Convicted terrorists living next door, deadly terror plot devised inside California prison

Do you think convicted terrorists go to Gitmo, spend the rest of their life in prisons or get deported? Think again. Many convicted terrorists have already been released from prison and may be living next door to you. To make matters worse, while in prison, they recruit masses of new jihadists. According to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 36 Americans who have traveled to terror training camps in Yemen under false pretense of studying Arabic, converted to Islam in prison. This is a constantly growing problem, since the number of convicted terrorists in American prisons is on the rise.

On January 26, 2010 Department of Justice posted a Fact Sheet, stating that today, there are more than 300 international or domestic terrorists incarcerated in U.S. federal prison facilities. In 2009, there were more defendants charged with terrorism violations in federal court than in any year since 9/11.

Department of Justice - Fact Sheet

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposes to build prisons in Mexico

On January 25, 2010, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger voiced his proposal of outsourcing prisons to Mexico, claiming that would save money spent by the state of California on incarcerating illegal immigrants. Schwarzenegger’s proposal comes only 2 weeks after a federal judicial panel has accepted his administration’s latest plan for reducing the state prison population by about 40,000 inmates to improve medical and mental health care.

Governor’s proposal calls for an $880 million infusion from the federal government to pay Mexico to build and run private prisons and house illegal immigrant prisoners. "We pay them to build a prison down in Mexico and then we have those undocumented immigrants be down there in the prison," Schwarzenegger said. This idea had not been vetted, nor was it explained whether the Governor would like to send all illegal immigrant prisoners to Mexico or just those who have Mexican citizenship.

Schwarzenegger’s plan did not address numerous issues that would arise from dispatching inmates to the private facilities on foreign soil – namely, the fact that the U.S. would not be able to control the impact of Mexico’s rampant corruption, drug trafficking and early release in exchange for pay-offs within any such private prisons. But there is an even bigger problem that is facing American legal system – namely, prison radicalization. Relinquishing control of the prison population to private facilities on foreign soil would further exacerbate this already prevalent problem our authorities are facing.

September 11, 2005 plot designed in California prison

One of the homegrown terrorist groups planned a massacre on the fourth anniversary of the September 11th attacks (September 11, 2005). Co-conspirators James, Patterson, Washington and Samana, were determined to attack such targets as Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Army Recruiting centers, Israeli consulate, a Century City synagogue and a military base in Manhattan Beach, with the intent to “kill everyone” present at the target locations. The plot was set to be enacted from behind the bars of the New Folsom Prison in California. It was designed and directed by the group’s leader, Kevin Lamar James and his cellmate, Peter Martinez, a former Oakland street gang member.

The FBI described the plot as the most operationally advanced since Sept. 11. James founded Jam'iyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh (Arabic for "Assembly of Authentic Islam", known as JIS), preaching that the group’s members have the duty "to target for violent attack any enemies of Islam or ‘infidels,' including the United States government and Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of Israel."

JIS terror recruits swore to obey James and to keep complete secrecy as to the group’s existence. Upon release from prison, they promised to get directives from him at least every three months, recruit Muslims to JIS, attack U.S. government officials and supporters of Israel. James distributed a handwritten document called the "JIS Protocol" throughout California prisons, advocating the murder of "infidels". A spokesman for the California prison system said "anything is possible given the freedoms religious groups are guaranteed in prison."

James had developed a following of several dozen inmates, including Levar Haney Washington, who would be paroled in a matter of weeks. Washington entered the prison system as a convicted thief and left as a militant jihadist terrorist. James directed Washington to recruit five people without felony records, acquire firearms and explosives. Upon his release, Washington immediately began recruiting future terrorists at his mosque, Jamat-E-Masijidul Islam in the Los Angeles area. "He regarded Osama bin Laden very highly," reported one person whom Washington attempted to recruit.

Two men that joined this terrorist cell were a Pakistani greencard holder Hammad Riaz Samana (Santa Monica College student) and LAX duty-free shop employee, Gregory Vernon Patterson. The terrorist trio conducted surveillance of American government targets (military recruitment stations and bases), Israeli targets (consulate in L.A. and El-Al airlines), Los Angeles Airport (where Patterson worked) and Jewish targets (including an Orthodox synagogue, Young Israel of Century City). They acquired an arsenal of weapons, financed through 11 robberies of gas stations in a 5-week time period and planned to engage in attacks during national holidays "to maximize the number of casualties."

This terrorist cell was discovered accidentally, when Patterson dropped a cell phone during one of the gas station robberies. Information stored on the phone led to an investigation by the FBI and a total of 25 agencies, resulting in subsequent arrests and convictions. If it wasn’t for the dropped cell phone, the terrorist group would have gone unnoticed and their attacks had the potential of inflicting enormous losses. The question that begs to be asked is how an inmate at the California’s prison was able to direct terrorist activities without being detected. Much like Janet Napolitano exclaiming that “the system worked” in light of the Christmas Day attack, former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales praised "the work of able investigators at all levels of government". This exemplifies the tendency of law enforcement to pat themselves on the back in spite of horrendous intelligence failures.

James was sentenced to 16 years in prison on March 6, 2009 and is set to be released in 2020. His accomplice, Gregory Patterson, is scheduled for a release in 2016 (only 6 years from now).

FBI press release regarding September 11, 2005 Los Angeles terror plot

Terrorists released from prisons

Most Americans are unaware of the fact that convicted terrorists are being released from prisons and might be living next door. Here are some examples:

• Donald Thomas Surratt was released from prison on February 14, 2006.
• Muhammed Aatique was released from prison on March 31, 2006.
• Faysal Galab was released from prison on October 17, 2008.
• James Elshafay was released from prison on January 28, 2009.
• Agron Abdullahu was released from prison on March 24, 2009.
• Shafal Mosed was released from prison on September 1, 2009.
• Yasein A. Taher is in the witness protection program, he was released in 2009.
• Yahya A. Goba is in the witness protection program and will be released in 2010.
• Sahim Alwan is in the witness protection program and will be released in 2010.
• Mukhtar al-Bakri is scheduled to be released from prison in 2011.
• Marwan Othman El-Hindi is scheduled to be released from prison on August 3, 2016.
• Syed Haris Ahmed is scheduled to be released from prison on July 19, 2017.
• Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Hamdi is scheduled to be released from prison on September 6, 2017.
• Yassin Muhiddin Aref is scheduled to be released from prison on September 6, 2018.
• Ehsanul Islam Sadequee is scheduled to be released from prison on February 9, 2021.

The Fort Dix Five

In April of 2009, terrorists convicted of plotting an attack on Fort Dix soldiers in Burlington County, N.J. received their sentences. The Fort Dix five include brothers Eljvir, Dritan and Shain Duka, ethnic Albanians who worked at a family roofing business (all three of them are illegal aliens); Mohamad Shnewer, a 24-year-old cab driver from Jordan (naturalized U.S. citizen), and Serdar Tatar, a 25 year old native of Turkey (Lawful Permanent Resident), who was an assistant manager at a 7-Eleven store. Tatar had a map of the military base, since his father’s pizza shop made deliveries to the Fort Dix.

The group was planning a jihadist holy war and intended to storm the military base with automatic weapons. The Fort Dix probe began in January 2006 when police were provided with a videotape that showed the men firing rifles and shouting Islamic battle cries. FBI agents then spent 15 months shadowing the suspects, recording their conversations and examining their computers. The evidence indicated that the men gathered weekly at a Palmyra mosque, watching and discussing Al Qaeda videos that depicted deadly attacks against U.S. forces. Eljvir Duka declared his intent of training a “sniper" and tried to determine how far he would have to stand from the White House to shoot the President.

Serdar Tatar, who provided a map of Fort Dix for the planned terrorist attack, was sentenced to 33 years in prison. Mohamad Shnewer was sentenced to life in prison plus an additional 30-year sentence. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Hammer said Shnewer was at the center of the terror plot and admired Osama bin Laden. Jurors found the Fort Dix terrorists to be guilty of conspiracy, but acquitted them of attempted murder. Also arrested with them in May 2007 was a sixth suspect, Agron Abdullahu, who provided weapons to the Fort Dix Five, but wasn't part of the terror conspiracy. He pleaded guilty to weapons charges and was sentenced to 20 months in prison.

The Fort Dix Five news article

Terrorists created in American prisons

The issue of American prisons serving as recruiting grounds for terrorist acts was highlighted by the 2002 arrest of Jose Padilla, an American Muslim convert and gang member who reportedly planned a "dirty bomb" attack after being released from jail. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Intelligence Committee that "prisons continue to be fertile ground for extremists who exploit both a prisoner's conversion to Islam while still in prison, as well as their socioeconomic status and placement in the community upon their release."

Gang intelligence officers in California and Florida continue to uncover potential terrorist plots inside prisons. "Al Qaeda recruits in prisons. They really do," said Edward Caden, a retired prison administrator in California, commenting to ABC News on the New Folsom prison plot. "Prisons are a prime, prime target for terrorist recruiting. It is a ripe population."

ABC News article on the New Folsom, California prison plot

An investigation by the Justice Department Office of Inspector General confirms that Al Qaeda is using American prisons "to radicalize and recruit inmates.” Investigators said that safeguards were so loose in the 105 federal prisons that inmate chapels "remain vulnerable to infiltration by religious extremists."

Report warns of infiltration by Al Qaeda in U.S. prisons

Burn after reading

Justice Department’s investigation also revealed that prison officials were not reading all mail to and from convicted terrorists and other high-risk inmates, a security gap that could have deadly consequences. "The threat remains that terrorist and other high-risk inmates can use mail and verbal communications to conduct terrorist or criminal activities while incarcerated," concluded the Inspector General's report.

The mail investigation was spurred, in part, after it was uncovered that three convicted terrorists at a federal maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado, have written an estimated 90 letters between 2002 and 2004 to Islamic extremists. Some of the recipients had direct ties to the March 11, 2004, attacks on commuter trains in Madrid, which killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,700. Some of the letters sent by convicted terrorists from American prisons later surfaced in the hands of a terror suspect who used them to recruit suicide operatives.

The maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado houses about 400 of the most dangerous and violent inmates in the federal system, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, convicted Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, convicted spy Robert Hanssen, and leaders of violent street gangs. The Bureau of Prisons staff did not meet its requirements of reading 100 percent of high-risk inmate mail, including translating documents written in foreign languages. It was determined that only about 1.8 percent of the mail was read during the time period analyzed by the Inspector General.

Justice Dept.: Terrorists' Mail Going Unread by Federal Prison Officials

In a briefing for Congressional officials, the Inspector General's office said it found evidence that volunteers leading prayer services in prison had ties to people on terrorist watch lists and associations with Al Qaeda. Federal prison officials "were putting out the welcome mat to any group that wanted to infiltrate the prisons," Senator Charles E. Schumer said. "There was virtually no vetting of who would become a chaplain or a volunteer, and there was virtually no supervision. It was an invitation to danger."

Convicted terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman (also known as the Blind Sheik) was also able to continue transmitting instructions to jihadist militants in the Middle East, through his attorney Lynne Stewart. She was disbarred and sentenced to two years and four months in prison in 2005 for smuggling messages to her jailed terrorist client. Prosecutors, who wanted Stewart jailed for 30 years, called the light sentence "a slap on the wrist" for someone convicted "of a crime of terrorism." A federal court of appeals upheld her conviction in November 2009, adding that she deserves more than the 28 months she got because she may have lied at her trial.

New York Daily News article about Lynne Stewart's conviction

New York terror plot spotlights prison radicalization

Much like the Los Angeles terror plot of September 11, 2005, another attack was planned behind the bars by four convicts (an immigrant from Haiti and three Americans). James "Abdul Rahman" Cromitie, David "Daoud" Williams, Onta "Hamza" Williams and Laguerre "Amin" Payen were arrested in May of 2009 for their plan to use weapons of mass destruction, bomb synagogues and to shoot down an aircraft with a surface-to-air guided Stinger missile.

According to the Associated Press, the men have met and became involved with jihadist ideology while incarcerated. They followed a pattern of prison conversion, followed by release and the pursuit of terrorist intentions. "This shows the real risks we face from homegrown terror and jailhouse converts, and the need for constant vigilance," said Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.).

FBI arrest four in a plot to bomb Bronx synagogue

New York Terror Plot Spotlights Radical Islam in Prisons

Fears that Islamic prison groups could foster terrorism have grown since the arrest in 2002 of Jose Padilla, a convict who converted to Islam in prison and reportedly attended an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan after his release. Similar concerns were raised after a Muslim chaplain for New York's state prison system, Imam Warith Deen Umar, was dismissed for allegedly using his position to promote Islamic radicalism. Umar, who was essentially in charge of hiring Muslim chaplains for New York's state prisons, told The Wall Street Journal that the 9/11 hijackers should be honored as martyrs. Shoe-bomber Richard Reid, convicted in a failed attack aboard an American Airlines flight in 2001, reportedly converted to Islam in prison.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee report states that as many as three dozen Americans who converted to Islam in prison have traveled to Yemen, possibly to train with Al Qaeda. "Al Qaeda's recruitment tactics also have changed," Chairman John Kerry wrote in an introduction to the report. "The group seeks to recruit American citizens to carry out terrorist attacks in the United States."
In addition to its finding that Al Qaeda was trying actively to attract "nontraditional followers" who could penetrate U.S. security, the report determines that Al Qaeda has remained a viable threat, stating, "Despite setbacks, Al Qaeda is not on the run."