’s trainees drive from Al-Kifah to the shooting range, and a small FBI surveillance team follows them. The FBI has been given a tip that some Palestinians at Al-Kifah are planning violence targeting Atlantic City casinos. By August, the casino plot fails to materialize, and the surveillance, including that at the shooting range, comes to an end.
Author Peter Lance will later say that why the FBI failed to follow up the shooting sessions is a “great unanswered question.” [Lance, 2003, pp. 29-33; New York Times, 10/5/2003]
FBI photographed El Sayyid Nosair, Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammed Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, and Clement Rodney Hampton-El. Nosair at Long Island, NY using ILLEGAL AK47's – Nosair (and two co-conspirators) will assassinate Rabbi Meir Kahane one year later – all but one will bomb the WTC in 1993 - Why were allowed to use AK47's at the Long Island shooting grange aka Jihad Training Camp? [Source National Geographic]