Posted on 08/05/2004 6:18:03 AM PDT by Lady GOP
ALBANY, N.Y. — Federal agents and Albany police raided a Muslim mosque overnight Wednesday and arrested two men for helping someone they thought was a terrorist, a law enforcement official confirmed to FOX News on Thursday.
A block of downtown Albany (search) was sealed off with armed officers for several hours after the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agents executed search warrants at the Masjid As-Salam mosque (search) and two Albany-area residences, officials said.
Yassin Muhhiddin Aref, 34, the Imam of the mosque, and Mohammed Mosharref Hoosain, the 49-year-old founder of the mosque, were arrested early Thursday morning. They are accused of reaching out to someone they thought was a terrorist trying to get a shoulder-fired missile to down planes in the United States.
FOX News learned from a law enforcement official, however, that that person was not a terrorist, and actually it was all a sting operation. The two men are accused of agreeing to help launder money to pay for the missile.
The men have ties to a group called Ansar al-Islam (search), which has been linked to Usama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terror network, two federal law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
after the branding irons and jumper cables!!
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=273076
Mohammed Hossain
Last updated: 9:18 a.m., Thursday, August 5, 2004
Editor's note: As part of its recently published special report on Albany's Central Avenue, the Times Union featured a profile of Mohammed Hossain, one of the suspects arrested Thursday during an FBI raid of the Masjid As-Salam mosque in Albany. Here is the text of that story.
Mohammed Hossain's journey to owning Little Italy pizzeria began in an unlikely place: Bangladesh.
Hossain and his wife, Mossamat, emigrated with their 1-year-old son, Abuhamza, from Bangladesh in 1985 in search of opportunity to lift themselves out of grinding poverty.
Their native tongue is Bengali and they arrived in this country knowing little English. Hossain worked as a dishwasher in diners, where he learned Greek and English. He gradually moved up to a position in the kitchen, with throwing pizzas being part of his repertoire. Nine years of saving allowed the family to rent a small storefront and open a pizzeria he called Little Italy in 1994. Adapting the menu to the neighborhood, they added fried chicken, hamburgers, beef patties, gyros and sweet potato pie. They eventually bought the building and moved into an apartment above the pizzeria with their five children.
When the kids -- who attend Annur Islamic School in Schenectady -- aren't using booths in the pizzeria as study tables, they do small jobs for their parents.
Except for a brief post-Sept. 11 backlash, business has grown steadily, and the couple has bought at public auction and fixed up income properties off Central Avenue.
''I'm proud to be an American,'' Hossain says. ''When I was in high school in Bangladesh, I looked at a map of America and I dreamed of coming to this great land. Since I've been here, opportunity has kissed my feet. Hard work has done the rest.''
Hossain has one regret he hopes to rectify soon.
''I'd like to sell the pizza shop and the houses and let my wife go back to college to get her Ph.D.,'' he says. She arrived in this country with a graduate degree in sociology but couldn't find work in that field, he explains.
''I feel guilty every day of my life,'' Hossain says. ''She has a master's degree and she works all day in a pizza shop. She should be out helping someone. Or teaching. I want to give her the chance to continue her education.''
I use extra starch on my laundered money. Makes the bills nice a stiff like ATM money.
There will be more.
That was my point. This wasn't the first and it won't be the last.
Many more!
Holy cow.
That place is literally two blocks from the neighborhood in Albany where I used to live (Washington Square).
I used to walk by that place all the time. Its on Central Avenue. I used to kinda get the willies every time I walked by it. Its pretty much an empty room where I assume Muslim men gather to do their 5 times a day prayer rituals.
I believe the store next door (with the yellow sign) is an Arab grocery store, which I think is connected with the mosque next door. The 'mosque' is literally an empty store in a commercial district, with apartments above it.
Wow thats very informative. Thanks for the video link.
Whenever I point this out to people who've never studied the language (I minored in Arabic in college about thirty years ago and have forgotten most of whatever I knew - but this little factoid stuck in my mind) I feel a lot like the guy at the end of the Twilight Zone episode shouting "It's a cook book!".
Probably why people think he's not strong enough on terrorism.
Notice that in later hearings on the case I cited, the prosecution then *added* charges:
Lakhani pleads not guilty in missile plot
excerpt:
Later, prosecutors added several other charges, including that he offered to procure anti-aircraft guns, tanks, armoured personnel carriers and radar systems besides the 'dirty bomb'.
The prosecution has not given details but a 'dirty bomb' could be used to spread radioactive or chemical or biological agents.
One of the members there interviewed claims undue scrutiny and stereotyping agains the Muslim community. Unbelievable.
True.
Vile Vermin everywhere.
Last March, the State Department declared the group a foreign terrorist organization. The label carries legal consequences: People in the United States cannot provide money or other material support to the group, members cannot receive U.S. visas, and U.S. financial institutions must block the group's funds. U.S. officials have said Ansar's members are thought to be linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant whose network is considered one of the most dangerous groups fighting U.S. forces and their allies in Iraq.
Go US FORCES... :)
Brother of Ansar al-Islam chief killed in Mosul clashes: official
MOSUL - A brother of Mullah Krekar, head of the radical Islamic group Ansar al-Islam, was killed during clashes here Wednesday pitting insurgents against Iraqi and US forces, a provincial government spokesman said.
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