Man Arrested For Jihadist Plot In Chicago

[General Mung Beans]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/us/ma ... o-bar.html

Man Is Accused of Jihadist Plot to Bomb a Bar in Chicago
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ and MARC SANTORA
Published: September 15, 2012


Federal agents arrested an 18-year-old man on Friday who planned to blow up what he believed to be a car bomb outside a Chicago bar, law enforcement officials said Saturday.


There was never any danger that the suspect, Adel Daoud, would actually detonate a bomb because the plot he agreed to carry out was proposed by undercover agents posing as extremists, according to a statement released by the United States attorney’s office in the Northern District of Illinois.

Mr. Daoud, a United States citizen who lives in Hillside, on the outskirts of Chicago, was being closely monitored by law enforcement officials for an extended period of time and, according to the statement, was “offered several opportunities to change his mind and walk away from the supposed attack.”

Mr. Daoud’s older brother, Amr, 21, described him as a very devout Muslim who would go to the mosque for prayers with their father every day at 4 a.m. He said that their parents came to the United States from Egypt, but that neither they nor his two sisters were as religious.

He said that Adel, who graduated from high school and was not working, wanted to go to school in Canada to become a sheik, a Muslim religious official.

“He’s a very peaceful guy; I never even knew him to be violent,” said Amr Daoud, a cigar salesman. “One time he got punched in school and he didn’t do anything. He’s a very passive person.”

Mr. Daoud first came to the attention of the authorities in October 2011, when he sent out e-mails “relating to violent jihad and the killing of Americans,” according to an affidavit in support of the complaint.

In May 2012, Mr. Daoud was contacted online by two undercover agents from the F.B.I., and during these conversations he “expressed an interest in engaging in violent jihad, either in the United States or overseas,” according to the affidavit.

Over the next month, law enforcement officials said, he was introduced to someone posing as an “operational terrorist.”

Mr. Daoud offered a list of 29 potential targets, officials said, “including military recruiting centers, bars, malls and other tourist attractions in the Chicago area.”

He then chose, researched and conducted surveillance of the target and planned what he thought would be an attack using an explosive device, officials said. But they said there was never any danger.

“The explosives that Daoud allegedly attempted to detonate posed no threat to the public,” said Gary S. Shapiro, the acting United States attorney in the Northern District of Illinois. “They were inert and had been supplied by undercover law enforcement personnel.”

Around 7:15 p.m. on Friday, Mr. Daoud met with the undercover agent in Villa Park, and they drove together to downtown Chicago, the statement said. During the drive, Mr. Daoud prayed that the attack would succeed, causing destruction and leaving many people dead, according to the statement.

Once in Chicago, Mr. Daoud and the agent changed vehicles, taking a Jeep containing the fake explosive device and parking it in front of a downtown bar, officials said. Mr. Daoud then walked about a block into an alley, where he tried to activate the fake bomb by pressing a triggering mechanism. He was then arrested.

Mr. Daoud remains in custody after being charged in United States District Court on Saturday with one count of an attempt to use a weapon of mass destruction.

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

What an idiot and asshole.

[Mr Bean]

Another entrapment case, funny I was just reading a story on this about the number of "terrorists" who might have never done anything were it not for police informants egging them and providing the information and material necessary to pull off their plot to begin with.

[Haruko]

Reminds me of when Glenn Greenwald talked about FBI agents encouraging people to become terrorists and then nabbing them. Wonder if this is one of those cases of the FBI spending a lot of money and effort to make sure someone becomes a terrorist. These terrorists are always inept in their attempts, too, it seems.

Edit: Mr. Bean beat me to it.

[Haruko]

Here is one of these articles by Greenwald: http://www.salon.com/2011/09/29/fbi_terror/

Like the sub-header: "Are there so few actual Terrorists that the FBI has to recruit them into manufactured attacks?"

[Aaron MkII]

Well they have to justify the budget somehow. Still, you'd think people would be more angry about this stuff. I'm not sure if it counts as abusing your powers, but its pretty damn slimy.

[Havok]

You could give me all the info and tools necessary to rob a bank... I'm still not going to do it.

I think the point here is that if these people were approached by actual competent real suppliers/enablers they would be a threat.

I don't agree with it, but I get where they are coming from and how they are justifying what they are doing.

[Mr Bean]

You could give me all the info and tools necessary to rob a bank... I'm still not going to do it.

What if I give you a plan, a bank and four guys to back you up plus a getaway driver?

You might not, but there a lot of people who if offered that would say yes.

[Havok]

Oh, well gosh, then I guess all my personal accountability goes out the window then.

You just backed up what I said. They are going after people that are predisposed to doing it. Is it entrapment, probably yes. Do I like it? No. Do I get WHY they are doing it? Yes.

I'd be curious to see if there are statistics out there for people that do choose to walk away.

[PainRack]

I'm sorry, this all assumes that the guy will actually MEET real terrorist cells who will recruit him to act against the United States. I can certainly understand falsely supplying actual terrorist cells with fake explosives and etc, but in this scenario, its read more like that the FBI has already determined that he's guilty and is supplying rope to hang the suspect with.


To put it simply, the FBI strategy is now deliberately inflammatory, seeking to elicit an attack so that they can then shut it down. This as opposed to a strategy that aims to prevent any potential jihadists from seeking to attack the United States.

The first leads to perpetual war. Only the second can hope to some form of peace. A vigilant one, but the price of eternal freedom is eternal vigilance, ja?

[Mr Bean]

Oh, well gosh, then I guess all my personal accountability goes out the window then.

I guess you don't mind our limited police force spending their time setting up these opportunities for people rather than trying to find people who are looking for the means and already have motive. Havok I am not painting these people are poor innocents trapped inside a web of lies. There are cases like Hemant Lakhan where I do feel that they are innocent. No my primary problem is these cases typically monopolize the attention of up to a dozen agents who spend a great deal of time setting up someone who would not do anything if everything was not handed to them on a platter.

So along with arresting people and putting them in jail for the rest of their lives who can be classified as "mostly harmless" they also in part waste a great deal of time inventing a crime rather than tracking down the tens of thousands of crimes that go unsolved. Our murder rate conviction is not 90% It's not even 60% once you factor in wrongful convictions. And don't even get me started about burglaries which we FYI don't even have a 10% conviction rate on. Now I don't expect FBI agents investigating who stole my car stereo but I do expect the FBI to be involved in breaking up the pawn shops and fences that let thieves get cash for their hauls.

I want them out there fighting acutal crime, we don't have a shortage of crime to fight to invite new crime. You want to place informants in possible terrorists cells knock yourselves out, but don't go providing those people with training or equipment and a target list. Don't egg them on except as required to maintain their cover. But don't send someone into a Mosque who's job it is to say how much he hates America and hope he's going to stumble across a terrorist that way.

[Simon_Jester]

Oh, well gosh, then I guess all my personal accountability goes out the window then.

You just backed up what I said. They are going after people that are predisposed to doing it. Is it entrapment, probably yes. Do I like it? No. Do I get WHY they are doing it? Yes.

I'd be curious to see if there are statistics out there for people that do choose to walk away.

Suffice to say that if 'being predisposed to robbing a bank' is a crime, we'll have a lot of people in jail for bank robberies that would never happen naturally.

Terrorism is the same problem. You could probably find a hundred thousand people in America 'willing' to commit some kind of terrorist act (an abortion clinic bombing, assassination of an unpopular political figure) if they had the right ideologues urging them on and giving them all the supplies they need.

Very few of those people actually commit a terrorist act. Trying to round them all up for what they might be predisposed to do is grotesque. Trying to round only some of them up, the ones whose ideologies are unpopular with the state, is even worse.

[Spoonist]

To add to those things already said. When it comes to entrapment it also is subject to bias and politics, which is not nice.
Looking at statistics its clear which type(s) of religion and/or politics is behind most "terrorist" acts. In the US, depending on definition of terrorism which is another problem, it is statistically more likely to be a christian right-wing caucasian male.
So if that is the largest pool of actual terrorists, shouldn't one have these entrapment squads target the most likely source? Well, when looking at their results its obvious that isn't so. So either they target muslims almost exclusively or their militia infiltrators are really really incompetent.

So while I agree with Havoc that I understand where entrapment thinking comes from, I do think that as it is done now by the anti-terrorism units in the US its clear that they have an agenda that isn't based on actually preventing crime.

EDIT
Note that the above is mostly for US only, this since most euro and places like Canada have a very different legislation when it comes to entrapment.