Target: America The Boston Cluster and Extended Connections Case Study on Homegrown Radicalization July 2010 Madeleine Gruen NEFA Senior Analyst mgruen@nefafoundation.org
Overview In October 2009, Tarek Mehanna was arrested in his suburban Boston home by the FBI s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). Mehanna, along with Ahmad Abou-Samra, who was also from the Boston area and now resides in Syria, were accused of making false statements to the FBI in the course of its investigation into Daniel Maldonado, an American who trained with Shabaab al-mujahideen in Somalia. On June 18, 2010, Mehanna and Abou-Samra were additionally charged with one count of providing material support to terrorism. Mehanna, Abou-Samra, Maldonado, Confidential Informants (CIs), and others unnamed, were part of a small decentralized network that intended to play an active role in the Al-Qaida (AQ) movement by circulating AQ propaganda to other Americans, by pursuing training in overseas camps operated by designated terrorist groups, and by providing material support to the AQ movement. Members of the cluster contemplated attacking a Boston shopping center with automatic weapons.
Initial Charges Mehanna was interviewed by JTTF agents on December 16, 2006. The JTTF agents asked Mehanna about a trip he and Abou-Samra had taken to Yemen in 2004. The agents asked Mehanna if he had knowledge of Daniel Maldonado s location. Mehanna provided false information to the JTTF agents, saying that he believed Maldonado was in Egypt working on a web site. The FBI affidavit asserts that in fact Mehanna had received three phone calls from Maldonado on December 12, 2006, in which Maldonado discussed his training in Somalia and urged Mehanna to join him. On December 13, Mehanna discussed Maldonado s training in Somalia with a cooperating witness. In a recorded conversation with a cooperating witness that took place after the December 16 th interview with the FBI, Mehanna expressed concern over the fact that he had lied to agents about Maldonado s location and activities.
Key Points This case provides insight into how U.S. citizens who sympathize with terrorists make connections with like-minded people on the Internet, and through school and community activities. They use their networks to make connections with those who can facilitate their travel overseas for terrorist training or from whom they can procure materials, such as weapons. Their relationships can further strengthen their commitment to terrorist ideology. Many westerners who are sympathetic to Sunni extremist terrorism identify themselves as followers of Ahl as-sunnah wal-jama ah (ASWJ). ASWJ is a worldwide Salafi movement that aims to practice Islam according to the methods of the prophet Mohammed and his followers. Some who refer to themselves as ASWJ support violent jihad. Some ASWJ adherents believe that those who do not practice the faith according to the strictest interpretation are apostate. This case provides valuable insight into how American citizens arrange to access terrorist training camps overseas. Making it into a camp requires pre-planning and the right connections to those who can make introductions on behalf of U.S. nationals to the camp leaders. Some theaters of conflict may be more easily accessed by Americans than others.
Key Points Despite not being directly connected to AQ, the members of the cluster described in this report felt they had a role in the jihad movement. By translating or distributing AQ statements and circulating DVDs that depicted the suffering of Muslims, they felt they were playing an active role in supporting jihad overseas. Mehanna translated 39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad from Arabic to English. The document outlines ways in which sympathizers can support jihad, including circulating documents or praising the heroics of fighters. The document is similar to Anwar al Awlaki s 44 Ways to Support Jihad. Awlaki is an American-born, Al-Qaida-affiliated lecturer who resides in Yemen. He has become the leading radicalizing agent and motivator for American Muslims to become operational.
Tarek Mehanna and unidentified individuals smiling at Ground Zero in New York City. This photo was recovered from Mehanna s computer.
Background Profiles: Tarek Mehanna Mehanna in his high school yearbook Born in U.S. in 1982. Family is originally from Egypt. Lived in Sudbury, Massachusetts, a town west of Boston. Has a Pharm.D. degree (Doctor of Pharmacy) from Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, where his father is a professor of Medicinal Chemistry. Very active on social networks and used forums to express political and religious positions. Outspoken defender of Aafia Siddiqui, an MIT and Brandeis graduate who is accused of being a member of AQ and who has been convicted of attempting to murder U.S. soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan.
Background Profiles: Tarek Mehanna Mehanna ran the blog Iskandrani. He posted there and on various Islamicinterest chat forums, using the name Abu Sabaya. Mehanna refused to stand up for a federal court judge at his hearing. He stood only after his father urged him to do so. He is currently incarcerated in the Plymouth County Correctional Facility. Mehanna s family home in Sudbury, MA [source: Boston Globe]
Background Profiles: Ahmad Abou-Samra Born in 1981 and raised in Stoughton, MA, a suburb south of Boston. Was an honors student at a local Catholic high school, but transferred to Stoughton High for his senior year in 1999. Son of an endocrinologist who emigrated from Syria and worked at Massachusetts General Hospital for 21 years. His father was the president of the Islamic Center of New England and was also Vice President of the Boston chapter of the Muslim American Society (MAS). MAS is a group that was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. Ahmad Abou-Samra Abou-Samra s family moved from Massachusetts to Michigan, where his father is a professor at Wayne State University School of Medicine.
Background Profiles: Daniel Maldonado Maldonado is currently serving a tenyear sentence for training with Al- Qaida. He is the first American accused of training with AQ in Somalia. He was born in Massachusetts in 1978. His parents moved to Massachusetts from Puerto Rico. Maldonado grew up in a mostly white rural area of New Hampshire and was one of few Hispanic students. He favored a hip-hop style and wore his hair in dreadlocks. He met his wife, Tamekia Cunningham, while they were in high school; both dropped out of school. Daniel Maldonado [source: AP]
Background Profiles: Daniel Maldonado Maldonado and Cunningham married a year and a half after the birth of their first child. Soon after, Maldonado became interested in Islam and converted at the Selimiye Mosque in Methuen, MA. His wife, who had been raised as a Seventh-Day Adventist, converted at the same time Maldonado did. Other worshipers at the Selimiye Mosque stated Maldonado transformed physically as his religious intensity increased. He initially came to the mosque wearing jeans, his hair in dreadlocks, and his tattoos exposed. Eventually, he began wearing Islamic garb. In his autobiographical statement, Maldonado described his wife as being extremely devout, even more so than he. Cunningham s mother, however, contends that her daughter was simply following her husband and that she was never as serious about religion. Cunningham wore a covering in public that only revealed her eyes. She had their daughter begin to wear a head scarf when she was one year old.
Background Profiles: Daniel Maldonado/Safaraz Jamal The couple moved frequently around New Hampshire and Massachusetts as Maldonado tried to find work. They moved to Chicago, where Maldonado is reported to have worked in a halal butcher shop. After injuring his finger, the couple returned to New Hampshire for two years before moving to Houston in 2005. In Houston, Maldonado worked for Sarfaraz Jamal, who ran the Islamic Network site. Jamal was 24 years old when Maldonado began working for him. Jamal claimed to The Houston Chronicle that he had hired Maldonado to do small jobs around the office, such as answering email. Jamal is originally from Worthington, Ohio. He has since moved to Jordan with his family to study Islam. While living in his parents home in Ohio, Jamal started and operated ClearGuidance.com, a site regularly visited and utilized by conspirators in the Toronto 18 network. These conspirators have been convicted of plotting attacks on the Toronto Stock Exchange, a CSIS building, and a military base.
Screenshot from ClearGuidance.com from 2002. Islamic Network features a similar format.
Background Profiles: Daniel Maldonado Omar Hammami in high school, left, and in a more recent photo. Jamal moved to Houston after meeting the daughter of an almahgrib.com translator online. Maldonado frequently posted to almahagrib.com using the name Daniel Aljubhaifi. Approximately four months after moving to Houston, Maldonado and his family moved to Egypt, where he continued to work for Islamic Network. According to his blog, http://danielaljughaifi.wordpress.com/, Maldonado found living in Egypt more expensive and less idyllic than he had imagined. He and his family moved to Somalia in November 2006 so he could fight for what he believed to be a legitimate Islamic government. Maldonado traveled from Egypt to Somalia with another American, Omar Hammami. Hammami was born in Alabama and is now known as Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki. He is still in Somalia as a member of al-shabaab, and has been featured in Shabaab videos as a draw for Western recruits.
Background Profiles: Daniel Maldonado Maldonado called Mehanna from Somalia to urge him, and others, to come to Somalia to fight with Shabaab al-mujahideen. In one phone conversation between Maldonado and Mehanna, Maldonado used code language to tell Mehanna what he was doing in Somalia. He told Mehanna that he was in culinary school making peanut butter and jelly. Peanut butter and jelly was part of a code language Mehanna and Maldonado used when referring to jihad on the telephone or when communicating on the Internet. In the phone conversation, Maldonado talked about his wife interviewing women to become his second wife. Maldonado told Mehanna how easy it was for an American to travel to Somalia and become established with al-shabaab as compared to how difficult it was for an American to travel to any other place to receive training. Soon after his phone conversations with Mehanna, Maldonado fled to Kenya to escape Ethiopian military forces, which had intervened in Somalia. He was arrested by the Kenyan military in January 2007. His wife died of malaria as she traveled with their children from Somalia to Kenya.
Connections Between Conspirators & Support of Jihad After he was captured by Kenyan authorities, Maldonado provided evidence to the FBI against his former friends Tarek Mehanna and Ahmad Abou-Samra. Maldonado told U.S. authorities he had met Abou-Samra in 2002 at the Islamic Center of New England, which was led by Abou-Samra s father. Maldonado met Mehanna through Abou-Samra. They met for the first time in Mehanna s home where they watched a jihadi video together. The video showed people being killed and depicted the victories of mujahideen. The three, and a CI, regularly discussed the glory of dying for the sake of Allah. In subsequent conversations, they discussed with more specificity fighting in battle, churning over the possibilities of fighting in Iraq or in Chechnya. Abou-Samra and Maldonado discussed the possibility of going to Afghanistan, but felt that gaining entry into Afghanistan through Pakistan after September 11, 2001 would be impossible. Mehanna translated documents for At-Tibyan Publications web site, which was popular with supporters of jihad.
Plans for a Terror Attack in the U.S. Although Abou-Samra and Mehanna never developed a detailed plan to commit a terrorist act in the United States, they did discuss several ideas, including: Obtaining automatic weapons and shooting people at random at a shopping mall. This idea was inspired by the D.C.-area snipers and their success in terrorizing the public. The indictment does not name a specific shopping center. They discussed the type of weapons they would need to conduct a mall attack, the logistics of how the attack would be executed, and the potential response from emergency responders. Abou-Samra justified attacks on civilians because they pay taxes in support of the government. They decided to abandon the idea of an attack on a shopping mall after sending a cooperating witness to New Hampshire to speak to Daniel Maldonado about acquiring automatic weapons. Maldonado said that he would only be able to get handguns. Mehanna and Abou-Samra determined that the attack would not be successful if they could only use handguns.
Travel Mehanna, Abou-Samra, and a CI sought assistance from an unnamed individual who lived in California to attend a training camp in Yemen. Abou-Samra met the California contact at an Islamic conference, who is described in the complaint as a white convert to Islam who worked at an Islamic school. The contact in California had received religious instruction in Yemen and had attended an Al-Qaida training camp there. Abou-Samra traveled to California in October 2003 to meet with the contact and he maintained telephone contact with him through February 1, 2004, according to the FBI investigation. The California contact provided the name of an individual in Yemen who could get the CI, Abou-Samra, and Mehanna into the training camp. On February 1, 2004, Mehanna, Abou-Samra, and the CI traveled from Boston to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with a stopover in London. Between the three of them, they had $13,000 in cash. Upon arrival in the UAE, the three checked their email. The CI received messages from his family begging him to return to the U.S., which he did. Abou-Samra and Mehanna continued the trip to Yemen without the CI.
Travel, Continued Mehanna and Abou-Samra told customs officials they were traveling to Yemen to visit religious schools. They arrived in Yemen on February 4, 2004 and returned to the UAE from Yemen on February 11 th. In a conversation with the CI after his return to the U.S., Mehanna reported that they had not been able to locate anyone who could get them into a training camp. Abou-Samra continued on to Jordan on February 12; from there, he entered Iraq. According to the criminal complaint, it is believed that he spent approximately 15 days in Iraq before returning to Jordan. He stayed in Jordan until April 2004, and then went to Syria. He returned to Boston from Syria in August 2004. Over the next few years, Abou-Samra returned to Syria several times. Customs officials did not note the stamp in his passport for Iraq until September 2006. When questioned by Customs, Abou-Samra admitted he had been in Iraq in 2004. Abou-Samra was questioned by JTTF agents in December 2006 and made false statements about the purpose of his visit to Yemen.
Travel, Continued Two weeks after his last interview with the JTTF, Abou-Samra left the U.S. and returned to Syria. He was scheduled to return on January 7, 2007, but to date, has not returned to the U.S. Abou-Samra told a cooperating witness that he traveled to Pakistan in late 2002 or early 2003 to receive training. He met an individual named Abdulmajid who attempted to help him enter a training camp. Abdulmajid made contact with terrorist groups on Abou-Samra s behalf, including Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). According to Abou-Samra s statement to the cooperating witness, LeT would not accept him into the camp because of his lack of experience and because he was Arab and not Pakistani. LeT is alleged to have trained many Western Muslims for jihad, including some who were not of Pakistani descent, including Guadeloupian Willie Brigitte, Australian David Hicks, and shoe-bomber Richard Reid.
Possible Sources of Radicalization While the individuals involved in this cluster seemed to indoctrinate each other through discussions about jihad, the viewing of videos, and involvement with other radicalized individuals on the internet, there were also other possible sources for radicalization. Muhammad Masood served as the imam at the Islamic Center of New England, in Sharon, while Mehanna and Abou-Samra were attending. Masood, who was hired by Abou-Samra s father while he served as director of the Islamic Center, was originally from Pakistan and is the brother of one of the leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. In 2003, Abou-Samra had attempted to gain entry into an LeT training camp. Masood was convicted of immigration fraud in 2008. His case was investigated by agents assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Possible Sources of Radicalization, Cont. Masood came to the U.S. in 1987 on a student visa to study economics. He left the economics program at Boston University in 1991, but remained in the U.S. rather than returning to Pakistan. Masood became the imam at the Islamic Center of New England in 1998, while Abou-Samra and Mehanna were still in high school. Masood was likely an influential figure in Abou-Samra s and Mehanna s spiritual development. Imam Muhammad Masood (in the brown coat) [source: Associated Press]
Efforts to Radicalize Others Mehanna was frustrated that there were few Muslims in the Boston area who shared his interpretation of Islam. He actively tried to indoctrinate others by befriending them, lending them DVDs that depicted jihad, and he would also slip stuff in here and there during conversations. Mehanna and Abou-Samra felt the best recruiting tools were videos that depicted the suffering of fellow Muslims. Mehanna translated and distributed Al-Qaida documents on the internet with the hope that the translations would inspire English-speaking Muslims to take action. Mehanna translated documents, including 39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad, which encouraged the distribution of terrorist propaganda as a way of supporting jihad.
Tarek Mehanna Support Committee Since Mehanna s incarceration, The Tarek Mehanna Support Committee has been vocal in its defense of Mehanna. The group contends that Mehanna is innocent of terrorism charges and that he is simply a victim of FBI harassment and is being punished for refusing to act as an FBI informant to spy on his own community. Mehanna s father, Ahmed, told reporters that the arrest was a high-tech lynching. The Committee is utilizing social media networks to raise awareness of Mehanna s case.
The Free Tarek Mehanna Facebook page has close to 4,500 members as of June 2010. One of the administrators of the page is Tarek s brother, Tamer Mehanna.
Screen shot from the Free Terek Mehanna channel on YouTube.
Examples of fliers for events and issue awareness produced and promoted by the Tarek Mehanna Support Committee as part of its pressure campaign.
References Legal documents and other exhibits associated with Mehanna s case can be found at http://www.nefafoundation.org/documents-legal-a_m.html#mehanna The criminal complaint against Mehanna and Abousamra can be found at http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/us_v_mehanna_fbiaffidavit.pdf Abby Goodnough and Liz Robbins, Mass. Man Arrested in Terrorism Case, The New York Times, October 21, 2009. For more on Muslim American Society s connection to the Muslim Brotherhood see A Rare Look as Secretive Brotherhood in America, The Chicago Tribune, September 19, 2004. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/chi- 0409190261sep19,0,3008717.story?page=1 Anwar al-awlaki s 44 Ways to Support Jihad can be found at http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/featureddocs/nefaawlaki44way ssupportjihad.pdf Mark Clayton, Tarek Mehanna s Father Denies Terrorism Charges Against His Son, The Christian Science Monitor, October 23, 2009.
References Rachel Graves, Alleged Terrorist s Wife Paid Ultimate Price for Loyalty, Houston Chronicle, March 1, 2007. Charles Radin, From N.H. to Somalia: Recalling a Suspect s Zeal, Boston Globe, February 17, 2007. Robert Crowe, Job Lured Alleged Al Qaeda Trainee to Houston, Houston Chronicle, March 4, 2007. http://danielaljughaifi.wordpress.com/ http://www.freetarek.com http://iskandrani.wordpress.com/ Jonathan Saltzman, 2 Man Face New Terrorism Charges, Boston Globe, June 18, 2010. Daniel Maldonado s autobiographical statement about his capture and imprisonment in Kenya can be read at http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/featureddocs/myimprisonmenti nkenyaandamerica.pdf