Recently, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) helped to alert US authorities that Ramy Zamzam and four of his friends from Northern Virginia had gone missing by encouraging the families to bring their information to the FBI after the families told CAIR about the disappearances. (For my initial post on this case, click here.) This […]
David Headley was convicted on heroin smuggling charges in 1998, and the available evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the following year he did undercover surveillance work in Pakistan for the DEA in exchange for a reduced sentence. During his time in Pakistan in 1999, his surveillance target was reportedly a drug gang based in Afghanistan/Pakistan. This […]
CNN reports on a story that has broken over the past couple of days: Five people arrested in Pakistan had been reported missing in the United States, and police are confident they were planning terrorist acts, a Pakistani police official told CNN. It is too soon to link the men with any terrorist organizations, said […]
David Coleman Headley, and a snapshot from his passport. Images from The Hindu. In October, 49-year-old Chicago man David Headley (born Daood Gilani) was arrested for his role in planning terrorist attacks against the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten and two individuals associated with the notorious Muhammad cartoons incident. Subsequent to Headley’s arrest, news broke that […]
On Wednesday, I posted about the death of Luqman Abdullah, the imam of Detroit’s Masjid al-Haqq and a Detroit representative to al-Ummah, who was killed in Dearborn, Mich., in a shootout with FBI agents and police from the Joint Terrorism Task Force. The new issue of CTR Vantage is themed around this incident, and provides […]
Luqman Ameen Abdullah. Photo from the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Fox News. In October, a shootout at a warehouse in Dearborn, Mich., claimed the life of Luqman Abdullah, the imam of Detroit’s Masjid al-Haqq, and in the process garnered national attention. Abdullah had been a Detroit representative to al-Ummah, which a criminal complaint filed […]
Yesterday the Star Tribune (published in Minneapolis-St. Paul) reported on a seemingly significant arrest in the Netherlands related to the al Shabaab recruiting networks that have centered on the Twin Cities area. From the Star Tribune: A 43-year-old Somali man from Minneapolis was arrested this week in the Netherlands for allegedly financing the recruitment of […]
Federal authorities in Boston said Mehanna has been charged with conspiring with others on terror attacks against shoppers in US malls.
Aden Hashi Ayro, the deceased leader of al Qaeda-linked Shabaab, the terrorist youth movement of Somalia’s Islamic Courts Union. Photo from IntelCenter Over the past several years, an ongoing lack of internal order has left Somalia vulnerable to the rise of hard-line Islamist groups, of which the latest is al Shabaab (“the youth”), which has […]
Left to right, Daniel Patrick Boyd, Hysen Sherifi, Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan and Ziyad Yaghi have been charged with supporting violent jihad. Image from the New York Times. On Sept. 24, a superseding indictment was filed in the criminal case against Daniel Patrick Boyd and his codefendants. Authorities allege that Boyd was the ringleader of […]
On Sept. 24, the government submitted a memorandum of law supporting its motion for a permanent order of detention against Najibullah Zazi pending the outcome of his trial. The memorandum contends that Zazi should be detained because he poses a flight risk and a danger to the community. The memorandum represents the government’s most complete […]
Najibullah Zazi. AP photo Over the weekend, three men were arrested and charged in the ongoing terror probe centered around New York and Colorado. The three men are Najibullah Zazi, 24; his father Mohammed Wali Zazi, 53; and Ahmad Wais Afzali, 37. Though all three were charged with making false statements to authorities, terrorism charges […]
Osama bin Laden, from his latest tape. Image courtesy of Nick Grace. Bill Roggio notes the new bin Laden audiotape, “An Address to the American People by the Lion of Islam Sheikh Osama bin Laden.” As the title suggests, it is expressly directed at a Western audience. There are two interesting aspects to the tape. […]
The latest issue of the Weekly Standard contains my article on Daniel Patrick Boyd, who authorities say was the ringleader of the alleged jihadist cell arrested in the Raleigh, North Carolina area on July 22. My article — the product of several days of research in the Raleigh area — highlights the two faces of […]