Posts Tagged ‘domestic terrorism’
 
September 20, 2012 0

Chicago Teen Arrested For “Violent Jihad” Bomb Plot

Adel Daoud Photo From Facebook

An 18-year-old Chicagoan was arrested last week by the FBI for attempt­ing to det­o­nate what he believed was a car bomb out­side a bar in down­town Chicago. The plot was appar­ently intended as retal­i­a­tion for America’s per­ceived war with Islam and “oppres­sion against Muslims.”

Adel Daoud was arrested after try­ing to set off a fake device set up by FBI agents as a part of a sting oper­a­tion. Fed­eral author­i­ties began mon­i­tor­ing Daoud in Octo­ber 2011, after dis­cov­er­ing his rad­i­cal posts on Jihadist Inter­net forums.

His online activ­ity included send­ing friends copies of Al Qaeda in the Ara­bian Peninsula’s English-language ter­ror­ist mag­a­zine, Inspire, in order to “brain­wash them.” On one online extrem­ist forum, Daoud described Inspire as “the best mag­a­zine I have read.”

He also shared recorded lec­tures by Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born Mus­lim cleric killed in Yemen last year, and a video by Amer­i­can ter­ror­ist Omar Ham­mami, an Alabama native who became the pub­lic face and voice of Al Shabaab, the Al Qaeda affil­i­ate in Somalia.

Accord­ing to the FBI affi­davit, Daoud also used the inter­net to research jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for sui­cide bomb­ings and attacks on civil­ians. In May of this year, fed­eral author­i­ties began com­mu­ni­cat­ing with Daoud online and by July, under­cover agents were meet­ing with him in person.

Dur­ing the course of the FBI inves­ti­ga­tion, accord­ing to the affi­davit, Daoud expressed his desire to carry out attacks in the United States and to travel abroad to join ter­ror­ist groups over­seas, in par­tic­u­lar in Yemen. Daoud allegedly applied for a new pass­port in March 2012.

Before set­tling on the bar, Daoud pre­sented a list of pro­posed tar­gets, includ­ing mil­i­tary instil­la­tions, con­certs, malls and tourist attrac­tions. Accord­ing to a recorded con­ver­sa­tion with the under­cover agent, Daoud alluded to the fact that Mus­lims shouldn’t be at a bar, and if they are, they deserve what they get.

“I want [to do] some­thing that’s gonna make it in the news,” he said, accord­ing to the affi­davit. “If it’s only like five, ten peo­ple, I’m not gonna feel that good.”

One of Daoud’s friends was allegedly involved in the plot as well, but dropped out after being con­fronted by the sheikh at the mosque they attended.

Daoud has been charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruc­tion and an explo­sives violation. He faces a max­i­mum pun­ish­ment of life in prison.

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August 23, 2012 3

Extremist-Related Police Killings Continue to Mount

The recent shoot­ings in St. John the Bap­tist Parish in Louisiana, in which two offi­cers were killed and two more injured, high­light the con­tin­u­ing dan­ger domes­tic extrem­ists pose to offi­cer safety in the United States. Research by the Anti-Defamation League has found that at least one of the sus­pects has ide­o­log­i­cal lean­ings that would put him within the over­ar­ch­ing anti-government “Patriot” movement.

The Louisiana shoot­ings were unfor­tu­nately only the lat­est in a series of lethal encoun­ters in the United States between law enforce­ment offi­cers and domes­tic extrem­ists.  Ear­lier this year, six police offi­cers were shot, one fatally, in Ogden, Utah, after police entered a res­i­dence to exe­cute a search war­rant. Infor­ma­tion from the search war­rant affi­davit strongly sug­gests that the sus­pect, David Stew­art, was an anti-government extrem­ist.  In 2010, two peo­ple asso­ci­ated with the sov­er­eign cit­i­zen move­ment killed two East Mem­phis police offi­cers and wounded two other offi­cers in a pair of shootouts.

All in all, at least 28 offi­cers have been killed since 2001 in encoun­ters with extrem­ists from one move­ment or another. The killings have ranged from inci­dents in which police offi­cers were delib­er­ately tar­geted by extrem­ists to sit­u­a­tions in which police offi­cers hap­pened to encounter extrem­ists engag­ing in ide­o­log­i­cal or non-ideological crim­i­nal activity.

Over­whelm­ingly, the per­pe­tra­tors or sus­pects in these lethal inci­dents have been right-wing extrem­ists, adher­ents of one or another of the pri­mary white suprema­cist move­ments or anti-government extrem­ist move­ments active in the United States today.  This is part of a long-term trend since the 1980s, in which right-wing extrem­ists grad­u­ally replaced left-wing extrem­ists as the main source of extremist-related offi­cer killings in the United States.  Though the fig­ures here are solely for fatal­i­ties, anec­do­tal evi­dence sug­gests that the same trends hold for non-lethal extremist-related attacks on police offi­cers as well.

The resur­gence of right-wing extrem­ism in the United States since 2009 has undoubt­edly con­tributed to the level of vio­lence:  between 2009 and 2012, eight of nine extremist-related offi­cer deaths have been linked to right-wing extremists.

Among right-wing extrem­ists, anti-government extrem­ists have been the most lethal in recent years, per­pe­trat­ing or sus­pected of hav­ing per­pe­trated half of the extremist-related offi­cer deaths this cen­tury.  How­ever, white suprema­cists have slain nearly as many offi­cers in the same time period and, in a prac­ti­cal sense, rep­re­sent vir­tu­ally the same level of threat to offi­cer safety.

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August 14, 2012 0

White Supremacists React to Sikh Temple Shootings

Since the Sikh tem­ple shoot­ing in Wis­con­sin on August 5, reac­tions from Amer­i­can white suprema­cists have var­ied widely, from deplor­ing the shoot­ings to prais­ing the shooter, Wade Michael Page.

Early responses occurred before white suprema­cists learned the shooter was a long-time white suprema­cist.  Many reac­tions expressed con­cern that the mass shoot­ing would prompt calls for gun control. Others were unhappy with the tar­get.  “I have to say that Sikhs are the least objec­tion­able non-White immi­grant group in North Amer­ica by far!!” wrote one poster on the white suprema­cist dis­cus­sion forum Storm­front.   Another Storm­fron­ter agreed:  “There’s so many legit­i­mate ene­mies, it’s just so stu­pid to pick Sikhs.”  A poster to the Van­guard News Net­work (VNN) asked, “Why get focused on Sikhs?  Just weird.  Very spe­cific turd in a giant sewer…Our worst ene­mies are jews and white trai­tors.  If you aren’t fight­ing them, you just aren’t living.”

Oth­ers made crude jokes, as did this Storm­fron­ter from Wis­con­sin:  “In a related story, sev­eral gas sta­tions and con­ve­nience stores in the Mil­wau­kee area have put out Help Wanted signs.”

Soon, how­ever, white suprema­cists learned of Page’s extrem­ist past, prompt­ing a gen­eral attempt at dis­tanc­ing them­selves.  Some claimed the shoot­ing was not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of white suprema­cists.  Oth­ers thought it was poor tar­get­ing.  “He…never learned the cru­cial les­son,” posted one Storm­fron­ter.  “Don’t attack the symp­toms, attack the cause.”  A VNN poster opined that “I don’t mind the mas­sacres so much as the sheer idiocy of those doing the shoot­ing, the ran­dom thought­less­ness of their tar­gets.  If they are going to go out in a blaze of glory then they should at least attempt to select more polit­i­cally sig­nif­i­cant tar­gets instead of mean­ing­less indi­vid­u­als.”  Many expressed fear of a back­lash against the white suprema­cist movement.

Oth­ers, how­ever, thought of Page as a mar­tyr to the cause.  “See you in Val­halla, brother,” posted Zach But­ler, a North Car­olina white suprema­cist, to his Face­book pro­file.  One Orange County based white power music band, Armed and Ready, posted to its Face­book page:  “R.I.P. Brother Wade, out with a whim­per or out with a bang, it’s your choice.”

These sorts of sen­ti­ments appeared espe­cially pop­u­lar among mem­bers and sup­port­ers of the Ham­mer­skins, the large racist skin­head group of which Page was a mem­ber.   “For Wade, the fight goes on,” posted one Idaho Ham­mer­skin to Face­book.  “R.I.P. brother, you’ll be missed!” wrote another.  “RIP, Wade, U were one hell of a white patriot,” posted Robert Kopko, a Florida Ham­mer­skin.  Sev­eral days later, he announced that he was “gonna go out with some broth­ers an[d] have a cou­ple drinks for a fallen patriot.”  Another Florida Ham­mer­skin wrote that “I miss my good friend WADE!  HAIL WADE!!”

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