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A Muslim Was Just Arrested For Plotting To Blow Up a Mall Where I Live

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Real American:
For all you people who say I spend too much time bashing Muslims, how can you blame me when stuff like this happens: A Somali immigrant was just arrested for plotting to blow up a mall right here in Ohio. We aren't talking about a big city like New York or Los Angeles....this is in the heartland of America. They think he was going to hit the Eastland Mall in Columbus where I have shopped before. This is starting to get scary and I am mad at my government for countinuing to let these people into our country. So don't question me for my views when this stuff afftects my day to day life and puts the life of my family and friends in danger!



http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/8925848.htm?1c
Terrorists targeted Ohio mall

Somali man charged in plot to blow up a shopping center in Columbus area

By Shannon McCaffrey

Knight Ridder Newspapers


WASHINGTON - A Somali man has been indicted on charges that he plotted with members of al-Qaeda to blow up an Ohio shopping mall, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Monday.

``The American heartland was targeted for death and destruction by an al-Qaeda cell,'' Ashcroft said.

Nuradin Abdi, 32, allegedly conspired with admitted al-Qaeda operative Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver who pleaded guilty last year to plotting to cut the cables on the Brooklyn Bridge, authorities said.

Abdi has been held on immigration charges since November.

The four-count indictment was handed down Thursday by a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Ohio. Unsealed on Monday, it charges Abdi with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and with document fraud. He could receive up to 80 years in prison if convicted on all the counts.

Ashcroft said Abdi immigrated to the United States in 1999, falsifying information on an asylum claim. Sometime in 1999 or 2000, he traveled to a military-style camp in Ogaden, Ethiopia, where he trained in bomb making and guerrilla warfare in order to launch a ``violent jihad,'' according to the indictment.

When Abdi returned to the United States, Faris met him at the airport. The two began planning to detonate a bomb at an unidentified Columbus-area shopping mall, authorities said.

Federal law-enforcement officials have been warning in recent weeks of a possible al-Qaeda strike this summer.

``Current credible intelligence indicates that al-Qaeda wants to hit the United States, to hit the United States hard,'' Ashcroft said again Monday.

The announcement of the Abdi plot raised new concerns about security at the nation's shopping malls.

A report last month from the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks found that shopping malls and other privately owned facilities remain largely unprepared for terrorist attacks.

Malachy Kavanagh, a spokesman for the International Council of Shopping Centers, said malls and other retail outlets had been upgrading security since Sept. 11, 2001, placing concrete barricades outside entrances, cordoning off ventilation systems and placing municipal police outposts at some centers.

Kavanagh said retail officials were in close contact with local and federal law enforcement regarding specific threats. But he said mall officials hadn't been alerted to the alleged Abdi plot or been given new instructions to boost security.

Abdi ran a small cell phone business and was living in Columbus before he was taken into custody Nov. 28 by agents with the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. His wife, who was due to have their third child this month, maintains her husband is innocent and is being targeted because he's Muslim.

Federal authorities on Monday wouldn't reveal details of the alleged plot, including the identities of other co-conspirators. Prosecutors said Abdi wasn't targeting a specific mall and an attack wasn't imminent.

Asked whether Abdi had contact with members of al-Qaeda overseas, Ashcroft declined to answer. But he pointed to Abdi's association with Faris, whose relationship with top operatives of the terrorist group is a matter of public record since he pleaded guilty last year.

Faris arrived in the United States in 1994 and became a U.S. citizen in 1999. Prosecutors allege that he traveled to his native Pakistan and to Afghanistan in 2000, where he is believed to have met with Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a key planner of the Sept. 11 attacks who's now in U.S. custody at an undisclosed location overseas. Faris is serving 20 years in prison after admitting plans to attack the Brooklyn Bridge and derail passenger trains in New York and Washington.

Abdi was granted asylum status by immigration officials in January 1999. Asylum is generally reserved for immigrants and refugees who are fleeing persecution or war in their homelands. Deportations to Somalia are highly controversial because of civil unrest there. However, prosecutors said Abdi falsified almost all of the information on that claim.

He was granted a refugee travel document in June 1999 to travel to Germany and Saudi Arabia to visit relatives and the Islamic holy city of Mecca. He went instead to Ethiopia.

Abdi's asylum status was revoked in January by an immigration judge who ordered him held on national-security grounds. In a secret hearing in Detroit in March, a judge rejected Abdi's claim and ordered him deported.

Real American:
And another thing, the authorities just busted the imam of the largest mosque here in Cleveland for having ties to terrorist groups. His name is Fawaz Damra (look him up on google) and right after 9/11 he was on our local TV going on and on saying "Muslims strongly condemn terror and all religions need to live together in peace". Then like 2 weeks later the FBI arrested him for raising money for terror groups like Hamas and found a bunch of videotapes of him shouting "Death to America, Death to the Jews". Even after all that, the mosque here took a vote and decided to keep him as their leader. And people wonder why I am angry.

Montana00:
they arrested a muslim about a month ago. he was gonna blow up some apartment buildings. i dont remember where though.

its just a matter of time before they actually get in undetected. and trust me its going to happen our government cant stop all these muslims

white Boy:
truthfully, i think this atack is part of the several atacks to just scare US right now, when they seriosuly atack, they wont be caught....

M Dogg™:
I know a bunch of Catholics on my block that have killed, and will kill again if they are not caught. Oh my God... lets get all the Catholics, they are causing too much trouble. I mean honestly, the Latinos, the Irish, the Italians, the Spanish, my god, those are all drunken killers, the Mexicans and the Italians have mafias, the Irish are crazy white trash, the Spanish have a history of killing people and taking their land, and the rest of the Latins are importing crack. MY GOD... KILL THE CATHOLICS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(side note... I'm Catholic, so I guess get me too)

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