Posts Tagged ‘domestic terrorism’
 
April 19, 2013 1

Profile Of Boston Bombers Emerges

Even as the man­hunt for Dzhokhar Tsar­naev con­tin­ues, a por­trait of him and his brother, Tamer­lan, the alleged per­pe­tra­tors of Monday’s Boston Marathon bomb­ing, has begun to emerge.

Based on social media pro­files appar­ently belong­ing to them, the broth­ers were inter­ested in mil­i­tancy, Islam and Chech­nya, a region in Russia.

The two report­edly came to the United States as refugees in the early 2000s, per­haps a cou­ple of years apart, after flee­ing the vio­lence in the Cau­ca­sus.  Both appeared to main­tain close ties to their eth­nic home­land. The younger brother, Dzhokhar, included the seal of his home­town soc­cer team as the back­ground of his Twit­ter account. The older, Tamer­lan, expressed his hope for Chechen inde­pen­dence and included books about Chech­nya about on his Ama­zon wish list.

The broth­ers were also prac­tic­ing Mus­lims, post­ing mes­sages about Islam and Ramadan on var­i­ous social media pro­files. There is an indi­ca­tion that Tamer­lan may have had a more rad­i­cal streak, reflected in his YouTube playlist fea­tur­ing videos by a rad­i­cal cleric liv­ing in Aus­tralia and videos about join­ing an Islamic army to help estab­lish a Caliphate as well as a playlist on “Ter­ror­ists” (the videos of which had pre­vi­ously been deleted by YouTube).

A more com­plete pro­file on the broth­ers can be found here: Social Media Pro­files Shed Light on Broth­ers Accused in Boston Marathon Attack.

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April 17, 2013 1

Language In Ricin Letters Not So Mysterious

Fed­eral author­i­ties have inter­cepted let­ters sent to Pres­i­dent Obama and Mis­sis­sippi Sen­a­tor Roger Wicker that have tested pos­i­tive for ricin in pre­lim­i­nary or follow-up tests.  Ricin is a poi­son derived from cas­tor beans that oper­ates as a deadly toxin when ingested or swallowed.

Sen­a­tor Roger Wicker (R-MS)

Extrem­ists in the United States, espe­cially on the far right, have long been fas­ci­nated with ricin.

Accord­ing to an FBI bul­letin obtained by Fox News, the ricin-laced let­ters were sent from Mem­phis on April 8 and both con­tained the phrase “to see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent part­ner to its con­tin­u­ance.”  Both let­ters were signed “I am KC and I approve this message.”

The iden­tity of “KC” may not yet be known, but the lan­guage that he used does have a source.  The sen­tence about see­ing a wrong is actu­ally a quo­ta­tion that traces back to an obscure chi­ro­prac­tor, John Ray­mond Baker, from Longview, Texas.  Baker claims to have orig­i­nated the quo­ta­tion for a Web site he cre­ated to express griev­ances about a major insur­ance company.

Over the years, vis­i­tors to this site picked up the quo­ta­tion and began using it else­where.   Activists and extrem­ists across the polit­i­cal spectrum—from right-wing extrem­ist groups to the left-wing Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front—have repeated Baker’s nos­trum, both with and with­out attri­bu­tion.   They typ­i­cally use it as lan­guage to jus­tify or ratio­nal­ize their actions.

Baker him­self noticed this phe­nom­e­non as early as 2006, observ­ing that “now, peo­ple are using it about all kinds of injustices.”

No evi­dence has emerged to sug­gest that Baker him­self might in any way be con­nected to the ricin let­ters.  Clearly, though, some­one has exploited his lan­guage in order to jus­tify their poten­tially deadly actions.

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January 23, 2013 0

White Supremacists Begin New Year With Plot, Murder

Anthony Baum­gart­ner at Char­lotte, North Car­olina, NSM rally in Novem­ber 2012

Amer­i­can white suprema­cists marked the New Year with vio­lence, open­ing 2013 with a mur­der in Ken­tucky and an alleged plot in Ohio.  Sus­pects in both inci­dents have ties to neo-Nazi groups.

The mur­der occurred near the small town of Wal­ton, Ken­tucky, south of Cincin­nati, Ohio, on Jan­u­ary 9. About a week later, Boone County sheriff’s deputies arrested three men on kid­nap­ping, mur­der and abuse of a corpse charges, stat­ing that the sus­pects had beaten the vic­tim in two sep­a­rate loca­tions and stabbed and stran­gled him to death at the sec­ond loca­tion, then dis­mem­bered his body and left parts of it in dif­fer­ent places. The vic­tim was a 19-year old drug addict who also allegedly sold heroin to sup­port his own drug habit.  

The sus­pects arrested were Anthony Baum­gart­ner, 23; Jef­frey Allen, 21; and Stephen Hark­ness, 22. At least one of the sus­pects has ties to the white suprema­cist movement. Baumgartner, who has sev­eral white suprema­cist tat­toos, was a rel­a­tively recent recruit to the neo-Nazi National Social­ist Move­ment (NSM), with the rank of “Stormtrooper First Class.” He attended a major NSM rally in Char­lotte, North Car­olina, in Novem­ber 2012 and also attended or orga­nized local NSM events in Boone County. He claimed to have in the past been involved with a Ku Klux Klan group; this has not been verified.

Baum­gart­ner and the oth­ers also admired out­law motor­cy­cle gangs and Baum­gart­ner claimed on one Web site that he was the for­mer pres­i­dent of a biker club called “SS Ban­dits.” This has also not been verified.

Recently, he posted to a white suprema­cist site that “I want to get back in the race war so me and a few other boys in my area are start­ing to clean up [the] area of drugs and so called street gangs…we had […] enough and its time we stand up and take back what is ares [sic].”

In neigh­bor­ing Ohio, mean­while, fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors in mid-January indicted another neo-Nazi, Richard Schmidt of Bowl­ing Green, on weapons charges. Schmidt, a con­victed felon, allegedly had a horde of weapons that included at least 18 assault weapons and more than 40,000 rounds of ammo. Accord­ing to NBC News, a law enforce­ment offi­cer said there was evi­dence that Schmidt pos­si­bly was plan­ning attacks on Jew­ish and civil rights groups in the Detroit area. 

Schmidt was a long-time mem­ber of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, recently act­ing as its Toledo con­tact point, and in the past also occa­sion­ally attended meet­ings of the NSM.

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