Jamaat ul-Fuqra FormationJamaat ul-Fuqra (JF) or "community of the impoverished", a terrorist outfit operating in Pakistan and North America, was formed by a Pakistani cleric, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, in New York in 1980, on his first visit to the US. Mubarak Gilani's intention in forming the outfit was to 'purify' Islam through violence. Ideology, Leadership and StructureThe JF, in its early phase, sought to counter what is perceived as excessive Western influence on Islam. It also concluded that violence was a significant aspect in its quest to purify Islam. In its ideological moorings, the Fuqra regards as enemies of Islam all those who do not follow the tenets of Islam as laid out in the Koran, including those Muslims who they consider as heretics as well as non-Muslims. One of Gilani’s works published by the Quranic Open University in the US and seized in a 1991-investigation instructed his cadres that their foremost duty was to wage Jehad against the ‘oppressors of Muslims’. Members of the group are described as Islamist extremists with much hatred toward their ‘enemies’. The JF is loosely structured with certain elements working openly through social service organisations to recruit members, raise money, organise activities and carry out propaganda. Individuals selected to live on JF premises agree to abide by the law and discipline of the Jamaat ul-Fuqra. Investigations by the Colorado Attorney General's Office in the 1980s indicated that the JF was composed of approximately 30 different 'Jamaats' or communities, more or less mobile in nature. Most of these 'Jamaats' are reportedly existent even today along with what investigators discerned to be several covert paramilitary training compounds, one of which had been located in a mountainous area near Buena Vista, Colorado prior to the Colorado prosecutions in the mid-1990s. Within 10 years of its formation, Fuqra's communes in the US attracted many Muslim converts-including some of those recruited in prisons. The JF is said to comprise of some 1,000 to 3,000 members in the US. Secrecy is the hallmark of the outfit and cadres are reportedly well versed in the use of aliases. The Fuqra’s structure is well concealed behind front outfits and consists of a network of safe houses and cells. Furthermore, the JF founder as well as cadres consistently maintain that it does not exist. JF members occasionally travel abroad for ‘paramilitary and survivalist training’ under Gilani's supervision. Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, who also calls himself the sixth Sultan Ul Faqr, is the chief of JF. Jamaat ul-Fuqra is headquartered in Hancock, New York. Areas of Activity and InfluenceAlthough Gilani, the reclusive chief of Fuqra resides in Lahore, Pakistan, most JF cells are located in North America. Fuqra members have purchased isolated rural properties in North America to live as a community, practice their faith, and insulate themselves from Western culture. The group has set up and funded rural communes that the US authorities allege are linked to murder, bombings and other felonies throughout the US and Canada. Currently, there are half a dozen Fuqra residential compounds in rural hamlets across the US sheltering hundreds of cadres, some of who have reportedly trained in the use of weapons and explosives in Pakistan. Muslims of the Americas, a tax-exempt group established in the US in 1980 by Gilani, operates communes of primarily black, American-born Muslims in many states in the US, including in Binghamton in New York, Badger in California, York in South California and Red House in Virginia. JF is reportedly linked through court documents to the Muslims of Americas. There is also a road in the name of Sheikh Gilani in the vicinity of Virginia. The cult houses between 100 and 200 people, many of them women and children in about 20 huge trailers. There is also a Virginia newspaper, the Islamic Post, founded by Sheikh Gilani. Linkages and IncidentsJamaat al-Fuqra, also described as a cult, is currently the focus of a probe by US authorities for charges ranging from links with terrorist groups to laundering money into Pakistan. In the 1980s, they carried out various terrorist acts, including numerous fire-bombings across the United States. JF’s early targets in North America were ethnic Indians and targets linked to various Indian sects. In July 1983, Stephen Paul Paster, a front ranking JF member, was responsible for planting a pipe bomb at a Portland hotel owned by followers of the Bhagwan Rajneesh cult. After his arrest in Colorado, Paster served four years of a 20-year prison sentence for the bombing. He was suspected but not charged in two other bombings in Seattle in 1984 - the bombings of the Vedanta Society temple and the Integral Yoga Society building. Currently, Paster is reported to be based in Lahore, Pakistan, from where, intelligence sources say, he provides explosives training to Fuqra cadres. After the Portland bombing, two Fuqra cadres allegedly killed Mozaffar Ahmad, a leader of the minority Ahmadiyyah sect in Canton, Michigan. Both the suspects reportedly perished in a fire they had set at the Ahmadiyyah mosque in nearby Detroit. The JF is also reported to have been involved in the killing of three Indians on August 1, 1984 in a suburb of Tacoma, Washington. Besides, the JF is suspected to be involved in a series of fire bombings of Hindu and Hare Krishna temples in Seattle, Denver, Philadelphia and Kansas City. US officials in 1989, during a search of a storage locker in Colorado Springs, recovered a large cache of armaments and documents with multiple links to the JF. Among the arms recovered were handguns, semi-automatic firearms, explosives, pipe bombs, bomb components and several bombs. Some of the seized documents described the activities and code of the "Muhammad Commandos of Sector 5," who were reportedly involved in arms training and intelligence gathering. The documents, including maps and lists, contained details of potential JF targets and victims in Los Angeles, Arizona and Colorado––oil and gas installations and electrical facilities, US. Air Force Academy and other military sites, people in 12 US states and Canada with Jewish or Hindu-sounding names. Various JF publications were seized during this search. Titles of some of the publications seized included "Guerrilla Warfare", "Counter Guerrilla Operations", "Understanding Amateur Radio", and "Fair Weather Flying," and "Basic Blueprint Reading and Sketching." In 1991, JF’s plans to bomb an Indian cinema and a Hindu temple near Toronto were unsuccessful. Five JF cadres were arrested at the Niagara Falls border crossing after US Customs agents searched their cars and found visual evidence and plans of the interiors of the targets and a description of time bombs. A Canadian jury convicted three American JF cadres of conspiracy to commit mischief and endanger life. A fourth suspect, who had come to Canada from Pakistan shortly before the planned bombing, fled to Pakistan after his colleagues' arrest, according to evidence presented at the trial. In the 1990s, JF was more often than not operating under the guise of two front groups, ‘Muslims of the Americas’ and ‘Quranic Open University’. The latter portrayed itself as a religious and charitable educational institution dedicated to studying the Quran. Gilani has reportedly admitted to receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in donations from America. A large segment of JF members have been convicted of criminal acts, including murder and fraud. With the US State Department outlawing Fuqra and listing it as one of the proscribed groups in its annual reports, the activities of the outfit decreased relatively. The JF supports various terrorist groups operating in Pakistan and in the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir. Sheikh Gilani has linkages with Islamist terrorist groups like the Hamas and Hezbollah. Although dormant in terms of real activity, JF has an active link with the terrorist groups in Pakistan and provides both moral and material assistance to these groups. JF cadres are suspects in at least 10 unsolved assassinations and 17 firebombing cases between 1979 and 1990. In 1993 Fuqra members in Colorado were convicted of participating in a conspiracy resulting in the killing of a Muslim religious figure in Arizona. One of the persons convicted in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 was Clement Rodney Hampton-el, a Fuqra member. JF was linked in a Congressional testimony to the planning of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Gilani is now in Pakistani custody for the abduction of US journalist Daniel Pearl. Official sources in Pakistan have indicated that Daniel Pearl was attempting to meet Gilani in the days before he disappeared in Karachi. Pakistani police arrested Gilani in Rawalpindi on January 30, 2002 and shifted him to Karachi for questioning. Although he denied any link to the abduction, police also detained several of his colleagues. Consequent to his arrest, he reportedly told his interrogators that he had links with the Pakistani intelligence agencies. A media report has indicated that the JF is also being probed for links with Richard Reid, a Briton, accused of trying to use explosives in his shoes to blow up a Paris-to-Miami jetliner on December 22, 2001. A house in Virginia believed to be linked to the JF was raided by police in December 2001 and two persons were arrested for illegally purchasing guns. Three suspected US-based JF members have been arrested on weapons charges in the year 2001, including two following the September 11 multiple terrorist attacks. Vicente Rafael Pierre, a 44-year-old native of Brooklyn and his wife Traci Upshur, both JF cadres, were arrested on gun charges and convicted on November 30, 2001. Pierre's Virginia compound, near the Red House Commune, is reported to have served as a JF base. A money laundering scheme run by the Red House Commune is reportedly similar to a Colorado operation that was shut down in 1993. Colorado law enforcement agencies convicted five JF cadres for defrauding the Colorado government of approximately $350,000 through bogus workers’ compensation claims. Prosecuting agencies have indicated that the amount had been laundered through Professional Security International (PSI), a JF security firm, and Muslims of the Americas. A portion of the funds was tracked through PSI to JF couriers who traveled to Pakistan. The PSI reportedly enabled JF cadres to obtain federal licenses to buy weapons. The Fuqra is also suspected of having two more security firms located in New York. The Fuqra also reportedly has various broad schemes to take government entitlement money and utilise it to fund terrorist activities. The commune in Colorado is spread across 101 acres and police recovered bombs, weapons and plans for terrorist attacks in a raid in the year 1993. Two other communes in New York and California have shooting ranges. The 1,800-acre settlement in the Sierra Mountains in California also reportedly has an airstrip. In a February 22, 2002 interview, Gilani said his ‘contribution’ to the ‘Kashmir cause’ since 1947 and to the Afghan Jehad were on record. In the same interview, Gilani claimed that both the governments of Pakistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) had requested him to mobilise his university students to project the cause of Kashmir in the US through the media by holding rallies and informing the public. To this end, he claimed that the Kashmir-American Friendship Society was formed in 1993. Gilani is currently under investigation for his alleged links to the al Qaeda terror network of Osama bin Laden and for money laundering from the US into Pakistan and vice versa. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating connections between a small black Muslim community in California's Sierra Nevada valley, called Baladullah and the JF. The FBI reportedly looked into Baladullah, a community of 30 Muslim families, while investigating into JF’s activities at a remote Virginia settlement, where one person was convicted in November 2001 on charges of federal firearms violations. |
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Muslim terrorists convicted on firearms charges in the US
- Author: Jen McCaffery
Publication: The Roanoke Times, Virginia
Date: December 1, 2001
Purchase was illegal for convicted felon 2 guilty of plot to buy pistols
Authorities say the man is linked to a radical group, though that didn't come up during trial.
Lynchburg - The jurors never heard the words Al-Fuqra.
They did not hear that Vincente Pierre has been linked by federal authorities to Al-Fuqra, a radical Islamic group whose members have been convicted of the firebombing of a Hare Krishna temple in Colorado, and the murder of an imam in Tucson. They did not hear that Pierre pleaded guilty in Colorado in 1993 to workers' compensation fraud in an Al-Fuqra scheme.
Instead, Pierre and his wife, Traci Upshur, were tried on evidence that Pierre, a convicted felon, arranged for his wife to buy firearms for him because it was illegal for him to possess them. Unlike at Pierre's detention hearing, the evidence presented against him at his trial did not hint at Pierre's past.
The jury found the evidence convincing enough to convict the couple, who have eight children, of conspiring to buy two handguns for Pierre. Pierre, 44, and Upshur, 37, were convicted of conspiracy and making false statements. Pierre was convicted of six counts, and Upshur was convicted of four counts and was found not guilty on a fifth count of making false statements on another occasion.
They face up to five years on each count at their sentencing, scheduled for April.
Federal prosecutor Tom Bondurant said he brought up the Al-Fuqra link at Pierre's detention hearing because he argued that Pierre was a flight risk and a danger to the community. But he did not bring it up at the trial because "we had no basis to bring it up. His association with any group has nothing to do with this case."
He declined to say whether he thought any other community members were being investigated. Members of the group have denied any connection to terrorist activity in the past and pointed out that Muslims were killed in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Pierre and Upshur declined to comment after the verdict, as did some of their supporters in the courtroom.
Susan Fenger, a retired former chief criminal investigator on the case in Colorado, was on hand for the trial and talked about Al-Fuqra. She investigated Pierre in the Colorado case. Pierre was sentenced to probation after his conviction.
Fenger said the leader of the group, Sheikh Jilani, had been met with terrorist organizations in Sudan in 1993. She said the group is still active.
"Its main focus is to purify Islam through force or violence," she said.
The group "paints a face to the public that they are peaceful people," Fenger said. "But that's all a front. Al-Fuqra is set up to defraud various agencies."
The jury found Pierre guilty Friday of conspiring with his wife to buy .45-caliber handguns for him at a shop called the Outpost, outside Appomatox. Pierre would order and pay for the weapons, while Upshur would sign the paperwork. John Massarini, a retired police chief from New Jersey who owns the Outpost, assisted Special Agent Thomas Gallagher of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms with the investigation.
The defendants' case was likely damaged when Upshur took the stand and said she was buying the handguns for herself, even though she displayed little familiarity with the workings of the weapons and admitted she had never fired a gun. Upshur testified that she bought the gun for self-defense, then testified that she kept it at the home of someone else in the community.
Pierre, who Bondurant argued gave a fake name of Rafael Upshur at the gun shop, did not take the stand.
Defense lawyers Thomas Wray of Roanoke and Gary Smith and Carter Foulds of Winchester attacked Massarini for discrepancies in his testimony and about whether he assumed Rafael's last name was Upshur because that was his wife's name or whether Pierre told him that.
Gallagher said he was also assisting with another Al- Fuqra case in California, involving the death of a police officer.
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Authorities say residents were members of different cell than those behind Sept. 11 attacks </MCC SUBHEAD>
By CHRIS KAHN </MCC BYLINE1>
Associated Press Writer </MCC BYLINE2>
RED HOUSE, Va. -- Except for a metallic green "Muslims of America" sign at the entrance, there's little to distinguish the cluster of trailer homes near a country crossroads.
Yet federal authorities say the fenced compound was the home of a terrorist cell -- not connected to the Sept. 11 attacks but instead to al-Fuqra, an obscure Muslim sect with a history of violence in the United States.
The path of federal authorities' investigation of the group shows how the response to any hint of terrorist activity has shifted from watchful waiting to quick arrest and prosecution.
Before Sept. 11, the compound, which houses about 20 families, had been under surveillance for three years because of suspicion that residents were stockpiling machine guns, said Thomas Gallagher, a special agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
A week after the attacks on New York and Washington, two residents of the compound were charged with purchasing pistols illegally. Vincente Rafael Pierre, 45, and his wife, Traci Elaine Upshur, 37, were both convicted. A third resident, Bilal Adullah Ben Benu, 27, faces charges including illegally transporting ammunition for AK-47 automatic rifles.
The story is full of unanswered questions, beyond the central question of why alleged terrorists would set up housekeeping in an isolated hamlet in the flat farm country of central Virginia.
Residents of the compound, mostly black Muslims, will say little beyond proclaiming their innocence and complaining that they are victims of religious and racial prejudice.
Pierre said in court that al-Fuqra was a "phantom, nonexistent organization."
Prosecutors decline to say what kind of terrorist activity they suspect. Instead they cite al-Fuqra's history and warn that some of the compound's residents are dangerous.
Al-Fuqra, which means "the impoverished" in Arabic, was founded in Brooklyn, N.Y., 20 years ago by a Pakistani cleric, Shaykh Mubarik Ali Gilani. The group "seeks to purify Islam through violence," according to a 1998 State Department report. Its members are suspected in at least 17 bombings and 12 murders, Gallagher said.
In 1992, Colorado's attorney general charged al-Fuqra members in Buena Vista, Colo., with firebombing a Hare Krishna temple in 1984 and conspiracy to murder a Muslim cleric in 1990. The cleric, Sheik Rashad Khalifa of Tucson, Ariz., was killed after receiving death threats over his interpretation of the Quran.
"I considered them very dangerous," said Douglas Wamsley, who prosecuted the case for the attorney general. "They had concocted a plan to kill a man, and he was indeed killed."
Members of the group also bilked the state of more than $355,000 through false workers compensation claims, and used the money to buy a 100-acre mountain compound in Buena Vista, Wamsley said.
One al-Fuqra member was convicted on charges related to the temple bombing case. Three were convicted and two pleaded guilty in the Khalifa case. Afterward, other al-Fuqra members cleared out of the compound, leaving a cache of AK-47s and other weapons.
Pierre also belonged to the al-Fuqra group in Colorado. "But frankly, he was the least involved member of the group," Wamsley said. He was charged with workers' compensation fraud, pleaded guilty to lesser charges and was sentenced to two years' probation.
In February 1993, Matthew C. Gardner, who still lives in the Red House compound, bought the 44.5-acre plot with five other people for $39,000. The families hauled in trailer homes and named their main road after Gilani, the al-Fuqra founder. Residents patrolled the property carrying walkie-talkies and sometimes a gun or big stick, Gallagher said.
Six years ago Pierre moved into a brown trailer in the compound with seven of his eight children. Pierre said in court he made money selling Islamic clothing door-to-door.
From July 1998 to March 1999, federal agents watched Pierre and Upshur try to buy .45-caliber handguns at a shop called the Outpost. Pierre would order and pay for the weapons, while Upshur would sign the paperwork. Because he is a convicted felon Pierre is not allowed to own a gun, and prosecutors suspected Upshur was buying guns for her husband.
Benu, also a felon, has yet to be arraigned and has not entered a plea.
Pierre's lawyer, Thomas Wray, said his client was wrongly swept up in the rush to capture potential terrorists.
"It bothers me that they'd go after someone when their evidence wasn't sufficient," Wray said.
Pierre said al-Fuqra is "just a figment of someone's imagination due to their ignorance of the Arabic language or perhaps due to their hate or prejudice" toward Islam.
Gardner and other residents of the compound declined to speak with an Associated Press reporter. He told The Washington Post earlier this year that residents of the trailer compound have no connection to al-Fuqra or terrorists.
"We don't harbor them or feed them or give them our money," he said. "We don't go to school for terrorism. I don't understand how they can equate that with what's happening up here."
Muslim leaders echo the feeling of being targeted.
"There's a general chill in the Muslim community right now," said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an Islamic advocacy group based in Washington.
Hooper said Muslims feel threatened when hundreds of people have been detained and police view entire communities as suspects instead of focusing on individual crimes.
But Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney in Washington, said cases such as that of al-Fuqra show the importance of good surveillance of potential terrorists.
"These incidents indicate there are members of terrorist cells in America still," diGenova said.
Authorities' handling of the Muslims from Red House seems to reflect that cautious attitude. Before ordering Pierre held without bond in September, U.S. Magistrate Glen E. Conrad conceded that Pierre might have only loose ties to Al-Fuqra. However, Conrad said, "you're oftentimes known by the company you keep."