Res Publica 2005

Federal counter-terrorism agents swept down on homes and businesses in Seattle yesterday, conducting searches and charging 13 men with gun, immigration and bank-fraud violations.... None of the men targeted in the raids is accused under terrorism statutes. However, the federal charges unsealed yesterday allege the ringleader of the bank-fraud case told a paid FBI informant that his "whole Muslim crew" was involved in stealing money because "you can't go to war broke."

According to the complaint, the purported ringleader, a drug felon named Karim Abdullah Assalaam, told an acquaintance that the money obtained through the fraud "goes to help our Muslim brothers and sisters. ... It goes to the cause, not like it goes to me and you."

However, the complaint alleges that his half-brother, Attawwaab Muhammad Fard, who is also charged, used some of the money to buy a used Lexus. "There was a lot of jihad talk," said one highly placed federal law-enforcement official familiar with the case. "But most of the money went into their pockets."...

Several gun-related cases also sprang from the investigation. Assalaam and four other men were charged as felons possessing firearms, including several handguns, two shotguns and an AK-47 assault rifle.

In one instance, federal agents had reported "unusual activity" at a shooting range in Renton involving one of the men apparently teaching a group of individuals how to shoot.

In a related case in King County Superior Court, prosecutors in October filed assault and extortion charges against some individuals associated with an Islamic religious school run out of a South Seattle barbershop. The school was "training children ... in Anti American rhetoric," and "how to shoot and fight the Americans," according to court documents.

The owner of a restaurant downstairs from the Crescent Cuts barbershop on Rainier Avenue South told police that he had been asked to participate in the bank-fraud scheme. When he refused, he said, he was assaulted by a group of individuals and beaten with a meat tenderizer.

He described the school in court documents as "an anti-American training ground for Muslims."

# posted by Knitting a Conundrum @ 1:05 PM