Florida’s Terror-Tied Sheriff Scott Israel Embraced...

..Jihad Extremists to Secure His Own Political Future
This is how it works in America now. There is no doubt the 9/11 Islamic attacks on America were a profound success. Speaking of which, this is but another bombshell news story censored and ignored by the jihad-aligned media. Sheriff Scott Israel Embraced Extremists to Secure His Own Political Future By Russell Di Perna September 30, 2019: When embattled Broward County, Florida Sheriff Scott Israel was removed from office in January 2019 by new Florida governor Ron DeSantis, Israel claimed that the decision was partisan, that it had nothing to do with his deputies’ disastrous performance during two deadly mass shootings, and that he had provided “amazing leadership” to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office (BSO). Now, the Florida Senate’s special master has recommended that Israel be reinstated, even though the Supreme Court of Florida upheld the governor’s decision to remove him in the first place.

But I was the executive officer of the BSO. And Scott Israel is lying. He neglected police work in favor of politics. The bloody massacres at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in 2017 and the Parkland high school in 2018 were the most visible consequences. But another insidious effect was Sheriff Israel’s willingness to shatter the morale of the BSO by appointing political cronies to key posts — including radicals linked with Islamist extremism. I began my law enforcement career serving with the New York City Police Department (NYPD) when Rudy Giuliani was mayor. Under Giuliani, the direction of law enforcement was set by elected officials, but police policies and procedures were left to experienced, non-political leaders of the police department. That, I understood, was how a successful law enforcement agency should function.

That’s not what I observed while serving as the BSO’s executive officer. Instead, I saw politics permeate every layer of the agency until it completely delegitimized what was once the pride of South Florida’s law enforcement. Instead of the BSO functioning as a performance-directed institution, it acted more like a political campaign. Sheriff Israel surrounded himself with well-connected incompetents, who were unconcerned with the daily threats of crime, disorder, and terrorism. Sheriff Israel dared not fire them even when they made the most egregious mistakes. To do so would have harmed his political ambitions.

Upon taking office in 2013, Sheriff Israel appointed as his chief of staff Lisa Castillo, who had no prior law enforcement experience. In fact, she had no major work achievements in any previous position. Castillo served for a brief period as an intern with Mayor Ed Koch’s administration in New York City. From there, she had short stints in mid-level positions in local government. Despite her limited qualifications, the new sheriff apparently believed Castillo was qualified to serve on a very high level in an agency with a $900 million budget and 6,000 employees — and in a county of approximately 1.9 million residents. However, Castillo brought something more valuable to Israel than education, experience, or competence: Political influence. Castillo was married to City Commissioner Angelo Castillo of Pembroke Pines, an important voting constituency in Broward County. Pembroke Pines is also the location of the infamous Darul Uloom mosque, which is affiliated with the hardline South Asian Deobandi movement. The mosque’s imam, Shafayat Mohamed, was involved with a South African “backer” of Osama bin Laden. Mohamed has been thrown off several Florida nonprofit boards because of his bigoted statements about homosexuals. (The most notorious example was Mohamed’s 2005 article “Tsunami: Wrath of God,” in which he claimed that homosexuality caused the 2004 Indonesian tsunami. He also called Christians and Jews “perverted transgressors.”) Worse, the mosque had counted among its members several future terrorists, including “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla.

None of this stopped Sheriff Israel from establishing deep ties with Darul Uloom, at the urging of Lisa Castillo. In August 2014, Israel appointed Nezar Hamze as a full-time deputy. Hamze was a regular attendee of Darul Uloom. When he was hired, he was also the regional operations director of the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-FL), and had previously been CAIR-FL’s executive director. CAIR has a long history of coordination with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2009, the FBI cut off all collaboration with CAIR after federal prosecutors named the Islamist group as an unindicted coconspirator in the largest terrorism financing case in U.S. history. And in 2014, the United Arab Emirates designated CAIR as a terrorist organization. Hamze’s colleagues at CAIR-FL are deeply alarming. CAIR-FL Communications Director Wilfredo Amr Ruiz regularly promotes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, including canards about Jewish scripture popularized by the Nazis. CAIR-FL Director Hassan Shibly, meanwhile, has endorsed a Deobandi organization that advocates the mass murder of Ahmadiyyas, a peaceful Muslim sect despised by Islamists. The decision to hire the extremist-linked Hamze as a deputy was even more scandalous because he failed almost every step of the vetting process for the job. During his initial pre-employment interview in May 2013, three high-ranking BSO commanders — Major David Holmes, Major Michael DiMaggio, and Major Donn G. Peterson — all agreed not to recommend Hamze. But Lisa Castillo advised the sheriff to overrule his commanders and to hire Hamze as a BSO deputy anyway. Hamze continued his position with CAIR-FL, despite the clear conflict of interest. Shortly afterward, Scott Israel attended Darul Uloom along with Hamze, telling the congregation that it is important to “surround yourself with like-minded people.” Courting Broward’s growing Muslim voting population appeared to be a priority for both Israel and Castillo. To no one’s surprise, in May 2019, Angelo Castillo announced his candidacy for mayor of Pembroke Pines.

Israel has tried to explain these events as an effort to reach out to diverse audiences. However, Castillo had a remarkably narrow idea of which audiences were considered “diverse.” When staff suggested the sheriff’s office reach out to Jewish and Christian organizations to lecture on post-9/11 security issues, we were met with resistance from Sheriff Israel and his chief of staff. Meanwhile, at the suggestion of Castillo, Israel ordered members of his Community Outreach Unit to participate in prayer sessions at the Darul Uloom mosque on a regular basis. The rank and file of the BSO, men and women dedicated to their calling, recognized that preventing crime and promoting law and order took a backseat to politics during the Scott Israel regime. The politicization of the agency, the incompetence of the command staff, and the lack of training and experience in dealing with critical incidents created a fatally negative environment that consumed the entire agency. The hiring of Nezar Hamze was only the worst example. It is hardly surprising that morale and training deteriorated, contributing to the disasters at Parkland and Fort Lauderdale. A wise man once said said: “Experience is the hardest kind of teacher because you take the test first and the lesson second.” Sheriff Israel, his chief of staff Lisa Castillo, and the BSO’s command staff never learned the lesson. They were willing to sacrifice the safety of Floridians in return for short-sighted political advantage. History will not be kind to Scott Israel; he will be remembered as the sheriff whose decisions failed the test of time and whose “amazing leadership” inspired no one. Russell Di Perna is the former executive officer to the Sheriff of Broward County. He is a retired NYPD officer, and previously served in the United States Marine Corps and United States Navy. He is a graduate of Florida Atlantic University, where he studied political science, and of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, where he pursued Counter-Terrorism Studies.

In South Florida, terror has a badge and a gun.
Thu Apr 4, 2019, BY Joe Kaufman

After leaving his job at CAIR, Nezar Hamze has now settled into his new position as Executive Director of the South Florida Muslim Federation (SFMF), an umbrella organization for most if not all of the area’s Islamic extremist groups, including CAIR. Last month, SFMF held a meeting at a radical mosque with a number of SFMF affiliate imams, one of which was previously arrested and charged with conspiring to provide funding to the Pakistani Taliban. All of this should be unsettling for Floridians and Americans, but what is most alarming is the fact that Hamze also serves as a Deputy Sheriff in one of the most prominent law enforcement offices in the nation.

On March 23, 2019, SFMF’s Council of Imams held its second meeting at the Islamic Center of Greater Miami (ICGM), a.k.a. Muslim Communities Association of South Florida (MCA), a.k.a. Masjid Miami Gardens. According to SFMF, the meeting was called to discuss various community issues, such as mental health, marriage/divorce, parenting, “political anxiety,” senior issues, anti-Muslim bigotry, and religious outreach. Leading the meeting was SFMF Executive Director Nezar Hamze. The attendees of the meeting comprised of a number of imams representing mosques with strong links to terrorism.

The mosques included: the Islamic Center of Boca Raton (ICBR) that was founded by a Hamas website designer, Syed Khawer Ahmad, a former assistant of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader Sami al-Arian, Bassem Alhalabi, and an imam that was placed on the federal no-fly list, Ibrahim Dremali; Darul Uloom, where future al-Qaeda commander Adnan el-Shukrijumah was a prayer leader and “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla took classes; and Nur-ul-Islam, where a former member of the mosque’s Islamic Affairs Council and ex-Vice President of its children’s school, Raed Awad, was the Florida representative for the Hamas charity Holy Land Foundation (HLF).

One of the participants at the meeting was Izhar Khan, the imam of Masjid Jamaat Al-Mumineen (MJAM). In May 2011, Khan was arrested and spent the next 20 months in a federal detention center in Miami on charges of terrorism. According to the indictment against him, “Izhar is a Pakistani Taliban sympathizer who worked with [his father Hafiz] and others to collect and deliver money for the Pakistani Taliban… Izhar… provided and attempted to provide material support and resources… knowing and intending that they be used in preparation for and in carrying out… a conspiracy to murder, kidnap, and maim persons in a foreign country.”

The Miami Gardens mosque, where the Muslim Federation meeting took place and which is a member organization of SFMF, is no stranger to Izhar Khan. In December 2017, Khan was honored by ICGM at the mosque’s ‘A Light for Humanity’ celebration. Also in December 2017, ICGM imam Abdul Hamid Samra, who sat next to Khan during the SFMF meeting, invited Khan to join him in speaking at the Iglesia Rescate church in Hialeah. Furthermore, in April 2017, Khan participated in a youth basketball tournament at ICGM.

ICGM has played host to other extremist events. Last December, the mosque hosted a lecture by Markazi Majlis-e-Shoora (Advisory Council) member of Jamaat-e-Islami’s (JI) India faction, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Yusuf Islahi. JI’s militant wing, Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), owned the Pakistani compound where Osama bin Laden was living and eventually killed in. The event was sponsored by JI’s American affiliate, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA).
ICGM has, as well, hosted a number of events for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR has both institutional and financial ties to Hamas. One of the CAIR events, last July, featured CAIR-Florida Executive Director Hassan Shibly. After the 2006 Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah, Shibly notoriously stated that Hezbollah was “basically a resistance movement” and “absolutely not a terrorist organization.” In August 2014, Shibly tweeted that “Israel and its supporters are enemies of God.” And in April 2017, Shibly promoted a video on Facebook lauding convicted Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti as a “hero.”

ICGM has its own links to terror. The mosque is an affiliate of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). The mosque’s property, at 4305 NW 183rd St. in Miami Gardens, is owned by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). Both ISNA and NAIT, along with CAIR, were named co-conspirators by the US Justice Department for the Hamas financing trial against the leaders of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) charity.

Looming over all of this is the fact that the individual leading the Muslim Federation meeting, Nezar Hamze, is a Deputy Sheriff at the Broward County Sheriff’s Office (BSO), one of the most prominent law enforcement offices in the US.
When Hamze was hired to be a Deputy Sheriff, in August 2014, it was per a recommendation from then-Sheriff Scott Israel.
This past January, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had Sheriff Israel removed from the BSO and replaced him with former Coral Springs Police Sergeant Gregory Tony. Unfortunately, though, while Hamze’s friend Scott Israel left the BSO, Hamze has remained.
And like with Sheriff Israel, Sheriff Tony has allowed Hamze to hold a second job – the job as a leader of an umbrella organization for radical Muslim groups and groups tied to terrorism. No doubt, this is a threat to South Florida and to all American citizens.

It is totally unacceptable for a Broward Deputy Sheriff to be a liaison for terror-related entities and law enforcement. How can the BSO uphold the law, when one of their own is collaborating with those who spit on it? This blatant conflict of interests, alone, is a reason for him to be dismissed. It is time to shut Hamze’s organization down and Hamze with it.

Well-known terrorists confer on possible targets?

NEWS STORY: Islamist Candidate Khurrum Wahid Comes in Third at Florida Elections
Frontpage Mag ^ | 06/24/2019 | Joe Kauffman / FR Posted by SeekAndFind

On June 18th, over 7300 voters in Coral Springs, Florida went to the polls in a Special Election to cast their votes for the individual they wanted as their new City Commissioner. The former Commissioner, Dan Daley, left the seat vacant, after he won his own Special Election, for Florida State House. Out of the six candidates in the Commission race, one, Khurrum Wahid, raised far more money than any of the others. But for many voters, Wahid, a terror-linked lawyer, represented a danger to society, and therefore, he was soundly rejected.

Khurrum Basir Wahid, a South Florida attorney, has made a name for himself by representing high-profile terrorists, including the most violent of al-Qaeda operatives. And while Wahid has every right to act as legal counsel to such miscreants, when viewing the rest of his terror-related and disturbing activity, it would be a grave error not to view Wahid as a threat as well.

One of Wahid’s former clients is Hafiz Khan, a Miami imam who received a 25-year prison sentence, in August 2013, for his role in shipping $50 thousand to the Pakistani Taliban for the specific goal of murdering American troops overseas. Khan was not the only individual charged in the crime. His son, Izhar, spent 20 months in a Miami federal detention center for his alleged participation in the terror financing scheme.

As stated by the US Justice Department, “Izhar is a Pakistani Taliban sympathizer who worked with [his father Hafiz] and others to collect and deliver money for the Pakistani Taliban… Izhar… provided and attempted to provide material support and resources… knowing and intending that they be used in preparation for and in carrying out… a conspiracy to murder, kidnap, and maim persons in a foreign country.”

While using his law firm to actively raise money for Izhar and his father, Wahid went out of his way to label Izhar a “rising star.” Also, according to the Miami New Times, Wahid said of Izhar that he was a “sweet kid who did his father’s bidding.” In this same New Times piece, it is reported that Wahid, himself, was placed on the federal terrorist watch list, in 2011.

Besides his work as an attorney, Wahid is the National Co-Chairman of Emgage Action (formerly Emerge USA), an Islamist group he founded in 2006 that attempts to pass its extremist agenda off as political advocacy. The group is part of the South Florida Muslim Federation, a consortium of South Florida’s radical Islamic organizations and terror-related mosques.

Emgage tends to attract leaders of the Democratic Party, who see Emgage as an opportunity to pander for Muslim votes and close their eyes to the extreme nature of the group. Under Wahid’s authority sits Ammar Ahmed, the South Florida Director of Emgage. In February 2010, following a debate he participated in at a school, Ahmed wrote on Facebook, “I hate white people” and joked that he “should have threatened to blow up the school.”

Prior to creating Emgage, Wahid served as a legal advisor for the national office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and a director of CAIR’s Florida chapter. According to the US government, CAIR has both financial and foundational ties to Hamas.

Various CAIR representatives have served prison time and/or have been deported from the US for terrorist-related activity. In November 2014, CAIR was designated a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government. The mosque Wahid attends is the Islamic Foundation of South Florida (IFSF). Wahid is also the Registered Agent for IFSF’s corporation. Up until recently, the Youth Group leader for IFSF was Abdur Rahman al-Ghani, an individual who says on his Facebook page that Jews are “demonic” and Islam “will over-take the World.” In June 2013, IFSF hosted a Ramadan Prep Youth Night featuring Izhar Khan, and in April 2014, IFSF hosted a talk by Mazen Mokhtar, a former administrator for the al-Qaeda recruitment site, qoqaz.net (Jihad in Chechnya), and who has called Hamas acts “heroic” and suicide bombings “an effective method of attacking the enemy.”

It is through Wahid’s engagement in politics, via his Emgage organization, that Wahid probably believed that he had a shot to win the vacant Commission seat. However, any voter looking into Wahid’s extremist and terror-tied background would surely have questions about Wahid’s true intentions in running for such an office – in running for any office.

What is indeed concerning, though, is that just short of 1400 Coral Springs voters thought highly enough of Wahid to give him their votes, putting him squarely in third place. That was well behind the 2553 votes the winner, Sean Cerra, received, but it was 1400 votes nonetheless. Either those voters were ignorant of Wahid’s sordid history or they disturbingly chose to ignore it. Beyond Wahid and his fellow Islamists, any vote for him would be aiding and abetting extremist activity. A vote for Wahid was and is a vote for terror.

Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.