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Charlotte County Sheriff Thomas D. Jones, whose jurisdiction includes Red House, said that while FBI agents did not establish any specific link with the southern Virginia commune, agents told him "there had been a connection at a similar community in Georgia."
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The earliest known al-Fuqra attack occured in 1983 in Portland, Ore., when Stephen Paster, an al-Fuqra leader, was accused of setting off a pipe bomb at a Portland hotel. He served four years of a 20-year sentence and while suspected in two other bombings in Seattle in 1984, was never charged in those cases.
Mr. Muhammad converted to Islam in 1984 and, as a former U.S. soldier, was stationed at Fort Lewis near Tacoma, Wash., at the time of the initial al-Fuqra attacks. Al-Fuqra also was named in the August 1984 slayings of three India natives in Tacoma and in a series of fire bombings in Seattle.
One law-enforcement official noted yesterday that the sniper killings began Oct. 2 — the anniversary of the 1995 conviction of World Trade Center bombing ringleader Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman and others, including members of al-Fuqra.

"There are a series of coincidences here involving Mr. Muhammad and al-Fuqra that have to be followed," said the official. "Even if the investigation leads nowhere, it would be negligent not to pursue every angle."

Who's lurking whom?
Looks like they overplayed their hand though. Muhammad didn't go t Fort Lewis and convert to Islam until late '85.

Post here to the thread if you'd like to be on or off the Sniper Muhammad ping list.

FBI agents told Sheriff Jones that link(s) HAVE BEEN ESTABLISHED between Muhammad / Malvo and an Al-Fuqra commune in Georgia.

Looks like they overplayed their hand though. Muhammad didn't go t Fort Lewis and convert to Islam until late '85.

The 1985 conversion date is according to "relatives of his first wife," per an October 25 AP story. I'm not sure there's any firm way of proving it didn't happen earlier, short of his Islamic/NOI mentor stepping forward to confirm it...which I doubt will happen.

I had a feeling LE hadn't put the NOI angle to rest yet, considering that they included charges under the new VA anti-terrorism law. If Malvo keeps insisting that he pulled the trigger in the VA shootings, the anti-terrorism angle will become even more important, although I'm not too optimistic about the Feds being able to dig up anything much about al-Fuqra.

In a 9/28/01 detention hearing for Vincente Pierre of Red House, accused (and later convicted) of firearms charges, (and earlier parolled for his role in the Colorado worker's comp al-Fuqra scam), had an interesting statement:

There is no al-Fuqra organization. There are no legal papers with the name of any such organization. There are no publications named al-Fuqra. There is nothing owned under the name al-Fuqra, no non-tax exempt religious organizations named al-Fuqra. Why is this? Because "fuqra" is just a word, Arabic word, and it means what has been explained already. Is there an organization named al-Fuqra? No. This is a phantom, nonexistent organization which does not exist, again. It's just a figment of someone's imagination due to their ignorance of the Arabic language or perhaps due to their hate or prejudice of Al-Islam.

It looks like infiltration of this organization may be the only solution, and considering how the FBI has been hogtied and sensitivity-trained into ineffectiveness over the last decade, the chances of that happening anytime soon don't look very good.