From: <peacethrujustice@aol.com>
Date: Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 9:48 PM
Subject: [bangla-vision] Another young Muslim engulfed in a "terrorism conspiracy" - URGENT READ
THE PEACE Thru JUSTICE FOUNDATION
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/authorities-make-arrest-in-failed-recruitment-center-bomb-plot-in-catonsville-md/19751959
Arrest Made in Failed Recruitment Center Bomb Plot
Mara Gay Contributor
AOL NewsAntonio Martinez, also known as Muhammad Hussein, was charged with the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and the attempted murder of federal officials. He appeared today in federal court and was ordered held without bail until a hearing set for Dec. 13.
Federal prosecutors say Martinez, a naturalized U.S. citizen who works in construction, tried to use a car bomb to blow up an armed forces recruitment center in Cantonsville, Md.
But the device he alleged tried to detonate was fake -- one of several defective bombs given to him by undercover FBI agents, who set up Martinez in a sting, said Marcia Murphy, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office.
"There was no actual danger to the public as the explosives were inert and the suspect had been carefully monitored by law enforcement for months," she said
Martinez is the second young man charged in recent weeks with plotting a terror attack. A Somali-born teenager was arrested the day after Thanksgiving after he allegedly tried to blow up a van near a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, Ore. Authorities said undercover agents had supplied Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, with fake explosives.
Cantonsville made headlines in 1968 as well, when nine Catholic activists broke into a military center in the city and burned draft files to protest the Vietnam War. The "Cantonsville Nine,"' as the activists were known, included two Catholic priests -- brothers Daniel and Philip Berrigan.
Man Arrested in Recruiting Center Bomb Plot
Judge Orders Antonio Martinez, 21, Held without Bail; Arrested Trying to Detonate Phony Bomb in the Baltimore Area
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Twenty-one-year-old Antonio Martinez, also known as Muhammad Hussein, was arrested by federal agents Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2010, after attempting to detonate a car bomb outside an armed forces recruiting center in Maryland. The bomb was a fake, supplied to him by FBI undercover agents. (CBS)
- (CBS/AP)
A 21-year-old construction worker who had recently converted to Islam and told an FBI informant he thought about nothing but jihad was arrested Wednesday.
CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports the man is Antonio Martinez, also known as Muhammad Hussain. He was arrested by federal agents Wednesday morning after attempting to detonate a car bomb outside an armed forces recruiting center in Maryland. The bomb was a fake, supplied to him by FBI undercover agents.
"There was never any actual danger to the public during this operation this morning," U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said Wednesday after a hearing in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. "That's because the FBI was controlling the situation."
Criminal Complaint against Antonio Martinez
Martinez appeared in court Wednesday afternoon and was ordered held until a hearing Monday.
According to court documents, he has been on the FBI's radar screen since October, when he told a confidential FBI source he wanted to attack and kill military personnel.
A law enforcement source told CBS News that he had been "mouthing off" to friends and "wanted to retaliate against the military for the wars," and when others heard about it, "they wanted nothing to do with it."
The case is similar to one in Portland, Ore., where authorities said they arrested a Somali-born teenager the day after Thanksgiving when he used a cell phone to try to detonate what he thought were explosives in a van. He intended to bomb a crowded downtown Christmas tree-lighting ceremony, but the people he had been communicating with about the plot were in fact FBI agents.
After that case became public, Martinez called the FBI source he had been working with on the Maryland bomb plot, according to court documents, which said he seemed worried about another person that source had introduced him to. The person was an undercover FBI agent.
"I'm not falling for no b.s.," court documents quote him as saying.
After meeting with the source, however, Martinez decided to continue with the plot, according to the court documents. On Wednesday he drove an SUV with the dummy bomb to the recruiting center and parked outside the building, authorities said. When he attempted to detonate the device, he was arrested.
During Wednesday's hearing, Martinez told the judge he could not afford an attorney. He said he works in construction, is married and understood the charges against him.
Asked to identify himself, he said he was Muhammad Hussain but confirmed Antonio Martinez is still his legal name.
CBS News' Kate Rydell, reporting from the courtroom, said that Martinez, from Nicaragua, is about 6 feet tall with curly unkempt black hair, a scruffy beard and was wearing a long white tunic.
Afterward, Joseph Balter, the public defender assigned to represent him, cautioned against a rush to judgment. "It's very very early in this case," he said.
A spokeswoman from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Baltimore said there is no evidence this individual is tied to the recent shootings at military recruiting centers in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
Authorities did not say where Martinez was born or what prompted his conversion to Islam. According to court documents, he explained to the FBI informant that his mother did not approve of how he had chosen to live. His wife, he said, accepted his lifestyle.
"I told her I want to fight jihad (holy war) ... and she said she doesn't want to stop me," he said, adding that he was glad he was not like other people his age, going out or going to school. "That's not me ... that not what Allah has in mind for me."
Martinez lives in a working-class northwest Baltimore neighborhood in a tidy, three-story yellow house that's been divided into apartments. No one answered the door Wednesday afternoon.
The White House said Wednesday afternoon that President Barack Obama was informed about a Maryland bomb plot before a suspect's arrest and said the president was assured the public was not endangered.
White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said the arrest underscores the need for vigilance against terrorism and illustrates why the Obama administration is focused on addressing "domestic radicalization."
© MMX, CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
FBI plant banned by mosque – because he was too extreme
By Guy Adams in Los Angeles
Tuesday, 7 December 2010
AP
Craig Monteilh says he was recruited by the FBI after leaving prison in 2006
The spying game wasn't all it was cracked up to be for Craig Monteilh, a convicted criminal recruited by the FBI to investigate the march of radical Islam into Southern California. His endless talk of violent "jihad" so alarmed worshippers at the local mosque, that they took out a restraining order against him.
Monteilh spent 15 months pretending to be Farouk al-Aziz, a French Syrian in search of his religious roots. He prayed five times a day at the Islamic Centre in Irvine, Orange County, wearing white robes with a camera hidden in one of its buttons, and carried a set of car keys that contained a secret listening device.
The enthusiastic attempt to catch local Muslims discussing terror campaigns backfired, however, when community leaders went to the police with fears that the suddenly devout young man, who got up to pray at 4am, had become a radical in their midst.
Yesterday, as details of his efforts to persuade Niazi to blow up buildings became public, leading US Muslim organisations said they have suspended all contact with the FBI in protest against the excesses of agents who are secretly, and in some cases illegally, monitoring mosques.
"The community feels betrayed," Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, an umbrella group of more than 75 mosques, told The Washington Post. "They got a guy, a bona fide criminal, and obviously trained him and sent him to infiltrate mosques... It's like a soap opera, for God's sake."
Monteilh, who had previously served time in prison for forgery, says he was recruited on his release in 2006 by FBI agents, who he met in doughnut shops and Starbucks outlets. After being given the code name "Oracle", he was told to root out radicals among the region's 500,000 practising Muslims.
Over the 15 months that he posed as al-Aziz, Monteilh was paid almost $200,000 to pass secret tape-recordings of his conversations with local worshippers to his handlers. He became a regular at a local gym patronised by young Muslim men.
"We started hearing that he was saying weird things," said Omar Kurdi, a Loyola Law School student who trained there. "He would walk up to one of my friends and say, 'It's good that you guys are getting ready for the jihad'."
In May 2007, Monteilh recorded a conversation in which he suggested to Niazi and another young man that they blow up buildings. Niazi appeared to agree with the idea, and the tape was subsequently used as evidence in the terror case against him.
However, it now seems that Niazi had simply been attempting to humour someone he regarded as a dangerous extremist. Indeed, he was so concerned by "al-Aziz's" attempts to plot an attack that he reported it to community leaders, who passed details to police and took out a restraining order to prevent him from entering the Islamic centre.
"Farouk had told them he had access to weapons and that they should blow up a mall," Hussam Ayloush executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said. "They were convinced this man was a terrorist." Soon after the restraining order was obtained, in June 2007, the FBI attempted to cut their ties to Monteilh. Several months later, the former agent was arrested and imprisoned on a separate theft charge.
In January this year, after being released, Monteilh sued the FBI, alleging that the bureau conspired to have him arrested, then allowed his informant status to become known in prison, where he was stabbed. That lawsuit failed in September, prompting him to shop his bizarre story to the media.
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A number of Muslims in the New York area have wondered if the founder(s) of "Revolution Muslim" were undercover provocateurs planted within the Muslim community to cause the type of psychic damage (among emotionally unstable, blind-following youth) that we've seen over the past few years. As to the answer to that question, ALLAH knows best.
What is known is that the architects of "Revolution Muslim" contributed their part to distorting the image of Islam, and made it easy for law enforcement to tag and follow impressionable young Muslims who had the potential to become radicalized! (A significant number have paid a high price for that association in the process!)
Now one of the co-founders has had "a change of heart," and suggests that the core message of the group was misunderstood all along. Peruse the information below (especially you young Muslims), and decide for yourself. - MS
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/09/revolution.muslim.founder/index.html?hpt=C1
Revolution Muslim leader changes tune
- Younes al-Khattab started Revolution Muslim with another American-born convert
- Al-Khattab once praised al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden
- Today, he tells CNN's Drew Griffin he does not support killing civilians
New York (CNN) -- He might not be a household name, but Yousef al-Khattab and his Revolution Muslim extremist group have been pivotal in inspiring a wave of homegrown American jihadists over the past three years.
Born Joseph Cohen, this American Jew lived in Israel before converting to Islam. He espoused a radical version of the religion that he preached online and at public rallies.
In a CNN interview last year, he professed his undying love for Osama bin Laden, saying "I love him more than I love myself."
Today, al-Khattab seems to have changed his tune.
He admits that his now defunct Revolution Muslim website became a "bug light for Muslim misfits."
And he says he regrets that his message was taken by some as a justification to attack civilians.
"It was an idiotic thing, looking back on things now," al-Khattab said.
He says terrorists who attack civilians anywhere in the world are "disgusting."
Violent message outside a New York mosque
With so many of his followers under arrest, it is unclear whether al-Khattab means what he is saying or is just running scared. Either way, law enforcement sources say the collapse of Revolution Muslim's website and apparent conversion of its founder is a win.
By CNN's count, in just the past 18 months, eight of the 27 reported cases of homegrown terrorism saw U.S. terror suspects frequenting, blogging on, or directly linked to Revolution Muslim and the Islamic Thinkers Society -- another extremist New York group that al-Khattab played a role in.
Those cases includes the Baltimore man arrested Wednesday for plotting to bomb a military recruiting station.
Despite the risk of eschewing his radical brethren, al-Khattab agreed to go on camera and state his new message.
"I regret anybody that would hurt an American civilian. That I regret," al-Khattab told CNN. "I think that's disgusting and I think that was never the message."
He says some of his previous statements, including his message condoning the Fort Hood, Texas, shootings, were taken out of context.
"My intention was not at all to inspire somebody ... to do an act like that," he said.
Al-Khattab created RevolutionMuslim.com with Younes Abdullah Mohammed, who told CNN last year that "Americans will always be a target -- and a legitimate target -- until America changes its nature in the international arena."
The two apparently had a falling out, and parted ways. Mohammed has apparently left the United States for Morocco, where he is trying to start up a similar website, according to counter-terrorism sources.
Another blogger who was active on RevolutionMuslim.com is now thought to be in Yemen, working with outlawed cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
Though law enforcement officials are encouraged by the demise of the Revolution Muslim website, they are cautious about al-Khattab.
--Yousef al-Khattab
He has been a rock star in the world of militant Islam. His extreme rhetoric, according to sources, attracted many young would-be jihadists.
Al-Khattab says he is taking a risk speaking on camera denouncing his past because, he says, he will now be an enemy of the radicals he once embraced.
But he says this is message to them: He was wrong, and so are they.
"If you think that this is the direction, to come to the United States and bomb and blow up civilians, you're terribly wrong and that was never ever the message that I wanted to give, it was never my intention."
He says it's "not my fault" that his actions may have inspired others to kill civilians.
"That's like somebody reading 'Helter Skelter' and saying that ... it influenced him to do the same thing," he said. "I can't help that."
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NEW YORK CITY - DECEMEBR 16, 2010
MARK YOUR CALENDERS & PLAN TO ATTEND
Personal Stories of Preemptive Prosecution Part II
A Call to Action!
Thursday December 16, 2010...7:00 PM
Location: Furman Hall, NYU, 245 Sullivan Street, Room 216
Free Admission - ID required
RSVP greatly appreciated for attendance, childcare or access needs.
Contact: dan_vea@yahoo.com
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--
Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/
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