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NY Subway bombers apprehended in 1997
Fox and Friends | 10/07/05 | bert

Posted on 10/07/2005 4:24:58 AM PDT by bert

On Fox and Friends former New York police commissioner Howard Safir revealed that "two Palestinian kids" were apprehended with backpack bombs destined for the New York subway detonation in 1997.


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: 1997; jihad; nyc; nysubway; palestinians; splodeydopes; subway; subwaybombers; terrorists
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I don't recall any backpack bombthreat news during the Clinton administration
1 posted on 10/07/2005 4:24:58 AM PDT by bert
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To: bert

Of course not. The MSM and Clinton wanted everyone to think life was wonderful under Clinton.


2 posted on 10/07/2005 4:26:25 AM PDT by ConservativeMan55 (DON'T FIRE UNTIL YOU SEE THE WHITES OF THE CURTAINS THEY ARE WEARING ON THEIR HEADS !)
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To: bert

Are these the ones they busted in that house in Brooklyn Heights way back when?


3 posted on 10/07/2005 4:27:07 AM PDT by gridlock (Eliminate Perverse Incentives)
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To: bert

Actually, I believe this was the one where a third conspirator changed his mind and went to the police. IIRC, he actually walked into a station house and told the police what was going on, and the officers on duty fortunately did not blow him off, but acted immediately and were able to arrest the other two and find their bomb stash. I think they had been planning to hit Union Sq..

It received publicity in New York, but I'm not sure how much it got elsewhere.


4 posted on 10/07/2005 4:31:03 AM PDT by livius
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To: ConservativeMan55

Does anyone have a fan we can hit this shiiiite with?


5 posted on 10/07/2005 4:34:36 AM PDT by HHKrepublican_2
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To: livius

"It received publicity in New York, but I'm not sure how much it got elsewhere"

Almost zip


6 posted on 10/07/2005 4:35:51 AM PDT by nuconvert (No More Axis of Evil by Christmas ! TLR) [there's a lot of bad people in the pistachio business])
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To: nuconvert

I heard the same interview and NEVER heard about this.

WTF - who decided to hide this information from the American public in 1997?


7 posted on 10/07/2005 4:43:19 AM PDT by BlackRain (Trust, but verify. - Ronald Reagan)
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To: livius

If your recollection is correct, and it probably is, then this attack was prevented by the conscience of one man, and the swift actions of the NYPD.

Clinton will of course take credit for it even though he had no real anti-terror policy during his administration. His administration got lucky several times because some few people were unusually observant and competent in doing their jobs.

A situation that Clinton would've remedied with sensitivity classes and politically correct policies had he known there were competent people still working for the government.


8 posted on 10/07/2005 4:45:41 AM PDT by coconutt2000 (NO MORE PEACE FOR OIL!!! DOWN WITH TYRANTS, TERRORISTS, AND TIMIDCRATS!!!! (3-T's For World Peace))
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To: BlackRain

TERRORIST PLOT TO BOMB NEW YORK SUBWAY SYSTEM
By Steve Macko, ERRI Risk Analyst

NEW YORK CITY (ENN) - Members of the New York City Joint Terrorism Task Force on Thursday made a raid on a Brooklyn apartment and seized several pipe bombs and arrested three men, described as being "Middle Eastern." The Task Force, comprised of federal, state and local law enforcement officers, are now investigating to see if there was a possible plot to bomb the New York City subway system and other targets.

New York mayor, Rudolph Guiliani, a former federal prosecutor, said during an interview that the apartment that was raided, located at 238 Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, was located essentially over a subway station. He added, "One of things being looked at it is, was there a plan to bomb various subway stations and if there was one, was it a realistic one."

Four or five cylindrical pipe bombs were found in the apartment located in the Park Slope residential neighborhood of Brooklyn. Federal officials declined to comment on the specific nature of the devices.

Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom, who runs the FBI's New York Field Division, said, "We don't know exactly what this is at this point, but obviously the investigation is continuing. There are a lot of leads, we're not going to talk about those."

Police are said to have ordered the raid after receiving information by telephone at 2245 EDT on Wednesday night. Officers stormed the apartment at 0440 EDT Thursday morning and found three men sleeping inside and the suspicious devices. Police shot and wounded Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, age 23, and Lafi Khalil, 22, when one of them apparently made a lunge for an explosive device.

Police also arrested a third suspect in the raid. Friday's edition of The New York Times identified the man as Abdul Rahman Mossabah, 31, an Egyptian who entered the United States two weeks ago.

According to a federal complaint filed late Thursday, Abu Mezer told investigators that he and his accomplices had planned to use the bombs on the subways and elsewhere in New York. He also said that the two suicide bombers who bombed an open air market in Jerusalem were heroes and he wished that he could had been able to have taken part in that attack.

The FBI and the New York Police Department issued a statement saying Abu Mezer and Khalil were "planning to target U.S. and Jewish interests worldwide."

The complaint also said that at Kings County Hospital Center, Abu Mezer told investigators that he helped make the bombs, explained how they could be disarmed and described plans to target the subway system.

The New York Times said the plan called for an attack on the Atlantic Avenue station, which includes ten subway lines and a Long Island Rail Road terminal. The Atlantic Avenue area has been a focus of terrorist investigations before. Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman -- a radical Egyptian cleric who is serving a life sentence for conspiring to wage a holy war against the United States through terrorist bombings and assassinations -- attracted followers by preaching regularly at a mosque on Atlantic Avenue.

Agents from the New York Police Department bomb squad, the FBI, Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms cordoned off a four-block wide area around the apartment, evacuated residents and diverted subway services while they searched the apartment on Thursday morning.

The owner of a small grocery store located across the street from the apartment building, described the men as being extremely observant Muslims. They drove cars with bumper stickers saying "I love the Koran," and they "talked about Islam a lot." It was just recently that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek said that the West should change its attitude toward Islam because it was only being thought of as a violent religion.

The New York Daily News, citing unidentified police sources, reported on Friday that at least one of the suspects may be a member of the Islamic terrorist group HAMAS, which claimed responsibility for Wednesday's deadly bombing in Jerusalem.

The federal complaint said that Abu Mezer had claimed in an application for political asylum in the United States that he had been arrested in Israel for allegedly "being a member of a known terrorist organization." Police found Abu Mezer's asylum forms in the apartment along with a Jordanian passport in his name. Authorities said that it was not clear whether Abu Mezer's passport was legitimate.

Some counterterrorism analysts say there are still many questions that still need to be answered, but it would appear that the arrested suspects were individuals rather than being members of a Middle Eastern terrorist group. Sources say that what was found in the apartment was four pipe bombs wired together with a hobbyist toggle switch. What was found was deadly, but hardly the type of device used by professional Middle East terrorists.

New York Police Commissioner Howard Safir said each of the five bombs was powerful enough to kill someone within a radius of 25 feet, and injure someone at a range of 100 feet, but he said it was not clear whether they were "intended to be separate devices or one device."

Israel Radio said on Friday that one of the suspects is apparently a Palestinian from the West Bank city of Hebron and a member of the HAMAS terrrorist group. FBI investigators are said to have enlisted Israeli police officers to help identify the men accused of harboring explosives and planning an attack on U.S. targets.


Here is the case information - USA v. Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer et al: 97-CR-804-ALL


9 posted on 10/07/2005 4:48:47 AM PDT by BlackRain (Trust, but verify. - Ronald Reagan)
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To: coconutt2000
Much like the Millennium bombing that thankfully was thwarted by an alert Canadian border guard.

Slick willie took credit for that too.

10 posted on 10/07/2005 4:54:35 AM PDT by OldFriend (One Man With Courage Makes a Majority ~ Andrew Jackson)
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To: BlackRain; nuconvert; coconutt2000

Yes, that's the case.

I was living in NYC at the time, so I read a lot about it. One thing that impressed me was what a close call it was. The decision of one terrorist not to go through with it - and good, fast police work.


11 posted on 10/07/2005 4:55:01 AM PDT by livius
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To: bert
That's because Bill and Hillary were going for the Palestinian vote at the time.


12 posted on 10/07/2005 4:57:39 AM PDT by linkinpunk
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To: bert

This is old news. They planned to bomb the Atlantic Avenue station, which would have killed hundreds if not thousands of commuters. The FBI stopped them using a number off someone's cell phonewhich led to their address. It was something right out of "24". We were lucky to find them in time.


13 posted on 10/07/2005 5:06:04 AM PDT by montag813
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To: montag813

Unless it's yet another one I remember hearing about it then too.


14 posted on 10/07/2005 5:18:36 AM PDT by RDTF
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To: bert

http://gopandthecity.blogspot.com/2005/10/security-threat-nyc.html

Not updated yet. Check out the email that was received Tuesday that was thought to be a hoax. Also a roundup of blogs who are following


15 posted on 10/07/2005 5:23:58 AM PDT by AliVeritas ("A Proud Member of the Water Bucket Brigade".)
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To: AliVeritas

Philly Station evacuated:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1498289/posts


16 posted on 10/07/2005 5:42:55 AM PDT by AliVeritas ("A Proud Member of the Water Bucket Brigade".)
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To: coconutt2000

The same reasons that a phillipino spy was in the white house (Clintoon did away with security checks on the whole government, like the nuke labs hiring chinese spies, etc.)


17 posted on 10/07/2005 6:26:33 AM PDT by bdfromlv (Leavenworth hard time)
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To: livius
As a point of reference they were typical muslim cannon fodder. I was at USP Leavenworth when Abu Mezer was brought in to start serving his sentence and all of the Muslim brothers (N.O.I., sunni, shiite etc.) thought they were going to have a real sheik/mujihadeen to give them spiritual guidance and when they released him to the population they found he was dumb as a box of rocks and anyone could have talked him into pushing the button anytime to get his virgins.
18 posted on 10/07/2005 7:12:30 AM PDT by bdfromlv (Leavenworth hard time)
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To: bdfromlv
they found he was dumb as a box of rocks and anyone could have talked him into pushing the button anytime to get his virgins

Very interesting! I suspect this is probably pretty true in general. They're either dumb or seriously disturbed - or very young when they get taken over, as in the case of the younger of the DC snipers. I read that in Iraq and in the Pali area, they often use the mentally handicapped as suicide bombers.

I hope that meeting the "sheik" made at least the NOI guys wonder about it, since they are Americans and not used to doing the bidding of total idiots. But sometimes fanaticism and hatred can overcome common sense, so I'm not optimistic on this score.

BTW, stay safe!

19 posted on 10/07/2005 8:26:00 AM PDT by livius
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To: livius
Searching backpacks and baby-buggies on subway platforms? If a bomb has found its way to the platform, it's already too late to do much about it.

Hint: Pay particular attention to young, male, Middle-Eastern looking people carrying a suitcase or with a bulge around their waist.

Also be suspicious of people with knives clamped between their teeth and wearing T-shirts saying, "Kill The American Blue-Eyed Div els."
20 posted on 10/07/2005 10:22:57 AM PDT by R.W.Ratikal
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