August 17,
2005
California Turning into a Jihadist Hotbed
It appears that California is quickly turning into ground zero for jihadist actvity in the United States. In June, federal authorities busted up an apparent Al-Qaeda sleeper cell of Pakistani men in Lodi, CA, just outside Sacramento. Just last week, local police said that a group of Middle Eastern men was acting "suspiciously" while videotaping the Santa Monica Pier. And now it has emerged that two African-American converts to Islam, Gregory Patterson, 21, and Levar Washington, 25, have been arrested and charged with holding up at least 10 gas stations and convenience stores in the Torrance, California area. What does that have to do with terrorism, you might ask? Well, upon raiding Washington's apartment, authorities discovered a list of targets and notes for a major terrorist operation that would require cash, explosives, weapons and remote-controlled devices.
The attacks were scheduled, symbolically (at least, in the two men's warped minds), for September 11, 2005. The target list was to include the Israeli El Al airline at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), the Israeli consulate on Wilshire Boulevard, Jewish synagogues in Los Angeles and the California National Guard Armories. It would appear that police inadvertantly prevented what could have been a bloodbath. Incidentally, a third man, Hammad Riaz Samana, who is a 21-year-old Pakistani national, has also been arrested in the case. Below are some initial thoughts on this disturbing news:
1) The alleged mastermind behind the plot, Levar Washington, was an ex-gangbanger (Crips) who converted to Islam in prison. This echoes the case of Jose Padilla, the alleged Al-Qaeda "dirty bomber," who was a member of the Chicago gang the Latin Disciples before converting to Islam in prison. Prisons are fast becoming a fertile recuiting ground for Al-Qaeda. They're filled with angry, confused and violent young men who can easily be molded into radical Islamists.
2) To that end, investigators say that Washington and Patterson may have been linked to a wider plot involving a prison-based gang called "Jimiyat Islam Sahid." JIS recruits former gang members, according to investigators.
3) The fact that Washington and Patterson--both recent converts to Islam, allegedly planned to go on a shooting spree reminds me of another pair of African-American converts to Islam, the "Beltway Snipers," John Allen Mohammed and John Lee Malvo, who went on an infamous shooting spree in the Washington, D.C. area in 2002. Predictably, the mianstream media completely downplayed the role of Islam in Mohammed and Malvo's crimes (Malvo, for instance, has been known to pass time in prison by drawing pictures of Osama bin Laden).
5) This isn't the first time LAX has been targeted. In 2000, Al-Qaeda operative Ahmed Ressam targeted the airport as part of the foiled Millenium bombing plot. And in 2002, a deranged Egyptian jihadi shot and killed 2 people there. Tellingly perhaps, Gregory Patterson reportedly was working at LAX at the time of his arrest.
If it wasn't already brutally obvious to everyone, jihadists are in the United States, and they want to hit us again, badly. If the upcoming anniversary of the 9/11 attacks tells us anything, it's that we can never be complacent as long as the war against radical Islam rages on. Since this is my last blog until Monday (going out of town for a few days), I didn't want to forget to congratulate Italian authorities, who announced today that they are deporting 700 Islamic militants from Italian shores. Now that's amore.
EMail
Erick Stakelbeck With Your Comments ...