The snipers had the police read on air the message "caught Like A Duck In a Noose" (L,A,D,Ia,N = Ladin = Bin Ladin), and after a pregnant pause somebody figures out that there MIGHT be a link to terrorism?!
Posted on 11/10/2002 11:52:27 PM PST by goody2shooz
Sniper suspect John Muhammad fits the profile of a disaffected outcast who becomes increasingly radicalized under the influence of Islamism, say terrorism analysts and investigators, who suspect he is connected with the radical Islamist group, al-Fuqra.
According to Christian M. Weber, contributing editor for Soldiers for the Truth, an organization headed by Col. David Hackworth, Muhammad seems to follow the model of John Walker Lindh, Richard Reid and Jose Padilla, men exposed to Islamism who become disenchanted with the movement's pace and progress and who take the road to jihad.
"As one traces John Muhammad's life from his conversion to Islam in 1985, to his joining of the moderately militant Nation of Islam, to his deadly shooting spree in October 2002, his steady radicalization becomes readily apparent," writes Weber. "Terrorist profiling dictates that his departure from the Nation of Islam in 1999 would have been followed by his affiliation with an organization more actively militant. It also suggests that initial news reports citing U.S. officials who said there was no evidence of any connection between Muhammad and identified terrorist organizations may have been premature."
Weber points out that Muhammad acquired the 1990 Chevy Caprice that he would modify into his killing platform on the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks. He had also expressed sympathy with Sept. 11 terrorists.
Weber had previously pointed to Oct. 2, the day the snipers began their Maryland rampage, as a significant date for terrorist threats.
"Nor does it seem random chance that his spree started on Oct. 2, the anniversary of the conviction of World Trade Center bombing ringleader Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman in 1995," Weber writes. "It appears likely that after his separation from the Nation of Islam, which occurred on less than good terms, Muhammad gravitated to an organization at odds with the Nation of Islam and aligned with the Wahhabist sect of Islam associated with al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and Sheikh Rahman. In America today, one organization fits that bill; al-Fuqra."
Al-Fuqra was founded by Kashmiri Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani. He began preaching at a Muslim mosque in Brooklyn seeking recruits for the Afghan Jihad. He primarily targeted black American converts from the inner city and those with criminal backgrounds, a segment of the population that the cleric apparently saw as prime for melding militant Islam with a deep-seated resentment and disillusionment with Western society.
"The resulting organization, al-Fuqra (the impoverished), was formed with a goal of purifying Islam through violence," explains Weber.
Gilani is the man Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was to meet when he was abducted last Jan. 23 and murdered. He has a long history of involvement with terrorism.
"The upstate New York town of Hancock serves as the American headquarters for al-Fuqra, with at least six major rural communities, jamaats, of 200 to 300 members located in Red House, Va., Tulare County, Calif., Commerce, Ga., York, S.C., Dover, Tenn., and Combermere, Canada," he writes. "Total membership in al-Fuqra is believed to be between one and three thousand, with smaller jamaats being reported in over 25 locations throughout the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. The communities themselves are primarily walled or fenced-in gatherings of trailers or mobile homes. At least three of the compounds are known to have firing ranges, and the compound in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California has a fully functional airfield.
Surveillance reports of the compounds note that the residents remain in a fluid state and are continuously on the move. For the past several years, law enforcement authorities observing the Red House, Va., compound have voiced concern that this pattern may be designed to create a series of safe houses in the rural areas of southern Virginia.
According to Weber, al-Fuqra, which boasts distinct ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida, owns two private security companies in Brooklyn that not only provide armed protection for the jamaats, but also compete for government and private security contracts. Between 1980 and 1990, al-Fuqra members have been either convicted or suspected in 13 assassinations and 17 firebombings, he says.
Susan Fenger, former chief criminal investigator for the state of Colorado, has looked into Muslim groups with terrorist ties in the U.S.
"There was a large Fuqra group here in Colorado that was ripping off worker's comp money and using that to support their terrorist activities," said Fenger in a recent interview with John Gibson on the Fox News Channel. "Their terrorist activities involved targeting a number of individuals, and including the Hare Krishna temple here in Denver and an imam down in Tucson, Arizona."
"Their basis, their philosophy, is to purify or cleanse Islam," said Fenger. "And speaking in the traditional fundamentalist viewpoint of Islam. And to do so through any means of force and violence. That's their creed."
Referring to Sheik Jalani, the head of the al-Fuqra, Fenger said the leader exerts "total influence" over his followers, so much so that "many of the adherents to Fuqra even look at him in a more of a religious sense as able to move from place to place without, in a magical way."
"Without having to get on a plane?" asked Gibson.
"That's right."
And does the group actually engage in terrorist acts?
"There have been throughout the 1980s and '90s terrorist activities that this group was involved in," said Fenger. "However, they were carried out in a covert manner. What this group does is targets various individuals and entities and plans to carry out its terrorist acts in a very covert manner."
During an Oct. 28 CNN broadcast, anchor Arthel Neville asked that network's security analyst Kelly McCann about the sniper/al-Fuqra connection:
"Authorities are saying that Muhammad may have been, and Malvo may have been, associated with the Muslim group Jamad Al-Fuqra, and the State Department lists this group as a terrorist group operating out of Pakistan and North America. What do you know about this group?"
McCann: "It's been in operation since about the 1980s. It's centered in Lahore, Pakistan, and Sheik Gilani is the man who is responsible for starting it. Basically, the name says it all. It's also known by the name Jihad Council for North America. It's active in the Caribbean, and in North America, and in Pakistan, and if you see the Caribbean link, Richard Reid obviously, Malvo, and now Muhammad, it's interesting there's just a tremendous amount of coincidence and overlap that needs to be investigated."
"In any investigation the acceleration point is at the apprehension," McCann added. "When you apprehend somebody you should accelerate forward in order to run down leads that may run on, especially when you are doing counter-terror, into other areas, and I think that to be fair, no one's making any statements saying that there is a link. I think everyone is just saying that there are so many coincidences that we would be foolish not to run them into ground."
http://www.specialoperations.com/Terrorism/SOCGuide/A_F.htm
Fuqra
Jamaat ul-Fuqra is an Islamic sect that seeks to purify Islam though violence. Fuqra is led by Pakistani cleric Shaykh Mubarik Ali Gilani, who established the organization in the early 1980s. Gilani now resides in Pakistan, but most Fuqra cells are located in North America.Fuqra members have purchased isolated rural compounds in North America to live communally, practice their faith, and insulate themselves from Western culture. Fuqra members have attacked a variety of targets they view as enemies of Islam, including Muslims they regard as heretics, and Hindus.
Several Fuqra members were convicted in a Canadian court in late 1993 of conspiracy to commit murder - a charge related to their plans to bomb a Hindu temple and a Hindu-owned cinema in Toronto. The Fuqra has been a part of the American terrorist scene since its creation in Brooklyn, New York in or about 1980. Another of their goals, typical of many terrorist organizations, is the overthrow of the U.S. government in favor of their own. What is more interesting is their method: the installation of a Muslim President in the White House by means of selective breeding. More specifically, Fuqra members are encouraged to have as many children as possible in order to create a pure Islamic populace within the United States.By way of example, when authorities in Colorado raided a Fuqra compound in 1992 they found, along with large caches of weapons, two men, two women (both pregnant), and twenty-one children.While the existence of this group is not widely reported in the press, their activities have been remarkably prolific, with at least sixteen domestic attacks having taken place between 1983 and 1985 alone.Their targets have been varied, but have consistently included non-Black Muslim religious organizations and people.Ranging geographically from Seattle, Washington to West Virginia, and religiously from Hare Krishna temples to Yoga institutes, they have been effective in eluding a wholesale arrest of their members by breaking up their organization into numerous cells.Thus, when individuals are apprehended for the perpetration of a terrorist act, the trail stops with that particular cell, thus making it extremely difficult for authorities to prove any connection between said individuals and any kind of verifiable network.This provides the additional benefit to Fuqra of being able to plan numerous attacks with little chance of more than one of these being prevented at any one time.
The snipers had the police read on air the message "caught Like A Duck In a Noose" (L,A,D,Ia,N = Ladin = Bin Ladin), and after a pregnant pause somebody figures out that there MIGHT be a link to terrorism?!
Post here to the thread if you'd like to be on or off the Sniper Muhammad ping list.
Save the world a lot of misery, just shoot'em!!
Mohammad and Malvo have explicitly been charged under Virginia terrorism statutes, which carry the death panalty.
Do Marylan, Alabama, Georgia, or Arizona have a similar statute?
We don't yet know what they wrote about their affiliations or beliefs on the laptop, in notebooks, or in their letters to the police. We also don't yet know what Malvo has spilled to the Feds or to local prosecutors.
For all we know they're admitted to belonging to al Fuqra and/or NoI.
Interesting. The only angle on this I heard was an interview with Chief Seattle explaining how this was some kind of Indian saying.
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