First, Mohamed Atta and company. Then, Imran Mandhai and Shueyb Mossa Jokhan, the pair accused of plotting attacks on local power plants. Now, Jose Padilla.
The list of international terrorists and terrorism suspects linked to Broward County grows. And with it, questions:
• What's going on in Broward County, or South Florida as a whole, that makes it a draw for terrorists or at least those alleged to be planning terrorism?
• How is the local Muslim community coping with the unwanted notoriety?
• Is there a terrorist ''cell'' entrenched in South Florida?
''People are obviously feeling uneasy,'' said Khurrum Wahid, a lawyer and civil rights director for the Council on American Islamic Relations in Miami. ``The community is really paranoid, because a lot of people are not sure who their friends are.''
That new face in the mosque, in the neighborhood, on the street -- maybe a transient just passing through -- might not get the same warm welcome. ''People are being ostracized,'' Wahid said.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, it was suggested that Atta and some of the other kamikaze terrorists had come to Florida because of its proliferation of flight schools. They needed to learn how to guide an already airborne jetliner, if not how to land one. But South Florida also had a thriving Muslim community -- encompassing about 20 mosques and perhaps 70,000 adherents -- and a mixture of languages, hues and cultures that could make the men less conspicuous as they went about their preparation.
With the Muslim community still reeling from the repercussions of Sept. 11, Mandhai, 19, and Jokhan, 24, were indicted in May, charged with plotting a series of terrorist acts. They allegedly planned to bomb a National Guard Armory in Hollywood, electrical substations in Miami Shores, and, for good measure, Mount Rushmore.
The alleged goal of Jokhan, a naturalized American from Trinidad and Tobago, and Mandhai, a Pakistani computer-science student: Ignite a ``holy war.''
The purported schemes were also allegedly directed at Jewish-owned businesses, community centers in Weston and Aventura, and the Israeli Consulate in Miami.
The plot was uncovered when a man named Howard Gilbert infiltrated the Darul Uloom Institute in Pembroke Pines, where Mandhai and Jokhan attended prayer meetings.
INFILTRATION
Gilbert, according to officials, initially acted on his own, posing as a disgruntled former Marine who converted into a Muslim militant. He fed what he uncovered to federal agents. The FBI later replaced him with a paid informant who taped conversations with Mandhai and Jokhan.
Government agents infiltrating a group of worshipers might sound unusual, but, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, Muslim leaders did not express a great deal of shock.
In fact, police have become a regular presence at Darul Uloom Institute, 7050 Pines Blvd., and at some other mosques. This is partly due to the threats that were generated after the terrorist attacks. But local Muslim leaders, appalled by the events of last September, also wanted to see any potential plotter rooted out.
''We are centrally located,'' said Maulana Shafayat Mohamed, spiritual leader of Darul Uloom. ``We don't operate a closed shop, so people who have an agenda can pass through here. We try to have police here for every activity. We really want no crazy nuts coming around here.''
Last week, as he talked to a reporter, two Pembroke Pines police officers turned up and walked through the mosque, peeking behind curtains.
''We want them to pass through here,'' he said. ``We've established that link with the police.''
Padilla, the former Broward man suspected of plotting to explode a ''dirty bomb'' to spread radiation in the United States, also worshiped at Darul Uloom and at another Broward mosque, Masjid Al-Iman, in Fort Lauderdale. But he was not detained locally, and in fact had been living in Egypt, where he is said to have attended al Azhar University and started a family. Authorities detained him May 8 as he got off a plane at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport with $10,000, allegedly from the terror network al Qaeda.
Although sources have said they have no indication that Padillawas recruited to do al Qaeda's bidding while in South Florida, news of his detention yet again cast an unfavorable spotlight on Broward's Muslim community.
Local Muslims insist that these men kept to themselves whatever they may have been plotting.
''If these guys are terrorists, they're not telling the community,'' said Jamal Raheem, a world history teacher at South Dade High School.
Added Yussuf Mohamed, board chairman of Nur-Ul-Islam Academy, a 220-student pre-K through 12th-grade school in Cooper City: ``I don't know if their strategy is to use the mosques as cover. The disappointment to us is these guys are bringing shame to Islam and the Muslim community.''
NO SEPT. 11 LINK SEEN
The FBI has found no ties between Padilla and the Sept. 11 hijackers, several of whom lived in Broward County.
Nor do federal sources believe he made his alleged terrorist contacts while living in Broward County in the 1990s. They said he came in contact with al Qaeda terrorists after leaving Florida for Egypt in 1998.
However, a Padilla acquaintance, Adham Hassoun, was detained last Wednesday in Sunrise by federal agents. Hassoun once served as distributor of a magazine advocating Muslim holy war and helped found a charity accused by the Bush administration of funding terrorists.
Of the connection between the two, a federal source said: ``We have suspicions; that's it.''
One man isn't so sure that talk of a terror network is entirely far-fetched. He is Mohammad Javed Qureshi, a Muslim from Pakistan and founder of the School of Islamic Studies in Sunrise.
He is also Padilla's former boss. Qureshi, as manager of a Davie Taco Bell, hired Padilla to assemble tacos for $5.50 an hour in 1992, about the time Padilla converted to Islam.
''With this latest arrest it leads me to believe that there is a cell or organization recruiting Muslims for terrorist activities,'' Javed told The Herald last week, following news of Padilla's detention. ''We need to look into Egypt and see where he went,'' he also told The New York Times, ``and then put the two and two together. Are there recruiters here? Yes. Have I met them? No. But he moves, and the recruiters are out there. I'm trying to find them myself.''
