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.”
Good intel, thanks. Solution: bomb Bromley!
I too think that Bush has got to get rid of that third-rate no-name that he put in charge of the FBI and put in someone like Rudy Giuliani instead, so they can rid of all the timeservers and corrupt clintonoid stooges at the top levels. I can't believe that they are putting the same people who covered up Ron Brown, Vince Foster, OKC, Waco, Ruby Ridge, TWA 800, and all the rest, in charge of the anti-terrorism campaign. Hell, some of these guys WORKED with the terrorists. They are old friends.
Now they are going out of their way to run lying stories in the press about the anthrax letters and even this shoe bomber. Next thing they'll tell the Washington ComPost that the shoe bomber is really a pro-life sidewalk counselor. If it weren't for these English media reports, we wouldn't even hear this much of the truth.
If you read the history of past al-Qaeda ops, you'll recognize that a good number of their recruits fit this description. Being a "crazy loner" is not incompatible with being part of the Vast Muslim Conspiracy.
Now they are going out of their way to run lying stories in the press about the anthrax letters and even this shoe bomber. Next thing they'll tell the Washington ComPost that the shoe bomber is really a pro-life sidewalk counselor. If it weren't for these English media reports, we wouldn't even hear this much of the truth. "
My sentiments exactly. The FBI is the crookedest, most politicized law enforcement agency in the country. They are a disgrace to the American people.
You won't hear that in the US of A.
If they were Bruno Mallies (sp) will we bomb Rome?
I think it's Bruno Maglis (The key to remembering the spelling of such names is to screw the grammarians and pronounce the silent g's!)
Anyway, as Randy Newman tried to tell us 30 years ago:
"There'll be Japanese kimonos for you
And Italian shoes for me
They all hate us anyhow
Let's drop the big one now!"
The stupidity of this industry is without parallel.
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.