Soldier Arrested After C4 Military Explosives Found At Home
November 3, 2009 by Homeland Security NTARC News
Filed under Incident Reports
An Army Special Forces soldier was arrested in Tennessee on Monday following the discovery of 100 pounds of C4 explosives outside his home. Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent Eric Kehn said he expects the man will face more charges related to the discovery of the explosives according to news reports on News Channel 5. Authorities say the explosives have no known link to terrorism. Video Link
The explosives were found in crates. The material was sealed in watertight containers and partially buried.
Source
From The Leaf Chronicle
Timothy Ryan Richards of the 5th Special Forces Group, has been charged with knowingly receiving and possessing firearms not registered to him in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Federal and military officials searched Richards’ home early Monday morning after a pair of hunters found the C-4 plastic explosives in a field by the house, at 1880 Johnson Road, on Sunday at about 4:30 p.m.
Maj. April Olsen, 5th Group spokeswoman, said Richards was taken to the county jail and was transferred to federal custody. He was cooperating with authorities in the investigation, Olsen said.
Eric Kehn, special agent and public information officer with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the investigation is ongoing.
“Our explosive recovery effort investigation continues,” Kehn said. “He is appearing in court on some different charges, and that outlines what he’s currently being charged with.”
Those charges included Richards’ having a Saber, 5.56mm-caliber rifle with a barrel less than 16 inches long and a Swedish K .45-caliber machine gun, according to the criminal complaint filed by ATF Special Agent Jamie Smith.
The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court, Middle District of Tennessee, in Nashville.
Olsen said the search was conducted by agents from the ATF, the FBI and U.S. Army Criminal Investigations
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WRTAC Warns Of Reprisals After Radical’s Islamic Leaders Death
November 3, 2009 by Homeland Security NTARC News
Filed under Homeland Security News
The Washington Times reports Federal officials have issued a warning that the shooting death of a radical Sunni Islamic leader in Michigan last week may engender retaliatory violence against law enforcement officers there as well as in the Washington area, though law enforcement officials played it down as a routine measure.
Gunfire erupted during the arrest of Ummah leader Luqman Abdullah and members of his group after Abdullah pulled a gun and shot and killed an FBI canine, according to a document obtained by The Washington Times from the Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center (WRTAC).
FBI agents returned fire at the warehouse in Dearborn, Mich., and killed Abdullah, who was charged with selling stolen goods and illegal possession and sale of firearms.“Abdullah’s death and associated arrests may foster resentment, violent rhetoric, and threats from Ummah adherents,” said the raw intelligence document issued by the WRTAC.
“Because of the group’s anti-law enforcement sentiments, law enforcement officers should be particularly mindful of this change in the threat environment and the possibility for retaliation,” the WRTAC said.
As for implications in the D.C. area, the WRTAC said that “Ummah sympathizers or other similar groups may be operating in the National Capital Region. Officers should be alert for possible retaliatory actions as a result of the FBI Detroit raid.”
Supervisory Special Agent Katherine W. Schweit of the FBI’s Washington office declined to comment or even confirm the contents of the document.
But, speaking in general terms, she said, “Any time an incident occurs elsewhere in the country, information is provided to all state, federal and local offices to provide them with the status, and urging them to be cautious regarding similar incidents.”
via Read Full Article.
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1,600 Are Suggested Daily For Watch List
November 2, 2009 by Homeland Security NTARC News
Filed under Homeland Security News
The Washington Post reported that during a 12-month period ending in March of this year, 1,600 people were recommended daily by the U.S. intelligence community to be put on the list due to ‘reasonable suspicion.’ It’s important to know, each nomination does not necessarily represent a new individual, but may instead involve an alias or name variant for a previously named to the watchlist.
Newly released FBI data offer evidence of the broad scope and complexity of the nation’s terrorist watch list, documenting a daily flood of names nominated for inclusion to the controversial list.
During a 12-month period ended in March this year, for example, the U.S. intelligence community suggested on a daily basis that 1,600 people qualified for the list because they presented a “reasonable suspicion,” according to data provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the FBI in September and made public last week.
FBI officials cautioned that each nomination “does not necessarily represent a new individual, but may instead involve an alias or name variant for a previously watchlisted person.”
The ever-churning list is said to contain more than 400,000 unique names and over 1 million entries. The committee was told that over that same period, officials asked each day that 600 names be removed and 4,800 records be modified. Fewer than 5 percent of the people on the list are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. Nine percent of those on the terrorism list, the FBI said, are also on the government’s “no fly” list.
via Read Full Article.
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Detroit Imam Killed During FBI Raid
October 28, 2009 by Homeland Security NTARC News
Filed under Incident Reports
According to several new reports, the leader of a Detroit mosque, Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53 years old, who had previously been known as Christopher Thomas,was fatally shot Wednesday during a Federal Bureau of Investigation raid on what authorities called a criminal gang run by U.S. converts to Islam.
An FBI spokeswoman said six men were arrested in the raid on a suburban warehouse and two Detroit homes. The men were arrested on suspicion of a variety of offenses, including illegal possession of firearms, trafficking in stolen goods and altering vehicle identification numbers.
Three suspects remain at large.Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53 years old, who had previously been known as Christopher Thomas, refused to surrender. He shot a police dog before he was fatally shot by authorities, the U.S. attorney’s office in Detroit said in a statement.
This news release was issued today by Gina Balaya of the United States Attorney’s Office and Sandra Berchtold of the FBI:
11 Members/Associates of Ummah Charged with Federal Violations One Subject Fatally Shot During Arrest
United States Attorney Terrence Berg, Eastern District of Michigan, Andrew G. Arena, Special Agent in Charge (SAC), Federal Bureau of Investigation, (FBI), Detroit, Michigan, and Police Chief Warren Evans, Detroit Police Department (DPD), Detroit, Michigan announced a federal complaint was unsealed today charging Luqman Ameen Abdullah, a.k.a.Christopher Thomas, and 10 others with conspiracy to commit several federal crimes, including theft from interstate shipments, mail fraud to obtain the proceeds of arson, illegal possession and sale of firearms, and tampering with motor vehicle identification numbers.
The eleven defendants are members of a group that is alleged to have engaged in violent activity over a period of many years, and known to be armed.
In light of the information that the charged individuals were believed to be armed and dangerous, special safeguards were employed by law enforcement to secure the arrests without confrontation.
During the arrests today, the suspects were ordered to surrender. At one location, four suspects surrendered and were arrested without incident. Luqman Ameen Abdullah did not surrender and fired his weapon. An exchange of gunfire followed and Abdullah was killed. An FBI canine was also killed during the exchange.
Abdullah was the leader of part of a group which calls themselves Ummah (“the brotherhood”), a group of mostly African-American converts to Islam, which seeks to establish a separate Sharia-law governed state within the United States.
The Ummah is ruled by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rapp Brown, who is serving a state sentence in USP Florence, CO, ADMAX, for the murder of two police officers in Georgia. As detailed in the affidavit in support of the criminal complaint that was unsealed today, Abdullah has espoused the use of violence against law enforcement, and has trained members of his group in use of firearms and martial arts in anticipation of some type of action against the government.
Abdullah and other members of this group were known to carry firearms and other weapons.
Additionally, two federal search warrants were executed at 4467 Tireman Avenue, Detroit Michigan, and 9278 Genessee Street, Detroit, Michigan. The affidavits for these search warrants are sealed.
This case was jointly worked by the FBI, DPD, JTTF, and the United States Attorney’s Office – Eastern District of Michigan. We would like to express our appreciation to the Detroit Public Schools, Dearborn Police Department, Madison Heights Police and Fire Departments, and the members of JTTF for their assistance in this matter.
At the time of this release, Mujahid Carswell, Mohammad Alsahi and Yassir Ali Khan were still at large. Anyone with information regarding the location of these individuals should contact the FBI at (313) 965-2323
A complaint is only a charge and is not evidence of guilt. A trial cannot be held on felony charges in a complaint. When the investigation is completed a determination will be made whether to seek a felony indictment.
Source
FBI Lacks Translators For Terror Intelligence
October 27, 2009 by Homeland Security NTARC News
Filed under Featured
AFP cites a Justice Department audit in a report that states the FBI currently does not have enough translators to review as much as one third of the foreign-language material it collects in counter-terrorism operations.
About one third of electronic documents and one quarter of audio files collected in anti-terror probes have not been translated and reviewed, said the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, seen by AFP Tuesday.
“Not reviewing such material increases the risk that the FBI will not detect information in its possession that may be important to its counterterrorism and counterintelligence efforts,” it said.
According to Fine, Federal Bureau of Investigations agents translate and read all of the 4.8 million pages of text in foreign languages.
However, 14.2 million e-mail messages, or 31 percent of the total during the auditing period, have not been reviewed. Neither have 1.2 million hours of audio, or 25 percent of the 4.8 million hours collected.
Despite the demand for translators, the FBI has also seen the number of their linguists drop, going from 1,338 in March 2005 to 1,298 in September 2008.
“We found that the FBI failed to achieve its linguist hiring goals for critical languages,” the report read.
2nd Chicago Man Tied To Terror Plot
October 27, 2009 by Homeland Security NTARC News
Filed under Incident Reports
The Chicago Tribune reports that the FBI has arrested a second Chicago man allegedly involved in an international terrorist plot with Western European targets.
The man was taken into custody Oct. 3 before he boarded a flight at O’Hare International Airport to Philadelphia, the first stop on a trip to Pakistan, where he planned to meet people with known ties to terrorist organizations that have carried out fatal attacks that resulted in the deaths of U.S. citizens, a source said. He has not been charged.
After that arrest, dozens of FBI agents from the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Oct. 18 raided a Grundy County meat-processing plant that specializes in Islamic foods.
The owner of the plant, Tahawar Hussain Rana, also of Chicago, was arrested at his North Side home the same day as the raid on First World Management Services in Kinsman, northwest of Dwight. Agents seized records from the plant, as well as a related North Side business also raided the same day, said the source, who is familiar with the investigation.
via Read Full Article.
Shopping Mall Terror Plot Alleged In Boston Area Arrest
October 21, 2009 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
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.
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.
Additional details are available at My Pet Jawa, who also covered the story here.
Terror-Related Arrest Began in Las Vegas
Last week we linked to a story on Fox News about a a Somali man on the U.S. government’s terrorist watch list who was stopped outside Las Vegas along with four other men. The man was released because the officer had no legal authority to detain him. As we stated in the post, the story didn’t end there.Two days after the vehicle was pulled over outside Las Vegas, two of the passengers appeared at the U.S.-Mexico border crossing in San Ysidro, Calif.
So is that the end of the story? Apparently not.
The Channel 8 I-Team in Las Vegas has additional details as well as pdfs of a Criminal Complaint and Criminal Indictment
FBI Raids Slaughterhouse In Ongoing Investigation
October 20, 2009 by national
Filed under Incident ReportsSeveral news reports are circulating in regards to an FBI raid on a Illinois slaughterhouse. Although details are sketchy, there is no indication the raids are in any way connected to terrorism.
We’ve included links to a few of the reports.
Authorities Confirm Raid, No One Taken Into Custody
Federal agents conducted a raid Sunday afternoon at a goat meat processing plant near Morris, Illinois. The secretive operation was led by the Chicago FBI office. CBS 2’s Mike Puccinelli reports that on Monday, the Feds are being very tight-lipped on what they found and why they were even there.
Spokesman Ross Rice confirms agents were at 6260 Kinsman Road, in Kinsman, Illinois. The business is called First World Management. Rice would not say why agents were there but said nobody was taken into custody.
The FBI said the raid began Sunday morning and ended in the late afternoon. They were at the plant about nine hours total.
From WBBM 780
Federal agents conducted a raid Sunday afternoon at a goat meat processing plant near Morris, Illinois.
The operation was led by the Chicago FBI office. An agent confirmed for Newsradio 780 they were executing a search warrant at the First World Management plant in Kinsman, Illinois.
Why is a mystery. A call to the plant was met largely with silence. We did get confirmation that some items — possibly computers — were seized and that there were no arrests.
Neighbors who saw the raid tell CBS 2 News it was a huge operation, involving more than 100 agents, police officers and even what one believed to be National Guard troops.
One witness said she saw troops carrying M-16 rifles that were trained on a group of men sitting on the ground outside the facility.
From the Chicago Tribune
Federal agents investigating possible Immigration irregularities conducted raids at a Grundy County meatpacking business and several Chicago locations over the weekend, sources familiar with the probe said Monday.
The FBI’s Chicago office confirmed agents took part in the execution of a search warrant Sunday at a First World Management Services plant in Kinsman, northwest of Dwight. FBI spokesman Ross Rice said no arrests were made there.
But a source said the owner of the plant, which processes lamb and goat, was taken into custody at his home in Chicago.
Documents and records were taken from the plant and from a Chicago travel agency on West Devon Avenue, also owned by the same person, the source said.
Federal Agents Seize Property of Nuclear Critic
October 20, 2009 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
The New York times is reporting that Federal agents have seized six computers, two cameras, two cellphones and hundreds of files from a Los Alamos, N.M., physicist.
In the report, an FBI spokesman in Albuquerque, states that the action on Monday was part of “an ongoing federal investigation” and that he could provide no details.
The physicist, P. Leonardo Mascheroni, said he was told that the seizures were part of a criminal investigation into possible nuclear espionage. Dr. Mascheroni also declared his innocence.
“If I were a real spy,” he said Tuesday in a telephone interview, “I would have left the country a long time ago.”
Dr. Mascheroni was laid off from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1988 and has ever since championed an innovative type of laser fusion, which seeks to harness the energy that powers the sun, the stars and hydrogen bombs.
U.S. Space Researcher Arrested on Spy Charges
October 19, 2009 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
There are not a lot of details yet in the report of a top U.S. space researcher who was arrested in an FBI sting Monday and charged with attempting to spy for Israel.
Stewart Nozette, 52 years old, of Chevy Chase, Md., is a former government physicist who worked for agencies ranging from the Defense Department to the White House.
In exchange for thousands of dollars in cash and an Israeli passport, Mr. Nozette attempted to pass on U.S. top secret nuclear and space secrets to an FBI agent who was posing as an Israeli intelligence operative, according to an FBI affidavit filed with the criminal complaint in the case.
Nozette, 52, was arrested shortly after 4:00 p.m. at the Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington by counterespionage agents from the FBI’s Washington field office after he believed he was meeting with agents from the Mossad to pass information to them in exchange for money, the Justice Department said.
Man On Terror Watchlist Stopped Then Let Go – Las Vegas
October 15, 2009 by Homeland Security NTARC News
Filed under Incident Reports
Fox news is reporting that a Somali man on the U.S. government’s terrorist watchlist was stopped last week by a police officer outside Las Vegas along with four other men, but the officer had no legal authority to detain the man so he was sent on his way, according to the report.
Apparently the story doesn’t end there. According to the Fox News ‘Liveshot’s report. Two days after the vehicle was pulled over outside Las Vegas, two of the passengers appeared at the U.S.-Mexico border crossing in San Ysidro, Calif.
According to court documents, they had been dropped off by a taxicab, and they told a customs official at the border crossing “that they would be flying from Tijuana airport to Mexico City airport, and [they] displayed airline tickets to the Officer.”
In several cases over the past decade, Mexico has been a waypoint for travel between the United States and Somalia.
Meanwhile, the driver of the rented vehicle, is the only one of the five Somali men to be facing charges so far.
He has been charged in a criminal complaint with lying to the FBI.
The officer who stopped the vehicle found $4,000 in the car and eventually learned that the driver’s wife had filed a missing persons report in Minneapolis. The officer contacted the FBI, which interviewed the man on Oct. 8.
Read The Full Article and Comments Here
FBI: Terrorism Fundraising, Recruitment Among Top Threats
October 12, 2009 by Homeland Security NTARC News
Filed under Homeland Security News
Interesting perspective from the FBI’s outgoing special agent in St. Louis who says fund-raising for terrorist activities is one of the top three threats in the eastern Missouri region.
FBI Special Agent John Gillies outlined his top three threats in one of his last interviews before leaving to head the Miami division.
Gillies listed recruitment of individuals to send overseas for training in terrorism as the No. 2 threat, displacing organized crime.
Gangs are Gillie’s choice as the third leading threat. He said the St. Louis FBI office has recently led the nation in disrupting and dismantling gangs.
Gillies was beginning his new assignment in Miami on Monday. Roland Corvington will take over as the special agent in charge of the FBI in St. Louis.
Possible Explosives Discovered Near OKC Railroad Tracks
October 12, 2009 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
UPDATE: NewsOK reports that a man has been arrested in connection with this case and the devices have been confirmed to be hoax devices. Read More
Original Post
NewsOK reports that the Oklahoma City bomb squad, representatives of the BNSF Railway, the FBI and the local unit of the Joint Terrorism Task Force are investigating possible explosive devices discovered near railroad tracks in Oklahoma City.
The Oklahoma City bomb squad Sunday night disposed of at least three possible bombs along railroad tracks at SE 34 Street and Shields Boulevard.
AdvertisementAuthorities were at the scene from about 5 p.m. until after midnight. A resident said he saw a man speeding along the 200 block of SE 34 and throwing out several devices, police Lt. Jeff Cooper said.
The resident investigated and called police after finding what looked like bombs near the railroad tracks, Cooper said.
The bomb squad had neutralized three of the devices by 10:30 p.m
In what is most likely an unrelated incident, there was another report of explosives being discovered in Tecumseh, Oklahoma last week. (approx. 45 miles away)
Explosives were found Wednesday afternoon by Oklahoma road crews working in Tecumseh, police said.
Oklahoma Department of Transportation workers were trimming trees near Highway 177 and Gordon Cooper Drive when a suspicious package was found.
Police examined the package and called the Oklahoma Highway Patrol bomb squad.
Bomb experts detonated it and determined that it did contain explosives.
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