Free Republic

Hope. Change. Jihad. Iyman Faris, 49, was sentenced in 2003 for aiding and abetting al-Qaida by scoping out the iconic New York bridge as a part of a plot to cut through the cables supporting the structure. He had met with Osam bin Laden in Afghanistan and worked with 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Faris is set to be released on Dec. 23, 2020, but a court filing last year in a U.S. District Court argued that Faris lied on immigration papers and that his terrorist affiliations demonstrated a lack of commitment to the Constitution.

Obama nominee Judge Staci Michelle Yandle illegally maintains U.S. citizenship of al-Qaida terrorist Iyman Faris, who had met with Osama bin Laden, had planned to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, and had falsely claimed to be a student on his immigration application. Judge Yandle also falsely claimed that Faris had not lied on his immigration application. In February 2016, President Obama nominated Staci Michelle Yandle to be a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois.In July 2018, Yandle ruled that an immigrant named Iyman Faris could keep his U.S. citizenship.However, Yandle’s ruling was in violation of federal...

Prior 03/22/2017, |by SeekAndFind Mohammad Rauf, (aka Iyman Faris, a Pakistani) came to us from Bosnia in 1994, claiming asylum). By 2002 he had joined Osama bin Laden at an Al-Qaeda training camp, then returned to join up with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In 2003, Rauf pled guilty to planning a second wave of attacks with al Qaeda. He’s due for release in 2020. Justice Department (is) seeking to strip U.S. citizenship // Snipp // July 11 2018, Judge Staci Yandle, an outstanding Obama appointee to the Illinois District Court, is having none of it. She has ruled, the government has...

Back in 2003 Iyman Faris was convicted of a rather scatterbrained plot to take down the Brooklyn Bridge by cutting the structure’s support cables. He was planning to do this in collusion with Al Qaeda as part of a possible second wave of attacks against the United States. He was given a rather lengthy jail term but he’s due to be released in December 2020. So what happens then? He’s a naturalized citizen of Pakistani birth, but the Justice Department is now looking to change that situation by stripping him of said citizenship and ejecting him from the country....

The news last month that police had arrested Sajid Badat at his home in Gloucester, England, shook many Britons. The charges against him concerned his training with al-Qaida in Afghanistan and his possessing PETN explosives, the same substance would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid had tried to set off. Police believe Badat intended to carry off the very first suicide bombing in the United Kingdom. But not everyone was shaken by this news. Gloucester's Muslim community esteemed Badat too much to credit the charges. One admirer called him "a walking angel" and "the bright star of our mosque." Another described him...

Nuradin Abdi was convicted in 2007 of planning to blow up an Ohio shopping mall. Iyman Faris was convicted in 2003 of planning to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. Christopher Paul was convicted in 2008 of conspiring to use explosives against targets in the U.S. and Europe. All three terrorists worshiped and socialized at a small mosque in Columbus, Ohio, and, according to David B. Smith, an attorney for Faris, were part of a larger group of jihadists and extremists who frequented the mosque. The FBI now is investigating reports of links to that same mosque by Muslim-convert Abdulhakim Muhammad...

A Somali native accused of plotting to blow up a Columbus area mall is now in a legal holding pattern. A judge has ordered a psychological exam for Nuradin Abdi, but it may take three months for the results to be released. It appears the FBI started paying close attention to Abdi five years ago. That's when court documents accuse him of taking part in terrorist training, just four months after landing on US soil. In January, 1999 Abdi entered the US from the United Arab Emirates. ... Abdi returned to the US nearly a year later, in March of...

A US-born man pleaded guilty Tuesday to helping to train fellow Al-Qaeda agents to carry out bombings in Europe and the United States, after a five-year global investigation, officials said. The targets included European tourist resorts frequented by Americans, as well as US military bases, embassies and consular offices in Europe. "Today's guilty plea brings an end to the long, dangerous career of Christopher Paul, an Ohio native who joined Al-Qaeda in the early 1990s, fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia and conspired with others to target Americans both at home and abroad," said Acting Assistant US Attorney General Patrick Rowan....

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- High-ranking officials said the arrest of a Columbus terror suspect won't be the last in Ohio's capital city, NewsChannel 4's Elenora Andrews reported. The FBI and Ohio's terrorism task force say they are still tracking terror in the city. A key federal official told NewsChannel 4, "There is more to come" in Columbus, Andrews reported. Ohio's top law enforcement officials said the arrest of Nuradin Abdi, 32, who was accused of planning to blow up a Columbus-area shopping mall, should serve as a wake-up call. "Understand that we are at war with terrorism, we are at war...

A Somali immigrant the government says plotted to blow up an Ohio shopping mall pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. Nuradin Abdi, 35, entered his plea before U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley a week before his trial had been expected to start Aug. 6. "In this climate an American jury, we felt, could potentially find him guilty because of all this negative stuff that's coming in, and if they found him guilty he was looking at spending the rest of his life in custody," said Abdi's attorney, Mahir Sherif. "The government came back with another...

Revelations in the Peoria Journal Star earlier this week that the Peoria/Champaign area is one of seven in the United States on a terrorist “circuit” were frightening. “Terrorists enter the United States in San Francisco and Los Angeles, then move to Phoenix, then Denver," reported Phil Luciano of the PJS. "From there some head to Peoria and Champaign. Some terrorists remain in those communities, while others head on to New York City" (emphasis added). Luciano was provided this information by Peoria County Sheriff Mike McCoy, who received it at a recent FBI conference held in Springfield. Names of larger cities...

Federal authorities expect to file terrorism charges soon against a detained Pakistani man with ties to the shipping industry and links to a senior al Qaeda leader, law enforcement officials said yesterday. Uzair Paracha, 23, has been secretly detained as a material witness since his arrest March 31 in the offices of a New York clothing import firm owned by his father, sources said. Authorities believe the Paracha family business may have been used as cover for attempts to smuggle al Qaeda operatives or weapons into the United States, according to several sources familiar with the case. Paracha's father, who...

Judge Gives U.S. Wiretap Response Deadline COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- A federal judge gave the government two months to respond to an Ohio trucker's request that his terrorism conviction be thrown out on the grounds that the government illegally spied on him. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema cited "the potentially weighty issues raised in the defendant's motion" in an order Wednesday that set a 60-day timetable for the government to respond to Iyman Faris' arguments. Faris' challenge is among the first to seek evidence of warrantless electronic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, a practice that began after the Sept....

Why does the ACLU seek FOIA files on the NSA Surveillance program? Perhaps this can shed a little light on the subject. We could all see this coming. Back in December, Iyman Faris, the only named American target of the National Security Agency’s secret warrantless wiretap program announced his consideration of a lawsuit against the president of the United States. To accomplish this goal, his lawyer David Smith issued an all points bulletin for civil liberties attorneys and constitutional scholars interested in taking up his client’s case. The offer comes at a time of concern among civil liberties attorneys, who...

Iyman Faris, the only terrorist who has been named publicly in connection with the NSA terrorist surveillance program, has moved to set aside his conviction for conspiring to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge on the ground that he was "illegally" spied upon by NSA. Faris's cause is being taken up by the American Civil Liberties Union: In many ways, Faris is not an ideal plaintiff for attorneys who hope to focus their case on whether the president abused his authority by spying on innocent Americans. Faris’ guilt is widely acknowledged, despite his recent claims of innocence. Among the evidence against him,...

Lawyers May Challenge NSA Wiretapping Wednesday, December 28, 2005 WASHINGTON — Defense lawyers in Florida, New York, Ohio and Virginia are considering filing legal challenges on behalf of suspected or convicted terrorists in response to the National Security Agency's wiretapping program. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration authorized NSA to eavesdrop without court approval on people inside the United States with suspected ties to Al Qaeda or who may have been planning a terror attack. Lawyers question the program, saying the government may have withheld information uncovered during wiretaps to get more convictions, according to a...

The attorney for the only known target of NSA eavesdropping says his client would be happy to sue the president. By Michael Scherer Dec. 23, 2005 | Iyman Faris, the only named American target of the National Security Agency's secret warrantless wiretap program, will consider a lawsuit against the president of the United States, according to his criminal defense attorney, David Smith. "I am sure he would be delighted to sue President Bush," said Smith, of the law firm English & Smith in Alexandria, Va., who is representing Faris in his criminal appeals. "He may be the only person in...

FINALLY, some good may come from the Valerie Plame kerfuffle - if Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has the stones to do what's right. A grave crime was exposed Dec. 16 when New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau published a story revealing President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to listen in on conversations between al-Qaeda suspects abroad and people in the United States without first obtaining a warrant. "We're seeing clearly now that [President] Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator," wrote Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. But the scandal was not the program Mr....

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An Ohio trucker has admitted to helping plan al Qaeda attacks in the United States after meeting terror chief Osama bin Laden at an Afghanistan terror training camp. Iyman Faris, 34, checked out the chances of destroying a New York bridge and tried to buy equipment for proposed al Qaeda attacks while appearing to be a law-abiding trucker, according to documents unsealed Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. Faris pleaded guilty May 1 to providing material support to al Qaeda and to conspiring to do so, according to the documents. The charges together carry...

Finally, some good may come from the Valerie Plame kerfuffle -- if President Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez have the stones to do what's right. A grave crime was exposed Dec. 16th when New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau published a story revealing President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to listen in on conversations between al Qaida suspects abroad and people in the United States without first obtaining a warrant. "We're seeing clearly now that (President) Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator," wrote Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. But the scandal was...