Free Republic

Lawyers, law officers debate whether a terror cell took root among us -- A ‘sexy script,’ a suspect castBY JIM REDDEN Is the Portland area a breeding ground for radical Muslim terrorism? Or are law enforcement officials seeing a threat where none exists? The Portland FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force has spearheaded the arrest of seven Portland Muslims since the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, 2001, in New York City and Washington, D.C. An eighth Muslim suspect is still at large. The task force targets include the leader of a conservative local mosque, a mosque member trained in firearms and six...

Three of the so-called Portland Six--(from left to right) Patrice Lumumba Ford, Jeffrey Leon Battle, and Muhammad Ibrahim Bilal--were closer to Afghanistan than authorities have so far disclosed The seven muscular men would have stood out in any hotel. All heavily bearded, they hung around the lobby, doing chin-ups from the rafters and sparring in the courtyard of the Chini Bagh Hotel in Kashgar, China, where I saw them in late October 2001, about 185 miles from the Afghan border. THIS MONTH THREE of them were named as part of the so-called Portland Six, which U.S. authorities allege is a...

What to make of the Islamic compounds across America affiliated with the Pakistani radical group Jamaat al-Fuqra? WALL STREET JOURNAL reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped when he went looking for the leader of a group called Jamaat al-Fuqra in the terrorist bazaar of Pakistan. At the time he disappeared, Pearl was tracking reports that Fuqra had hosted would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid at its walled compound in Lahore. In the end, it was agents of another group that spirited Pearl off to his death, but Fuqra remains a subject of interest, and not only because of its activities in Pakistan....

PORTLAND TERRORIST CONNECTION TO ELITE U.S. UNIVERSITY AND CHINA Common Ghetto street punk on prison furlough? Or world-traveled, grad-school educated, Mandarin Chinese-fluent, politically connected savvy operative? These are the thoughts that come to mind in analyzing the initial information we have on one of the Portland, Oregon al-Qaida cell members, (photo, above) Mr. Patrice Lumumba Ford (Patrice Lumumba was the Communist Congo revolutionary and assassinated leader in the 1960s).Word now comes out today that suspect Ford’s father has revealed he is “shocked that my son could be involved in something like this”, because he is world-traveled, apparantly a graduate of...

Portland, Ore. (CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Justice Department, under increasing attack from Congress and civil libertarians for its practice of detaining and questioning potential terrorists, faces outright defiance by the mayor of Portland, Ore.Mayor Vera Katz, on a recommendation from the city attorney, said the Portland Police Department would be violating state law if it assisted the Justice Department in tracking down and interviewing the 23 men in the Portland area who are on a national list of 5,000 individuals being sought."I understand that our decision not to participate in the questioning will not be popular with some people," Katz ...