Posted on 02/16/2010 11:04:26 PM PST by nickcarraway
When Monica Bledsoe spoke to her younger brother late last May, he seemed his old upbeat self. He had just led his first sightseeing tour of Little Rock, Ark., for their fathers new tour bus company and all went well. The tips had flowed.
A week later, her brother, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle on a military recruiting center in Little Rock, killing one soldier and wounding another.
Ms. Bledsoe was stunned. I would never have thought this could happen, she said.
Eight months after the shooting, Mr. Muhammads family is still sorting through the confusing pieces of his shattered life. A gentle, happy-go-lucky teenager, he had become a deeply observant Muslim in college, shunning gatherings where alcohol was served. He traveled to Yemen to study Arabic, married a Yemeni woman, was imprisoned and then deported for overstaying his visa. After returning to Memphis last year, he stewed with anger about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Recently, Mr. Muhammad, 24, thrust himself back into the news by claiming in a note to an Arkansas judge that he was a member of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a terrorist group based in Yemen. He asked that he be allowed to plead guilty to capital murder, a request that will probably be denied.
The note has renewed questions about his case, which had been nearly forgotten in the wake of subsequent attacks, most notably the shooting rampage in November at Fort Hood, Tex., and the attempted bombing of an airplane on Christmas Day. Like both of those cases, Mr. Muhammads involved a Yemeni connection and the failure by the authorities to anticipate an attack, despite having clues.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The suffering his family is going through must be terrible.
But no one is more vocal about shining light on Mr. Muhammads radicalization than his father, Melvin Bledsoe. Though he has hired a lawyer for his son, visits him in his cell in Little Rock on weekends and contributes to his defense, Mr. Bledsoe, 54, says he has no illusions about his sons guilt.
My heart bleeds for the families of the victims, he said.
What he wants, Mr. Bledsoe says, is to understand how evildoers brainwashed his son, as he puts it. And he wants the F.B.I. held accountable for what he considers its negligence in preventing the attack.
They didnt pull the trigger, but they allowed this to happen, Mr. Bledsoe said. It is owed to the American people to know what happened. If it can happen to my son, it can happen to anyones son.
Gee, the warning signs were certainly there.
“He asked that he be allowed to plead guilty to capital murder, a request that will probably be denied.”
Lawyers can’t make any headlines or money if that happens. Judges are lawyers in black robes and always look out for their bretheren.
No sir - YOU are responsible. Why didn’t you keep a clser watch on your son before he became a terrorist? Don’t blame others for your failures.
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