Posted on 12/25/2001 3:20:19 PM PST by Pokey78
THE man accused of smuggling bombs concealed in his shoes on to an American aircraft is a small-time British criminal who converted to Islam behind bars.
A possible link to Osama bin Laden emerged when The Times discovered that the alleged bomber, Richard Reid, 28, who was identified by British police from fingerprints sent by the FBI, was a worshipper at a London mosque also attended by one of the suspected conspirators of September 11.
The leader of Brixton Mosque in South London said that Mr Reid was incapable of acting alone and was probably on a test mission for a new terrorist technique when he apparently tried to detonate C4 plastic explosive packed into his shoes on American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami last Saturday.
Mr Reid, a mixed-race Briton who appeared in court in Boston on Christmas Eve accused of assaulting flight attendants, was overpowered by passengers and crew.
He was born in Farnborough Hospital in Bromley, southeast London, in the summer of 1973. His English mother Lesley came to Brixton Mosque looking for her son several months ago after he went to Pakistan and stopped communicating with his family.
His father Colvin is Jamaican. The couple married in Poplar, East London, a year before he was born. A streetwise South Londoner, Mr Reid was apparently radicalised by contact with London-based extremists.
He arrived at Brixton Mosque as a worshipper several years ago and was known by the name Abdel Rahim. A petty criminal with a string of convictions for street crime such as muggings, he is believed to have served time in several prisons and in the Feltham Young Offender Institution in West London. He converted to Islam while in custody.
He joined the Arabic classes at Brixton Mosque and completed the first of three books teaching Arabic. He was proficient enough to write to fellow worshippers in Arabic when he went abroad recently.
While he was at Brixton Mosque a fellow worshipper was Zacarias Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan origin who lived in Brixton.
M Moussaoui has been charged in America with conspiracy over the September 11 attacks and is suspected of having been the “20th hijacker”, who was prevented from joining the outrages only because he had been detained for behaving suspiciously at a flight school.
Both men followed a similar path of conversion to radical Islam. They arrived at the mosque asking to learn the tenets of Islam.
They appear to have been targeted by London-based extremists who encouraged them to challenge the teachings of Brixton Mosque, which condemns terrorism, suicide bombings and Osama bin Laden.
AbdulHaqq Baker, chairman of Brixton Mosque, said of M Moussaoui: “We saw quite a stark change in him. He became infuriatingly arrogant. He would try and speak to other unsuspecting youths about his view. We would try and stop him.
“He kept asking us: ‘Do you know where there is jihad which I can fight?’ He would wear military gear and a rucksack showing he wasn’t sleeping in a fixed place.”
As for Mr Reid, Mr Baker said: “He was an amiable, happy-go-lucky individual, always wanting to get involved in things and helping. He was very keen to learn the basics of Islam.”
Mr Baker said that Mr Reid would have been incapable of devising the plot to blow up the aircraft over the Atlantic without help from fellow conspirators.
“No way could he do this on his own,” Mr Baker said. “He doesn’t have the capacity to think: ‘I’m going to get these explosives, I know where to get these explosives from, I’ll put them in my shoe’.
“He was a testing ground. If he had succeeded they would know this is a mechanism that works. If the plane had exploded there would have been very little trace of how that happened.”
The mosque found Mr Reid a job making incense sticks for Black Crescent, a company that provides employment for Muslims. The sticks are sold outside Brixton station.
“He was a regular south-east London youngster. He was very streetwise. He used street slang,” Mr Baker said.
At first Mr Reid used to come for prayer wearing fashionable Western street clothes. He had just started a beard when he first arrived at the mosque, then let it grow to full-length.
He also began to wear a traditional Muslim thobe. He originally wore this beneath fashionable jackets, but eventually replaced these with military tops.
“By the time he left he was clearly arguing for this fight with the non-Muslims and this warped understanding of jihad,” Mr Baker said. “Some of my colleagues remember clearly the heated discussions they had with him saying this belief in jihad is wrong.”
Mr Reid took a path that many prisoners may be following. Muslims make up the fourth largest group of inmates in prisons in England and Wales. Their numbers doubled between 1993 and 2000.
The latest Prison Service figures show that last year there were 4,298 Muslims in the jails; 25,567 Anglicans; 20,888 prisoners of no religion; and 11,327 Roman Catholics.
The figures do not disclose how many prisoners convert to another faith while serving a sentence. The Prison Service said that the present selfreporting system of religious affiliation made it impossible to track conversions in jail.
A Prison Service spokeswoman said yesterday: “We are not able to prevent people converting to another faith. The only way we would pick up a change of faith from Christian to Muslim would be if someone asked for a Muslim diet.”
M Moussaoui...was prevented from joining the outrages only because he had been detained for behaving suspiciously at a flight school.
Wasn't Moussaoui being held on a visa violation while warnings from the flight school were ignored?
But we were told that this guy had no links to Al Queda!?
Nothing to see here, move along. < /sarcasm>
The government needs to get its fecal material organized, or those of us paying attention are going to lose all faith in their cluefulness and ability to wage war against the terrorists.
Maybe they should detail one of their agents to read foreign newspapers. They have so many agents detailed to prevent their incompetence from becoming public knowledge, they don't have the manpower to investigate terrorism.
After the testimony in '93 that airliners were the next attempt to take down the WTC center and disregarding that plus the warnings from Israel prior to 9/11 show how ineffective the FBI is in fighting terrorism.
The episodes of the Keystone Cops come to mind when watching these clowns operate. When are they going to start getting their act together?
Instead of arresting people, they would march up to them and say, "You, sir, are an a**hole! [idiot, fool, etc.]"
ya think?
Islam is p e a c e
Kwanzaa is love.
People keep saying that it has never been done before (the shoe trick), but we don't know that.
There are at least a couple of airplane crashes which are unexplained aren't there?
Now we know where he picked up the name "Tariq."
This statement bothers me. He's ONLY accused of assaulting flight attendants?
Not accused of intent to blow up an airliner??
No, here's the story:
Missed Opportunity: FBI Missed Moussaoui Importance; Source: ABCNEWS; Published: Tuesday, December 11, 2001 Author: By Brian Ross; Posted on 12/11/01 7:59 PM Pacific by JohnHuang2
Dec. 11 — The case of Zacarias Moussaoui represents a huge embarrassment for the FBI.
Moussaoui today became the first to be indicted in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.
But not only was the French citizen in federal custody well before the hijackings, his alleged terrorist ties were revealed to the FBI the week before the suicide raids.
It was suspicious instructors at a Minnesota flight school who first tipped off the FBI in August about Moussaoui, who showed up with lots of cash and no flying skills.
FBI agents in the field were immediately convinced Moussaoui was up to no good. That's what they said when they interviewed people at another flight school Moussaoui attended in Oklahoma.
"They said he was trying to do something bad," the flight school instructor said.
A Fateful Decision
But lawyers at FBI headquarters turned down requests for a special wiretap to check Moussaoui's computer. And today the FBI director continued to defend the fateful decision not to authorize what's known as FISA warrant.
"The attorneys back at FBI determined that there was insufficient probable cause for a FISA, which appears to be an accurate decision," FBI Director Robert Mueller said.
But after Sept. 11, the FBI found Moussaoui's computer disks full of incriminating information, according to officials.
And on Sept. 5-6 in Paris, French intelligence officials reportedly revealed details of Moussaoui's background — including alleged ties to al Qaeda going back to his student days — to FBI and CIA agents.
"French intelligence claims they informed the FBI and CIA about Moussaoui's background," said former French defense official Alexis Debat.
But as was made clear today, one hand of the FBI didn't know what the other knew. And on Sept. 11, Moussaoui was sitting in a county jail in Minnesota.
Could any of this prevented the Sept. 11 attacks?
"Who can say?" Mueller said today.
He doesn't? How many IQ points does it take to think those deep thoughts?
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