Shopping Mall Terror Plot Alleged In Boston Area Arrest

An alleged shopping mall terror plot on U.S. shopping malls has resulted in the arrest of A 27-year-old Massachusetts man according to early reports this morning. The man has been charged with conspiring with others to support and plan terror attacks in and outside the United States according to the reports.

From the Boston Herald

A 27-year-old man from Sudbury has been arrested on charges he planned terrorism attacks inside and outside the United States, including a plot to use automatic weapons to open fire at shoppers and emergency responders in shopping mall attacks, federal prosecutors said today.

Tarek Mehanna, is accused of conspiring with Ahmad Abousamra and others to obtain the automatic weapons needed to carry out a mall ambush in which they planned to open fire at random, said Acting U.S. Attorney Michael K. Loucks.

The plot included plans to fire at emergency responders, but was abandoned because the men could not obtain the weapons, authorities said.

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If this story and the names involved sound familiar …. This may be why.

From The Boston Globe 2008

Statements that Tarek Mehanna allegedly made to the FBI two years ago in the midst of a terrorism investigation came back to haunt him last weekend, when the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy graduate was arrested as he was about to board a Boston flight to start a new job overseas.

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Additional details are available at My Pet Jawa, who also covered the story here.

Boston – Police Need Assault Rifles In Case Of Terror Attack

The top FBI agent in Boston said today that the Menino administration should revive a controversial plan to arm neighborhood officers with semiautomatic assault rifles, saying the scarcity of such weapons on the force makes Boston more vulnerable to a terrorist attack similar to the 2008 rampage in Mumbai, India, that killed 166 people.

Warren T. Bamford, the special agent in charge of the FBI field office in Boston, said other big cities in the United States have made such weapons widely available to specially trained police officers and that the issue “should be revisited sooner rather than later” in Boston.

“There’s no imminent threats,” Bamford said in a meeting with Globe editors and reporters. But, he continued, “All things being equal, if a terrorist decides, ‘OK, we’re going to do something like what took place in Mumbai,’ well, where would you go? If you have a choice of a metropolitan city, would I go to New York, with 40,000 police officers, would I go Los Angeles, with 8,000, or would I go to Boston, with 3,500 … and I know there’s no assault rifles in the Boston Police Department?”

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