| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: WoT |
| Columbus area man held as al Qaida bomb suspect |
| 2007-04-12 |
| A North Side man joined al-Qaida and tried to help the terrorist group blow up U.S. government buildings abroad and European resorts frequented by Americans, a federal indictment released yesterday in Columbus says. Christopher Paul, 43, who shared an apartment with convicted terrorist Iyman Faris, is charged with conspiring to support terrorists, conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction and providing support to terrorists. Paul was one of three Columbus men that federal authorities had been investigating. Faris, who shared an apartment with Paul at 676 Riverview Dr., is now serving a 20-year prison sentence for plotting to topple the Brooklyn Bridge. Nuradin Abdi is awaiting trial, charged with plotting to blow up a Columbus-area mall. The indictment released yesterday says Paul trained in weapons and other explosives during trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan, tried to recruit people for a "violent jihad," and met with al-Qaida members with personal connections to Osama bin Laden. The indictment by the federal grand jury described Paul as a man so eager to fight that he told an al-Qaida member that he would continue to plan violence even if the group scaled back its military operations. It further says that Paul had traveled abroad as early as 1990 to receive terrorist training. Paul "offered himself to persons in Pakistan and Afghanistan associated with al-Qaida as an individual dedicated to committing violent jihad." While in Pakistan he met a former pilot of bin Laden's and became friends with Khalifah LNU, an al-Qaida member who was responsible for logistics at the group's training camps in Afghanistan. He received weapons training while there. In April 1998, Paul went hiking with "several co-conspirators" in Burr Oak State Park in Glouster, Ohio, about 78 miles southeast of Columbus. They were training, the indictment states. Later, the indictment charges that from 1999 to 2000, Paul planned to bomb European tourist resorts that Americans frequent. He also plotted against governmental facilities such as embassies and U.S. military bases in Europe. While there, he trained fellow conspirators to use explosives. At his home in Columbus, authorities found a night-vision scope, laser range-finder and "military survival knife." Subsequent searches found things like books and manuals on how to make explosives and improvised booby traps. Officials also found a letter to Paul's parents, in which he said he would be "on the front lines" and it explained how they could get information on "jihad." Family members would not comment about the arrest last night. |
| Posted by:ryuge |