U.S. CITIZEN PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRING TO PROVIDE MATERIAL SUPPORT TO AL QAEDA

U.S. Citizen Pleads Guilty to Conspiring to Provide Material Support to Al Qaeda

Syed Hashmi, aka “Fahad,” pleaded guilty today in Manhattan federal court to conspiracy to provide material support to al Qaeda, announced Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Hashmi, 30, was arrested on June 6, 2006 at Heathrow Airport in London, shortly before he was to board a flight to Pakistan. He was later extradited to the United States; Hashmi is the first individual to be extradited from the United Kingdom to the United States on terrorism charges.

According to the superseding indictment filed in Manhattan, New York federal court and statements made during the guilty plea proceeding:

From January 2004 through May 2006, Hashmi provided material support or resources to al Qaeda by helping to provide equipment to others who then transported the equipment to al Qaeda associates in South Waziristan, Pakistan. Hashmi provided the equipment with knowledge that it would be used by al Qaeda to fight against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Hashmi also provided money to a co-conspirator who planned to transport the equipment to al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Hashmi pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, namely al Qaeda, which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison. Hashmi is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Chief Judge Loretta A. Preska on June 7, 2010.

U.S. Attorney Bharara praised the investigative work of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which principally consists of special agents and detectives of the FBI and the New York City Police Department. Bharara thanked the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Security Division and Office of International Affairs. Bharara also expressed his gratitude to the British authorities and law enforcement community, including New Scotland Yard and the Crown Prosecution Service, for their cooperation in the investigation.

U.S. Attorney Bharara said: “This afternoon, Syed Hashmi admitted that he knowingly provided material support to al Qaeda. Having admitted his guilt, he will now face justice for giving aid to terrorists he knew full-well were dedicated to harming Americans.”

This case is being handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Terrorism and International Narcotics Unit. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Brendan R. McGuire and John M. Hillebrecht are in charge of the prosecution.

Previously...

http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/islamicthinkers/index?tab=articles

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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1646245/posts

JIHAD FEAR IN QUEENS - GANG’S UGLY TACTICS
NY Post ^ | 6/9/06
Posted on June 9, 2006 7:50:15 AM PDT by areafiftyone

June 9, 2006 — The Queens chapter of an international jihadist group - founded by the Brooklyn College grad accused of being an al Qaeda sympathizer - is terrorizing people in the extremist’s old stomping grounds, residents said yesterday.

“They have a lot of hatred [but] the police said they can’t do anything about them,” Kana Chauhan, president of the Jackson Heights Merchants Association, said of the radical group Al Muhajiroun.

The organization is tied to suspected terrorist ally Syed “Fahad” Hashmi, a disciple of Syrian cleric Omar Bakri who was banned from speaking on English college campuses.

The Queens-bred Hashmi, who was arrested in London Wednesday on charges he moved funds and military gear to notorious terror camps in Pakistan, founded the local chapter of the extremist group. Each weekend, it sets up its hate-spewing operation on 37th Avenue and 74th Street.

“They’re against America, they make trouble,” local merchant Amarjit Singh said. “Whatever they say is really nasty.”

Hashmi, who has called the United States “the biggest terrorist in the world” and is a fan of homegrown Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh, was indicted last month in Manhattan. He’s fighting extradition in Britain.

Meanwhile, nearly every Saturday for more than a year, Hashmi’s buddies - who call themselves the Islamic Thinkers - have unloaded their propaganda from a minivan and set up a table festooned with anti-U.S. banners and fliers.

Then, shouting and using a megaphone, the young firebrands - most are in their 20s and early 30s - walk the street spewing hate.

“They display pictures of people dying in the war. They want people to feel they’re right and get them thinking against [President] Bush and America,” said Sarabjit Damber, 24.

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...

Previously...

http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/almuhajiroun/index?tab=articles

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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1645289/posts

U.S. Citizen Is Indicted in Terror Conspiracy
NY Times ^ | June 7, 2006 | ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS and AL BAKER
Posted on June 7, 2006 5:55:57 PM PDT by neverdem

An American citizen who once lived and attended college in New York City was indicted today on charges of conspiring to send money and military gear to al Qaeda associates who lived in Pakistan, the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan said.

The defendant, Syed Hashmi, 26, was arrested in London’s Heathrow Airport on Tuesday night, as he was trying to board a flight to Pakistan, prosecutors said.

Law enforcement officials said the arrest of Mr. Hashmi reinforced their belief that New York was a nexus in a web of worldwide terrorist activity. Mr. Hashmi had an address in Flushing, Queens, until about three years ago, and graduated from Brooklyn College with a degree in political science, officials said.

Officials said Mr. Hashmi was a member of al Muhajiroun, a London-based group that is active in New York. Investigators have characterized al Muhajiroun as a religious group largely made up of devout Muslims. A small number of them have been involved in terrorist activity. The group has been connected to the Finsbury Park Mosque in London.

Between January 2004 and May 2006, Mr. Hashmi and at least one other man who has previously been arrested in New York conspired to provide “material support or resources” to members of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization, according to the federal grand jury.

Prosecutors refused yesterday to name the other man. But law enforcement sources said that Mr. Hashmi had become acquainted with another Queens man, Mohammed Junaid Babar, who was taken into custody in Queens in April 2004, through his association with al Muhajiroun.

The New York Police Department and the Joint Terrorist Task Force have monitored the activities of Al Muhajiroun, which officials said had supposedly disbanded as of last year.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...

stepping back in time...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2087587/posts

http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=32432

“No Terrorist Left Behind”
By: Phil Orenstein
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, September 25, 2008

SNIPPET: “Syed Hashmi was born in Pakistan grew up in Queens, NY and attended Brooklyn College earning a bachelor’s degree in political science in 2003. He was arrested June 2006 in London at Heathrow Airport with a large sum of money where he was headed for Pakistan. He was extradited to United States in May 2007 and is now in solitary confinement at Metropolitan Correction Center in Manhattan awaiting trial. According to the indictment filed in Manhattan federal court, he was charged with providing and conspiring to send money, material support and military gear including night-vision goggles to associated al Qaeda fighters in South Waziristan, Pakistan to use against United States forces in Afghanistan. The charges carry a maximum prison sentence of 50 years. Due to a violent outburst attacking arresting officers at Heathrow Airport, and shouting that he hoped they would be killed, bail was denied at a hearing and he was placed under secure lockdown. In a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office FBI Assistant Director Mark Mershon said: “If we are engaged in a war against terror — and we most certainly are –then Syed Hashmi aided the enemy by supplying military gear to al Qaeda. The JTTF (Joint Terrorism Task Force) is committed to eradicating terrorism anywhere in the world, from the streets of New York to the hills of Afghanistan. In a global community, terrorism anywhere is a threat to people everywhere.”

According to Michael Sheehan, a terrorism expert and NBC News analyst, law enforcement authorities work day and night keeping such dangerous people under surveillance for years until enough evidence is found to bring charges against them. He said: “Hashmi was a jihadi. He was interested in fighting jihad in Pakistan. He had connections to serious terrorists in the U.K. He was an American citizen, a very troublesome character, and we’re glad that he’s been picked up.” Hashmi was also suspected of playing a role in the thwarted fertilizer bomb plot targeting prominent buildings in London, which would have killed potentially hundreds of people.

Although this is an indictment and not yet a conviction, the facts and circumstances presented in this case warrant cause for grave concern about what is happening on our college campuses. Muslim young men and women are susceptible to radicalization under our very noses on campus, while professors and authorities out of touch with the real world are facilitating and promoting the entire process. According to the NYPD intelligence report (2007), Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat, Hashmi became radicalized while he was a student at Brooklyn College. Those who knew him described him as a quiet, bright, and caring young man who was passionate about Islam but not overzealous. However, Hashmi as well as many young Muslims in New York City struggling with their identity, often fall victim to extremist Islamic ideologies. In the late 1990’s he was a member of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), but dissatisfied with their passive message, he became susceptible to destructive radical organizations. That’s when he started attending meetings of the New York branch of al-Muhajiroun, a purveyor of violent jihadist ideology, and then a total transformation took place. After Sept 11, 2001, Hashmi invited a speaker from al-Muhajiroun to Brooklyn College, and soon he became a top recruiter and senior figure in the organization.

Al-Muhajiroun is a London based group founded by Syrian Militant Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed that serves as an incubator of radicals for the global terror network. His organization, which praised the terrorist attacks on 9/11, radicalized the five London fertilizer bomb plotters. The fanatical message of jihad of Sheikh Bakri and his network of lieutenants dispatched to campuses and mosques around the world, is irresistible to young moderate Muslims, indoctrinated and transformed into violent and angry radicals, which was the story of the London fertilizer bombers. Abu Hamza, the hook-handed cleric now in prison for inciting murder, Mohammed Siddique Khan, leader of the July 7th London bombings, shoe bomber Richard Reid, suicide bombers, some of whom ended up committing massacres in Israeli, and many more were radicalized by al-Muhajiroun. Now exiled from Britain, Bakri recently made headlines when he issued a death threat to Paul McCartney, saying that he would be enemy of every Muslim and the target of suicide bombers if he comes to Israel to perform.

A former British Muslim radical, Ed Husain described the radicalization process in detail, which began in a secondary school which was infiltrated by Islamist dogma. The students were indoctrinated by textbooks and curriculum replete with doctrine linking Islam and politics as one and the same, and portraying radical groups such as Muslim Brotherhood as legitimate. After this educational brainwashing process, when Husain was invited to a radical London mosque teeming with al-Muhajiroun followers, he was easily hooked on Bakri’s powerful message to turn Great Britain into an Islamic state with global jihad as its foreign policy.

Al-Muhajiroun networks spread to New York City campuses where Hashmi and many other restless youth were nurtured in Islamic extremist ideology and joined its global mission, some of whom ended up travelling to Pakistan for jihad camp training or staying home to plan domestic attacks. The organization officially disbanded in 2004 and broke up into splinter groups which carry on the same extremist ideology and operations. One of them that operates in New York City is the Islamic Thinkers Society (ITS) of which Hashmi was also a known member. Its homepage leads with the “Free Fahad” campaign and a video featuring CUNY professor Corey Robin and an Imam pleading for Hashmi’s freedom. The new movement still went by the same name of al-Muhajiroun at an event at CUNY’s Queensborough Community College campus where the speaker railed “We reject the U.N., reject America, reject all law and order. Don’t lobby Congress or protest because we don’t recognize Congress! The only relationship you should have with America is to topple it!” This extremist group is perhaps best known for the virulent flag stomping and anti-Israel rallies including the 2006 demonstration in front of the Israeli consulate in Manhattan where they chanted “The mushroom cloud is on its way! The real Holocaust is on its way!” and “Israeli Zionists you shall pay! The wrath of Allah is on its way!”

Mohammed Junaid Babar, another former student from Queens, NY started aspiring to Islamic extremist ideology through the internet, dropped out of St. John’s University, became radicalized and joined al-Muhajiroun. After 9/11, he travelled to Pakistan to help fight against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Upon his return, he was arrested in New York in 2004 and plead guilty to five counts of providing and conspiracy to provide money and supplies to Al Qaeda terrorists, with a sentence of up to 70 years. He admitted to two separate attempts to kill General Pervez Musharraf, for which he would face the death penalty in Pakistan. In order to reduce his sentence, he became a cooperating witness and testified against his al-Muhajiroun accomplices, including the July 7th London transit system bombers, and was the star witness in Operation Crevice, which resulted in the arrest of five terrorists convicted of plotting to use fertilizer bombs to blow up buildings, shopping centers and synagogues in London. Potentially hundreds if not thousands of lives were spared thanks to Babar’s testimony. Babar will also testify as a witness against the jihadist activities of Syed Hashmi, who according to documentation of the case, brought Babar into al-Muhajiroun where he met the London fertilizer bomb plotters. When Hashmi moved to Britain, he used his apartment to store supplies, military gear and money that Babar shipped out to Abdul al-Hadi al-Iraqi, al Qaeda’s chief of operations in Afghanistan.

In his testimonies Babar brought to light a textbook case of how typical young British Muslim men are indoctrinated in radical Islamic ideology and transformed into violent jihadists. Professor Anthony Glees, director of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, said “The fertilizer bomb trial has given us the smoking-gun evidence that groups like al-Muhajiroun have had an important part in radicalizing young British Muslims, and that this can create terrorists.” Al-Muhajiroun is not only active in Britain but according to Babar’s admissions at the trial, al-Muhajiroun had deployed an army of jihadists in the U.S. which was critical to the success of the fertilizer bomb plots and recruitment operations. Syed Hashmi was a key operative in the New York network of al-Muhajiroun.

We all should watch the Hashmi case with great interest. We should not only be interested in the outcome of the trial, but in the details that emerge, which will teach us important lessons. The phony righteous pleadings for the freedom of Syed Hashmi are all smoke and mirrors to distract us from domestic threats.”

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