Security experts in Florida are concerned about a growing number of young people who are being persuaded to show allegiance to the lethal terrorist organisation, al-Qaida.
When a grand jury indicted on Friday seven men who pledged support to al-Qaida, federal officials claimed a victory against homegrown terrorism.
“They were persons who for whatever reason came to view their home country as the enemy,” said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Relying on a confidential informant, authorities trapped the loosely organised group of men ﾖ five U.S. citizens, one legal resident from Haiti and one Haitian illegal immigrant.
The Justice Department is making it clear it is determined to stop people from following the model of al-Qaida, the international terrorist organisation responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C.
“There is cause for concern that this ideology of hatred has the reach and tentacles that it appears to have,” said Jack Riley, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp.
But sceptics doubt that the government’s success at foiling an alleged bombing plot hatched in an inner-city Miami warehouse will matter much in the war against terror. At issue is whether al-Qaida can influence U.S.-born extremists seeking a cause to lend credence to their aims.
“The question is, is this a real incident, or are these a bunch of people playing war games with the enemy?” asked Roger Handberg, a security policy expert and chair of the political science department at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
Federal authorities say the ragtag group of accused terrorists had big goals, including blowing up the FBI building in Miami and the Sears Tower in Chicago.
The suspects ﾖ Patrick Abraham, Burson Augustin, Rotschild Augustine, Narseal Batiste, Naudimar Herrera, Lyglenson Lemorin, Stanley Grant Phanor ﾖ were each indicted on two counts of conspiring to support a foreign terrorist organization, one count of conspiring to destroy buildings by use of explosives, and one count of conspiring to levy war against the government.
If convicted, each man faces up to 70 years in prison.
“Terrorism is a whole different ballgame,” said Guy Lewis, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, who contends the still-fresh memories of the nation’s worst terrorist attack leave no room for error.
“The Justice Department’s mission went from being reactive, allowing a crime to occur and then moving in and making arrests, to being proactive. Prevention is now the number one priority. That’s why you see this type of case,” Lewis said of the Miami arrests. “No way can you allow these guys to acquire weapons and explosives and move towards accomplishing their goals.”
“If you’re a homegrown terrorist you can look at what al-Qaida does and say, `I’m going to do that, too,'” said Donald Hamilton, executive director of the Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. “The key point is that you have a leaderless resistance, which is difficult for law enforcement to break up. The FBI is good at penetrating conspiracies, but if you keep yourself a lone wolf, or if you’re a very small group not taking orders from anyone or calling attention to yourself, that’s very difficult to stop.”
But some question the prosecution of groups with no proven ties to al-Qaida.
The arrests mirror that of a Boca Raton doctor, Rafiq Sabir, whom federal authorities arrested in May 2005, along with a New York City jazz musician, in a sting operation. Sabir had pledged allegiance to al-Qaida in the presence of an undercover informant and pledged to provide jihadists with medical help, authorities said. He remains in prison in New York.
“Expressions of hatred were never the basis for arresting people until the Patriot Act,” said Miami civil liberties attorney and Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Miami chapter.
Gonzales stressed that “there was no immediate threat” in either Miami or Chicago from the seven men, who lacked the bomb-making materials they would have needed to carry out their plot.
Walid Phares, senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy in Washington and a professor at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, said that the accused group, even if it posed a potential threat, appeared to have a very weak understanding of al-Qaida’s ideology. “These guys have no agenda. They’re attracted to the terror success of al-Qaida,” he said.
The Nassau Guardian
