[lit-ideas] Re: The Terrorist next door
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 12:17:32 -0400
It's good that they catch terrorists. Any idea how he got into the country?
----- Original Message -----
From: Lawrence Helm
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 8/31/2006 11:57:15 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] The Terrorist next door
A 29-year-old Maryland school teacher is going to jail for 15 years for helping
Jihadists. Good for the courts. Good for the Judge. But look at all the
Muslims who showed up to protest -- the implication being that they thought Ali
Asad Chandia had done nothing wrong -- that the US was conducting a ?witch hunt
against "Brother Ali" and other "principled" Muslims who support "mujahideen"
groups.? That isn?t very moderate of them. Wouldn?t you agree, Omar?
Lawrence
The Terrorist Next Door
By Paul Sperry
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 31, 2006
The recent terror case of a "gentle" third-grade teacher from the D.C. suburbs
shows the danger is at once closer and harder to ID than you think. The enemy
is hiding not in the shadows, but in plain sight, and may even wear a smile.
Hundreds of Muslims last week flocked to a federal courtroom to show their
support for the affable and soft-spoken Ali Asad Chandia of Maryland as he was
sentenced to 15 years in prison for supporting terrorists. Friends say
anti-Muslim prosecutors railroaded a "law-abiding" and "peaceful" brother.
"He is a dedicated teacher," said one. "A great family man," said another.
Another told the judge Chandia's so gentle he wouldn't hurt a tree branch in
his yard. "I said to Ali that I may need to cut the branch (but) he asked that
I not hurt the tree," the friend, a landscaper, said in a letter. "I was
touched by Ali's insistence that the tree not be harmed in any way."
But prosecutors tell a different story.
They showed evidence that Chandia, 29, trained at a jihad camp in Lahore,
Pakistan, run by the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba, an al-Qaida subcontractor
that also trained some of the London bombers. He helped Lashkar ship 50,000
paintball pellets, unmanned aerial vehicles, night-vision gear and wireless
video cameras from the U.S. to Pakistan for paramilitary training. He even
chauffeured a Lashkar lieutenant around Washington on trips the officer made
here after 9-11.
Within months of the attacks, Chandia joined the so-called Virginia jihad
network dedicated to preparing for holy war against U.S. troops deployed to
Afghanistan. The gang's ringleader was the civil-rights coordinator for the
Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, a Washington-based nonprofit
leading the charge against airport and subway terror profiling.
Chandia, who graduated from the University of Maryland and once worked at
Costco, also worked as a former personal assistant to the jihad gang's
spiritual leader -- imam Ali al-Timimi, a native Washingtonian convicted last
year for soliciting the Muslim men to levy war against the U.S. Al-Timimi
praised the hijackers who carried out the 9-11 attacks and even cheered the
crash of the space shuttle Columbia. Chandia helped al-Timimi schedule his
sermons.
In Chandia's car, not surprisingly, federal investigators found a CD-ROM
containing videos that glorified Osama bin Laden and the 19 hijackers.
All this took place in the shadow of the U.S. capital. And yet members of the
large Muslim community there, many of whom work for the government, were
unfazed by the evidence aligned against Chandia. After his conviction, some 350
Muslims including Islamic scholars, activists and other leaders, as well as
government employees and contractors, donated generously to his defense fund.
"We ask Allah to reward everyone who supported this cause," gushed the head of
the Ali Asad Support Committee. "We ask Allah to raise their ranks and to grant
them goodness in this world and in the hereafter."
The local Muslim luminaries also wrote letters to the judge complaining of a
U.S. witch hunt against "Brother Ali" and other "principled" Muslims who
support "mujahideen" groups. And they mobbed the federal courtroom in
Alexandria, Va., hoping for a lenient punishment.
But the judge wasn't buying it, and he imposed a fairly stiff sentence.
Chandia, for his part, was unrepentant to the end. Upon his sentencing, Chandia
lashed out at prosecutors, warning "their judgment is on the way."
U.S. marshals then led away a terrorist -- not a mild-mannered teacher or
loving father -- but a terrorist.
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