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Ohio al-Qaida suspect pleads guilty
EFLA suspected al-Qaida operative has pleaded guilty to two terrorism-related charges after he was identified by a top leader of Osama bin Laden’s terror network. Iyman Faris, a U.S. citizen from Columbus, Ohio, also known as Mohammed Rauf, was personally identified by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Mohammed, who was captured March 1 in Pakistan, told U.S. authorities that Faris, 34, had been assigned to look into ways to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge and derail trains, among other potential attacks.
So Khalid has been singing.
A U.S. official told NBC News that the plea was a “highly significant” development in the war on terrorism and that Faris had been cooperating with interrogators since his arrest. He pleaded guilty May 1, but Judge Leonie Brinkema unsealed the case record in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., after his plea was first reported Thursday morning by NBC News. Faris pleaded guilty to providing material support to a terrorist organization and conspiracy to provide such support, Attorney General John Ashcroft said at a news briefing Thursday afternoon. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison when he is sentenced Aug. 1. Ashcroft would not discuss where or when Faris, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan who drove trucks for a living, was arrested.
From Pakistan, huh? Will wonders never cease?
Faris provided cash, “thousands of sleeping bags,” airplane tickets and cellular telephones to al-Qaida operatives, Ashcroft said. From late 2000 to March of this year, he spent much of his time “scouting sites for acts of terrorism in the United States,” Ashcroft said. “Faris led a secret double life,” Ashcroft said, seeking flight training, traveling to Pakistan and Afghanistan and meeting with bin Laden in late 2000. He met with two “senior al-Qaida figures” — one of whom officials told NBC News was Mohammed — in 2000, 2001 and early 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ashcroft said. Ashcroft said Faris was involved in a new al-Qaida plot to launch simultaneous strikes in New York and Washington, a scenario similar to the organization’s attacks in those two cities on Sept. 11, 2001. Ashcroft said the New York target was “a bridge in New York City,” which other officials said was the Brooklyn Bridge. He would not discuss the target in the Washington attack, citing concern “for the national interest.” The case against Faris was kept tightly under wraps, but details emerged in an article in the current issue of Newsweek magazine. Citing intelligence documents, Newsweek reported that Faris was personally ordered to study ultralight aircraft by Mohammed, who told interrogators that he told Faris to case the Brooklyn Bridge. He also instructed Faris to obtain gas cutters or torches that could be used to cut the bridge’s suspension wires.
Geeze, have these guys never seen a big suspension bridge?
A statement of fact filed in court by the Justice Department said Faris researched the bridge on the World Wide Web and traveled to New York in late 2002 to examine it. Faris concluded that “the plot to destroy the bridge by severing the cables was very unlikely to succeed” because of its security and structure and sent a coded message back to al-Qaida leaders: “The weather is too hot.”
"Are you guys nuts?"
Newsweek reported that Mohammed also instructed Faris to obtain “torque tools” to bend railroad tracks in order to send a passenger train hurtling off the rails. Washington is home to a major train station that serves the Northeast corridor, as well as the nation’s second-busiest subway system. Faris himself recommended driving a small truck with explosives beneath a commercial airliner as it sat on the tarmac. As a licensed truck driver, Faris could have more easily penetrated airport security than others.
Remember that warning on truck drivers? Looks like they were right about that one.
Posted by: Steve 2003-06-19
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=15629