Posted on 09/28/2004 1:28:01 AM PDT by kcvl
A top al Qaeda lieutenant has met with leaders of a violent Salvadoran criminal gang with roots in Mexico and the United States including a stronghold in the Washington area in an effort by the terrorist network to seek help infiltrating the U.S.-Mexico border, law enforcement authorities said.
Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, a key al Qaeda cell leader for whom the U.S. government has offered a $5 million reward, was spotted in July in Honduras meeting with leaders of El Salvador's notorious Mara Salvatrucha gang, which immigration officials said has smuggled hundreds of Central and South Americans mostly gang members into the United States.
Although they are actively involved in alien, drug and weapons smuggling, Mara Salvatrucha members in America also have been tied to numerous killings, robberies, burglaries, carjackings, extortions, rapes and aggravated assaults including at least seven killings in Virginia and a machete attack on a 16-year-old in Alexandria that severely mutilated his hands.
The Salvadoran gang, known to law enforcement authorities as MS-13 because many members identify themselves with tattoos of the number 13, is thought to have established a major smuggling center in Matamoros, Mexico, just south of Brownsville, Texas, from where it has arranged to bring illegal aliens from countries other than Mexico into the United States.
Authorities said al Qaeda terrorists hope to take advantage of a lack of detention space within the Department of Homeland Security that has forced immigration officials to release non-Mexican illegal aliens back into the United States, rather than return them to their home countries. Less than 15 percent of those released appear for immigration hearings. Nearly 60,000 illegal aliens designated as other-than-Mexican, or OTMs, were detained last year along the U.S.-Mexico border.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
"Nearly 60,000 illegal aliens designated as other-than-Mexican, or OTMs, were detained last year along the U.S.-Mexico border."
I wonder how many OTMs got through... lock 'n load.
lets watch the debates, I BET NONE OF THE CANDIDATES ADDRESSES ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION! WE NEED TO KICK THESE GUYS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY. I don't care what it cost. They are here illegally. Not enough space to keep them? I heard the Government owned more than 500,000 sqft of unused office space. might be more. Really instead of me roasting in Iraq I would rather patrol the border of my beloved country.
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They are mobile and move around at will, unlike the more traditional neighborhood gangs we were used to dealing with. The good thing is that many of them are dumb enough to advertise their affiliation with MS with easily-seen tattoos.
I've read several very hopeful articles talking about Republicans in the White House through 2016. This will not happen if there is another terrorist attack and it is discovered the terrorists entered our country via the southern border.
I'll bet you are right. Carl Rove said a few years ago that this issue was not to be discussed. It wasn't even discussed at the Republican convention. The Bush amnesty plan is going to be shoved down our throats as it was at the convention. No discussion.
Thank you for serving our country.
Boy, I bet that did a lot of good.
They won't touch the issue, K; you're correct.
I know, I know; I'm locked and loaded, waiting for *it* to happen, as it surely will.
What do they mean "smuggled"? Asa Hutchinson escorted them across the border in a pink Cadillac. The Bush administration loves this kind of thing. As long as the terrorists come through Mexico, they are very welcome here.
Related story out of NJ today:
Terrorists recruited in jails; N.J. lawmakers updated on security
http://www.app.com/app/story/0,21625,1063736,00.html
Bump.
Thank you for your service to our country, Kt.
Surely you've heard what the jackbooted thugs are doing to Patriots trying to protect their homes and ranches in the border states?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1218545/posts
and
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1172917/posts
and
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1192971/posts
Getting real ugly, real fast.
BTT
Just Damn
Terrorists recruited in jails; N.J. lawmakers updated on security
Published in the Asbury Park Press 9/28/04
By TOM BALDWIN
GANNETT STATE BUREAU
TRENTON -- Groups with suspected al-Qaida links are successfully recruiting individuals not of Arab ancestry -- whites, blacks and Hispanics -- and there is a trend to recruit in the prison population, Attorney General Peter C. Harvey said yesterday.
Harvey made his remarks after testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Harvey and others updated lawmakers on the state's domestic security preparedness three years after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Al-Qaida is the name taken by followers of Osama bin Laden's group of Islamic militants behind the 9/11 attacks and suspected in a string of bombings thereafter, accusing the West of cooperating with undemocratic Arab regimes for the sake of oil.
At one point, state Sen. Robert J. Martin, R-Morris, asked Harvey how many al-Qaida loyalists may exist in New Jersey.
"There are persons in New Jersey who concern us," answered Harvey.
Afterward, Harvey refused to estimate how many such people there are. And he said they shared no common link such as language, ancestry or country of origin.
"That's a big mistake," Harvey said to the notion of suspecting a group on that basis.
"They are definitely recruiting whites," he said, adding later, "They have been pretty successful recruiting Caucasians, and African-Americans and Latinos."
"We have noticed there is an attempt to recruit inmates," he said in response to a questions about the state's prisons. He added later: "There are disgruntled people in America who want to express their anger through violence."
Representatives of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to inquiries about how widespread al-Qaida recruitment had spread among U.S. citizens.
Safeguarding schools
Also yesterday, Sidney J. Caspersen, director of the state Office of Counter-Terrorism, warned that the Beslan, Russia, school siege, in which more than 320 hostages -- half of them children -- died is a model against which U.S. authorities must brace.
Caspersen said he had no evidence of this. But he holds suspicions, and he said his mandate is to always expect the worst, saying al-Qaida attackers prefer the element of catching a target off its guard.
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"We learned a lot from that," he said of the Beslan siege, which reports say was not an al-Qaida operation but the work of Chechnyan separatists.
Harvey said a Beslan-type attack is a concern in New Jersey, but he said that, unrelated to the siege, his office had sent warnings to school districts to employ a so-called "best practices" operating standards, especially as they apply to strangers in a school building.
During the hearings, Harvey, Caspersen and Col. Joseph R. "Rick" Fuentes, the superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, said New Jersey is ahead of many states' preparedness but that much needs to be done.
Harvey said the very Statehouse complex where he spoke was essentially not secure.
"You could park a truck right in front of this hearing room today and if it had significant number of explosives, all of us would be killed," Harvey said.
Fuentes described the hallmark of the State Police anti-terror efforts as "visibility and unpredictability."
Caspersen told the committee the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, the George Washington Bridge, and parts of the NJ Transit rail system have been monitored, presumably by al-Qaida operatives.
Information overload
Ron Riccio, a Seton Hall professor who sits on the state's Domestic Security Preparedness Task Force, said average citizens are numbed by so much data coming at them, and they do not know what to do beyond turning to radio and TV in a crisis.
Riccio recommended that state officials should give residents specific instructions on what to do if terrorists attack.
"I don't think the rank-and-file people in the state of New Jersey know what to do in that circumstance," he said.
"We can't standardize a response to a thousand different threats," replied Sen. Nicholas P. Scutari, D-Union.
Verizon New Jersey President Dennis Bone, who is also on the task force, later agreed with what some security experts fear: that cell phones offer easy access for terrorists to communicate because they are cheap and can be thrown away after a single call.
"Not that it's not monitored," Bone said of international calls, "but once it's in the trash, or at the bottom of Newark Bay, there is nothing you can do."
You would think the US Government, the least they could do, is provide each American man and woman a sidearm, a 12 guage pump, a long arm and plenty of ammo...I'm sickened by the government's neglect of this MOTHER OF ALL SECURITY ISSUES for their global elitist interests...are they training enough people to professionally mourn with the coming American dead at the hands of terrorists crossing our borders illegally?
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