The Command Post
Global War on Terror
« IDF masses forces in Gaza Strip following Qassam attacks | Main | Hackers Attack Al Qaeda Sites »
September 28, 2004
Al-Qaida recruiting local U.S. gang ties
Washington, DC, Sep. 28 (UPI) -- Senior al-Qaida members reportedly are recruiting help from a violent Salvadoran gang with a history of smuggling people into the United States. The Washington Times reports U.S. officials said Adnan El Shukrijumah was spotted in July in Honduras meeting with leaders of El Salvador's notorious Mara Salvatrucha gang, which immigration officials said has smuggled hundreds of Central and South Americans into the United States via the Mexican border...

Yesterday, Tom Ridge said that he's seen no sign of terrorist efforts to cross the U-S-Mexico border and that nothing from intelligence reports has suggested that terrorists have tried to cross the border.

See also Al-Qaida meets with Central American gang, lawmaker says and the other links in Illegal aliens from terrorist states released into U.S.

UPDATE: The Washington Times report is Al Qaeda seeks tie to local gangs. It has more information on the gang and El Shukrijumah, including his picture and this: [he was] born in Saudi Arabia but [is] thought to be a Yemen national... [he is known] to carry passports from Saudi Arabia, Trinidad, Guyana and Canada... authorities said [he] was in Canada last year looking for nuclear material for a so-called "dirty bomb" and [he] reportedly has family members in Guyana... [he is a] former southern Florida resident and pilot thought to have helped plan the September 11 attacks [and he] was among seven suspected al Qaeda operatives identified in May by Attorney General John Ashcroft as being involved in plans to strike new targets in the United States...

[I can't leave a comment apparently because of a TypePad error, so here's the commentary portion of this post]

Ridge also stated that the U.S. had never put the military on the border, which, as I point out here, is false.

The subject of immigration and our porous border came up in Bill O’Reilly’s interview with president Bush, and I comment on that here.

The post Their money or your safety comments on the Bush plan that allows banks to accept Mexican ID cards that the FBI and the DOJ call unsafe.

UPDATE: It also needs to be pointed out that the chatter about terrorists coming from Mexico could be a dodge designed to deflect our attention from the Canadian border, our sea borders, our airports, or our ports.

Posted by Lonewacko at September 28, 2004 07:20 PM | TrackBack
Comments
Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (Click here should you choose to sign out.)

As you post your comment, please mind our simple comment policy: we welcome all perspectives, but require that comments be both civil and respectful. We also ask that you avoid the extensive use of profanity, racist terms (neither of which we consider civil or respectful), and other boorish language.

We reserve the right to delete any comment, and to prohibit you from commenting on this site, if we feel you have broached this policy. As a courtesy, we will first send you an email noting a violation so you understand the boundaries. This will occur only once, however, and should we ban you from our comment forums we expect that ban to be permanent.

We also will frown upon those who suggest that we ban other individuals for voicing unpopular opinions, should those opinions be voiced in a civil and respectful manner. The point of our comment threads is to provide a forum for spirited though civil and respectful discourse … it is not to provide a forum in which everyone will agree with your point of view.

If you can live by these rules, welcome aboard. If not, then we’re sorry it didn’t work out, and thanks for visiting The Command Post.


Remember me?