Posted on 08/19/2005 6:14:19 AM PDT by bloggodocio
State and federal authorities have three men in custody here in what investigators describe as a possible terrorist plot by an obscure Islamic group in California state prisons.
FBI officials, who are overseeing the investigation, say they are not convinced that the three men posed a serious threat of violence on their own. But the bureau is continuing to investigate the possibility that they were part of a larger group planning to attack National Guard installations, synagogues and other locations in Southern California.
The latest suspect to be arrested is Hamad Riaz Samana, 21, a Pakistani citizen who was taken into custody this month and is being held by federal officials on unspecified charges.
The two other suspects, Levar Haney Washington, 25, and Gregory Vernon Patterson, 21, were arrested in early July by the police in Torrance, California, in connection with a series of gas station robberies this spring. They are being held in a Los Angeles jail, charged with 10 counts of robbery and attempted robbery.
Radical literature
A search of the Los Angeles apartment of Washington, a former gang member who was recently released from prison in Folsom, California, yielded what the police called radical Islamist literature, bulletproof vests and the addresses of nearly two dozen sites in Southern California that may have been chosen for as a target. The sites included National Guard recruitment centers, the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles, several synagogues and the ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport of El Al, the national airline of Israel.
Officials at the Los Angeles offices of the FBI and the US attorney declined to describe the scope of the investigation or say whether other suspects were in custody or being sought.
A counterterrorism official at the Los Angeles Police Department, who spoke only anonymously because the bureau is the lead agency in the case, said the authorities had identified several people suspected of being associates of the three men. But the official said he did not believe that anyone still at large posed a threat.
Ties to extremism
An FBI official in Washington, who demanded anonymity because the investigation is continuing, said the authorities were investigating five or six men in California prisons who might have ties to Islamic extremism through a group identified by prison officials as Jamiyyat Ul Islam Is Saheeh, or the Assembly of Authentic Islam. The group is unknown to federal officials, he said, and seems to be "their own concoction."
A senior Los Angeles police commander, Assistant Chief George Gascon, told reporters on Wednesday that investigators believed the group had planned to carry out attacks around Sept. 11 or during the Yom Kippur holy days in October.
Discussing the men in custody, the bureau official in Washington said counterterrorism investigators "are looking to see if there was the possibility that these guys were going to do anything." He said that the discovery of radical Islamic literature in Washington's apartment was a matter of concern but that the authorities were not ready to describe the men as members of a terrorist cell.
"People have drawn conclusions that we haven't drawn yet," the official said.
Converts
Washington converted to Islam while in state prison for a 1999 assault and robbery conviction, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said. The man charged with him in this spring's robberies, Patterson, was also a Muslim convert and was helping Washington "reassimilate" to life outside of prison, said the spokeswoman, Sandi Gibbons.
Jerome Haig, a court-appointed lawyer for Washington, said the suspect had pleaded not guilty to the robbery charges. Haig said federal officials had given him no information about their terrorism investigation.
Yet another good reason to put these guys in for life.
But I thought it was the ROP?
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