Police: NYC imam tipped off terror suspect-story update

[haldir]

NEW YORK, Sept. 21 (UPI) -- A New York City Muslim imam, who acted as a police informant, betrayed his handlers by tipping off a terrorism suspect, authorities say.
Ahmad Wais Afzali, of the New York borough of Queens, was among three men arrested during the weekend in connection with an alleged bombing plot. In court records released Sunday, authorities allege Afzali, 37, tipped off suspected plotter Najibullah Zazi that federal agents were looking to arrest him and then lied to police about what he had done, The New York Times reported Monday.
The documents show that Zazi, 24, of Denver, abruptly left New York and returned to Colorado after having wiretapped phone conversations with the imam, which the FBI alleges contained talk of how police were interested in Zazi, mentions of events in Afghanistan and Pakistan and refers to "evidence," the newspaper said.
Federal authorities say that Zazi attended an al-Qaida terrorism training camp in Pakistan and was arrested in possession of notes detailing how to make explosive devices. Court documents indicate that FBI agents moved hurriedly to conduct raids at New York apartments last week based on information gleaned from Zazi's conversations with Afzali, the newspaper said.

[rambone]

I, for one, am shocked.

[haldir]

Najibullah Zazi, 24, and his father, Mohammed Zazi were expected in court Monday following their arrest at their home in Aurora Saturday night. The younger Zazi admitted to receiving training from al-Qaida. He faces charges related to making a false statement to the government.

Zazi has publicly denied being involved in a terror plot.

Authorities say that the 24-year-old Zazi admitted to FBI agents that he received instructions from al-Qaida operatives on subjects such as weapons and explosives.

Authorities also arrested Zazi's father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, and 37-year-old associate, Ahmad Wais Afzali, of New York City. Both also will be in court Monday on charges of making a false statement.

Federal agents have been investigating a possible terrorist plot that targets large venues in the New York area such as Grand Central Station, Giants Stadium, and Fashion Week. FOX News reported Monday morning that investigators aren't sure if the arrests stopped the plot.

The Feds showed up at the family apartment near Smoky Hill Road and E-470 in Aurora with a dozen vehicles that were loaded with agents just before 10:00 p.m. Saturday night. They quickly went to the apartment and first took Zazi's father out in handcuffs. A few minutes later Najibullah was led out in cuffs as well.

Zazi has been watched by the Feds for several months, since he visited his wife in Pakistan, who lives in an area near al-Qaeda training facilities. There have been reports that Zazi had undergone training by the terrorist group.

When he traveled to New York just before 9/11, agents tracked his movements during that trip. His rental car was confiscated by agents and they say they found a lap-top with bomb making instructions on several jpegs, the nine pages were hand written, which is why the suspect was asked to provide a handwriting sample to Feds during the three days they questioned him.

While his lawyer allowed him to talk with agents, had he declined, which is his right, they would not have been able to charge him with giving false statements in matters involving international and domestic terrorism.

"He appears to have contradicted statements he made that were intercepted thru wire taps," said attorney Dan Recht. "Had he not spoken, they would have not been able to hit him with the charge he and his father and a man he visited in Queens, while in New York."

Now, all three face charges that could land them in jail for up to eight years. They will learn what they are being charged with Monday in Federal Court.

[haldir]

The Queens imam arrested in the Denver terrorism probe is an FBI informant the feds say became a double agent - tipping suspects that they were in the government's crosshairs.

Ahmad Afzali, 37, insisted he's been loyally helping the government root out extremists since 9/11.

His lawyer, Ron Kuby, calls him a fall guy.

"I think the FBI is angry that they blew this case, and they want to blame poor Imam Afzali for blowing the investigation," Kuby said.

Afzali told the News just hours before he was arrested Saturday night for lying to the feds that "someone is trying to set me up."

His parents immigrated to Fresh Meadows from Afghanistan when he was 7. They owned pizzerias and were wealthy enough to give their son every new gadget, schoolmates said.

FBI says imam Ahmad Afzali worked both sides and tipped off suspects

[Blue Tile Spook]

bin Laden learned his lesson of not using telephones for communications so I wonder why Al Queda operatives, or alleged operatives, still use them?

[haldir]

Spencer: Jihad in New York and Colorado


In Human Events today I discuss the unfolding jihad plot in New York and Denver:

Details are still emerging, but it seems clear at this point that the extensive jihad terror plot that has been exposed in New York City and Denver this week involved plans to target baseball and football stadiums and New York's Fashion Week with explosives carried in knapsacks to the detonation point and then detonated remotely -- as in Madrid on March 11, 2004, when jihadist bombings killed 191 people and wounded 1,800.
Central to the plot is a young man named Najibullah Zazi, who was initially cooperative with Federal agents until it began to emerge that he had ties to Al-Qaeda. Zazi is in even more hot water after the discovery of bomb-making instructions in his own handwriting.
Zazi offered the improbable explanation that he accidentally downloaded the bomb-making material while downloading what news reports primly referred to as a "religious text." In keeping with prevailing politically correct sensibilities, no report specified what kind of "religious text" might come with downloadable bomb-making instructions, or said anything about which religion was involved. Reporters were mum about what the adherents of this unnamed religion might be doing to encourage bomb-making, or how they might find justification for such actions in the texts and teachings of that religion.
Just in case anyone on the planet still might not know which religion could be involved in such things, a clue came with the arrest of Ahmad Afzali, an imam who, according to the New York Daily News, "became religious in high school, and preached at the Masjid Hazrat Abu Bakr Islamic Center, New York's largest Afghan mosque, until 2007, when he opened a funeral business." (Yes, a funeral business.) Before this case broke, the FBI apparently consulted Afzali more than once. Last week he said, "They come for information, and I always help. I have helped them many times."
However, Afzali was apparently playing a double game. He called Zazi on September 11, after learning that the young man and his friends were suspected of terrorist activity. "They asked me about you guys," Afzali told Zazi. "They came to ask me about your characters." Afzali disclaimed any knowledge of whatever Zazi was doing: "I'm not sure what happened. And I don't want to know." Nonetheless, he protected his friend in front of the Feds: "I told them that 'they are innocent, law abiding.'"...

Read it all.

[haldir]

How using an imam in jihad terror investigation backfired on NYPD


Not that anyone is likely to draw any lessons from this -- not lessons about the NYPD cooperating with the FBI, which is what this article is about, but about making false and unwarranted assumptions about the loyalties of Muslims who appear to be "moderate." The fact that there is no moderate Koran, or moderate Islam, ought to give officials a certain sense of reserve when recruiting these "moderates" and asking for their help. It ought to make them at very least ask potential "helpers" some pointed questions, questions that are crafted to show what the aide really thinks about Infidels, Sharia, non-establishment of religion, American society, and related matters, all pertinent. But such questioning is not even on the radar screen. It would be "Islamophobic." It would not build bridges. So instead, we get this.
New York Jihad Plot Update: "How Using Imam in Terror Inquiry Backfired on Police," by William K. Rashbaum and Al Baker in the New York Times, September 22 (thanks to David):

A decision to enlist a Queens imam in an effort to develop information about the man at the center of a long-running cross-country terrorism investigation backfired earlier this month.
In fact, federal prosecutors have now charged the imam, a onetime source of information for the New York Police Department, contending that he betrayed the police by warning the suspect and then lied about it, and maybe even coached him on what to say if he was questioned.
Several law enforcement officials have said the imam's disclosures went a long way toward forcing their hand in an extremely sensitive investigation of a possible Qaeda plot. The situation left them scrambling to conduct raids and arrest the suspect sooner than they might have otherwise, a development that they said could make it harder to identify others involved and develop evidence against them.
Several officials -- all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because much of the investigation is classified -- have said that the inquiry, which had been under way for months, could well have continued, tracking the communications, meetings, plans and associates of the suspect, Najibullah Zazi, 24....
Current and former police and federal officials said the approach to the imam, and the resulting disruption, added to a long history of tensions and rivalry between the New York New YorkPolice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which in recent years have developed a new dimension: a clash of sorts within the Police Department, between its two primary antiterrorism units....

Current and former police and federal officials said that the effort on Sept. 10 to enlist the imam, Ahmad Wais Afzali, was undertaken by detectives from the Intelligence Division. They showed him pictures of the central suspect and three other men, some of the officials said.

In the subsequent hours, Mr. Afzali spoke both with the suspect, Mr. Zazi, a Denver airport shuttle bus driver, and his father. Court papers say he told the younger Mr. Zazi, who had driven from Colorado to Queens on Sept. 9 and 10, that the authorities had been looking for him....

Read it all.