Rochester Man Charged in Plot to Attack American Military Personnel, Shia Muslims

A Rochester, New York man was charged in a complaint filed Monday with two counts of receipt and possession of an unregistered firearm silencer. Mufid Elfgeeh is accused of plotting to kill members of the U.S. Armed Forces returning from Iraq as retribution for American foreign policy overseas. He is also alleged to have planned attacks on unidentified Shia Muslims in the Western District of New York.

According to the complaint, Elfgeeh used the online social networking site Twitter to post tweets in support of leading terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, al-Nusrat Front, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). He also used his Twitter account to solicit donations to assist jihadist fighters in Syria.

In one Twitter post, Elfgeeh wrote, "[A]l-Qaida said it loud and clear: we are fighting the American invasion and their hegemony over the earth and the people." He posted other tweets and photographs in support of the al-Qaida-linked terrorist group, Ansar al-Sharia, "stating that people will have an honorable life under Shari'a law, and that with grenades in their hands they are ready to die for the sake of Allah," the complaint said.

Elfgeeh called upon people to donate money for jihad and "stated that money is the largest resource for jihadists and the prophet Muhammad preached that people should fight the infidels with their money, their bodies, and their words." He also posted tweets urging people "to donate a third of their salary to the jihadists in Syria."

In conversations with a government informant, Elfgeeh discussed the deadly September 2013 attacks on a mall in Kenya by the al-Qaida affiliated Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab. The attacks killed at least 39 people and injured more than 150 others. Elfgeeh was recorded saying, "Kenya is killing everybody in Somalia. They [are] killing children, women, everyone…Anybody." He added "They [Kenya] go in there killing everybody, just like the Americans went into Iraq killing everybody. Just like … the Americans surrounding Iraq, everybody, it's like they go to Afghanistan killing everybody. It's like they went to Yemen now killing everybody. Doesn't make no difference."

In a December 2013 conversation with an informant, Elfgeeh brought up the idea of shooting members of the U.S. military. He expressed his desire to obtain a gun and ammunition and "just go around and start shooting." He later suggested emulating Mohammed Merah, a French-Algerian jihadist who went on a shooting spree in France in March 2012, killing three French soldiers as well as a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school.

Elfgeeh later paid the informant $1,050 in exchange for two handguns, two firearm silencers, and ammunition. He was arrested soon afterwards by members of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF).

"In a post 9/11 world, law enforcement takes very seriously any potential threat against the safety and security of our country," U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul, Jr. said in a Department of Justice press release announcing the arrest. "This defendant, on multiple occasions, stated his desire and intention to harm and kill American soldiers as well as his allegiance to terrorist groups whose mission it is to bring devastation upon our country. This defendant will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and so too would any individuals who attempt to inflict an act of terror on the United States or against Americans abroad."

Elfgeeh faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for each of the counts.

Tens of thousands demand Istanbul's Hagia Sophia be turned into a mosque

Tens of thousands of Turkish Islamists held a triumphalist gathering outside Istanbul's Hagia Sophia museum on Saturday. Originally built as a cathedral in 537 by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, it was converted into a mosque by the Ottomans following the fall of Constantinople in 1453.The former religious site was re-opened as a museum in 1935. The Islamists who prayed at the site on Saturday did so with the hope that it would be converted back into a mosque by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The protest also coincided with the anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople on May 29, 1453, an event for which Erdogan has encouraged the celebration.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic, converted the massive structure into a museum in 1935.

For Turkey's Islamists, Hagia Sophia serves as a symbol of Islam's triumph over Christianity.

"Ayasofya is a symbol for the Islamic world and the symbol of Istanbul's conquest. Without it, the conquest is incomplete, we have failed to honor Sultan Mehmet's trust," Reuters quoted Salih Turan, head of the Anatolia Youth Association, as saying. The association claims it has collected 15 million signatures asking for Hagia Sophia to reopen as a mosque.

Details of the conquest and Hagia Sophia's conversion from being a church into a mosque stand in stark contrast to the picture of Islam that Islamists want to portray – that of a tolerant and ethical faith. Islamic law might forbid the slaughter of innocent non-combatants during times of war, but that was not what happened in Hagia Sophia the day Constantinople fell.

The late Sir Steven Runicman, widely regarded as one of the greatest scholars of Byzantine history, noted that Ottoman soldiers under Sultan Mehmet's command entered the cathedral and indiscriminately slaughtered men, women, children and the elderly. Mehmet's personal imam then climbed into the pulpit to proclaim the shahada, transforming Hagia Sophia into a mosque.

Sheik Abdullah Basfar, the imam of the Ka'aba in Mecca, who led Saturday's prayer gathering outside Hagia Sophia, has a history of extremist rhetoric. In a translation provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), he notably stated in September 2005 that funding the Palestinian jihad against Israel was a religious "duty" of all Muslims.

Erdogan's government, however, says no plans currently exist to turn Hagia Sophia into a mosque.

The world's 350 million Eastern Orthodox Christians still look to Hagia Sophia as one of the most sacred places in their faith – a reminder of the Christian Byzantine Empire that stood for over 1,000 years.

Hagia Sophia's place in the Orthodox consciousness was such that a group of American Greek Orthodox Christians similarly and unsuccessfully tried to hold services there in 2010. Talk about converting Hagia Sophia into a mosque has provoked strong condemnation from the Greek government, which issued a statement in November 2013, saying talk about "converting Byzantine Christian churches into mosques [is] offending the religious feeling of millions of Christians."

The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I, the world's most senior Orthodox bishop, similarly condemned the effort, saying it should remain a museum or be reopened as a church.

Transforming Hagia Sophia back into a mosque would necessitate the whitewashing of priceless treasures of Byzantine iconography.

Turning Hagia Sophia into a mosque reinforces the narrative that Muslims seek to subordinate other religions to Islam, and it reinforces the idea of a clash of civilizations.

"It would strengthen the mutual suspicion and polarization between the West and the Muslim world," Sahin Alpay, professor of political science at Bahcesehir University, told Reuters. "All hell breaking loose is a high price to pay."

Iranian Power Struggle Reaches New Heights, Threats Exchanged

Correction 6/1/14: The second sentence of the second paragraph, which originally stated "The ideological camp...", was corrected to read "The pragmatic camp...".

Rifts between clerical and elite circles in Iran have been intensifying over the past year. MEMRI has consistently reported on the power struggle characterizing the pragmatic camp featuring Hashemi Rafsanjani and President Hassan Rohani and the ideological camp consisting of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and senior officials within the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Now, the conflict between the rival camps is reaching new heights, as both sides are engaging in verbal threats against the other.

The ideological camp is referring to the pragmatic leaders as traitors who are engaging in 'fitna' (popular unrest) and deviating from the principles of the Islamic Revolution, representing a "deviant stream" of the current era. The pragmatic camp is also accused of being puppets of the U.S. and trying to impose Western culture over Iranian society.

Officials within the ideological camp implicitly warned that if Rohani did not follow Khamenei's orders, he could suffer the same political demise endured by previous leaders, including former president Khatami and protest movement leaders Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi who are under house arrest since 2009.

In April 2014, a computer game was created online by an official regime sanctioned organization, allowing players to kill "fitna leaders", including moderate and protest movement figures. The game also allowed players to shoot down U.S., British, and Israeli flags. The game was blocked following Iranian public pressure and MEMRI continues to hold a copy of it.

However, the Pragmatic camp claims that the ideological camp act like Zionists who were pleased with the failure of the May 2014 round of nuclear negotiations. The pragmatic leaders have also called for more dialogue with the U.S. and continued efforts to open Iran up to the international community, advocating for more difficult decisions with respect to the nuclear program. It also threatened that the Iranian people will "enter the arena" (take to the streets) if the ideological camp continues to oppose the people's will.

This growing feud has forced the Iranian Army chief of staff Hassan Firouzabadi to call on the regime's senior officials to "avoid schism, rumors, and baseless accusations."

Guardian Copy Editor Brags About Joining Islamist Censorship Campaign

Free speech and the First Amendment apparently only apply when you agree with the content of the message. Just ask the author of a column denouncing the ad that the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) placed on NYTimes.com last week.

The IPT's ad elevated the issue of the Islamist campaign to censor references to violent jihad and radical Islam in government publications and programs. It cited several examples of terrorist attacks motivated by radical Islamist ideologies and concerted efforts to silence critics of Islamic extremism.

Guardian copy editor Raya Jalabi, who penned a commentary titled, "Why would the New York Times stoop to running an Islamophobe's ad?" bragged on Twitter on Friday that: "Friday is cool because I can call out #Islamophobia and thus be part of the campaign of censorship trying to take down America…."

It did not matter to Jalabi that the IPT's ad praised "courageous Muslim voices who dare criticize radical Islam."

Jalabi earlier wondered on Twitter how the ad could have passed muster with The New York Times, saying: "How @Nytimes deemed Islamophobic ad not 'gratuitously offensive on racial, religious or ethnic grounds' is beyond me."
She also added "+1" in agreement with an Al Jazeera America producer who tweeted, "I'm not feeling so okay about this racist, fearmongering ad being the first thing I see today on @NYTimes."

"Never mind that the groups whom the IPT calls 'radical Islamist terrorist groups' are actually mainstream Muslim American groups – like the Council on American Islamic Relations (Cair) and the Muslim Students Association (MSA) … stretching beyond recognition their alleged ties to anti-Semitism, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood," Jalabi wrote in her article.

Her article never once addresses the hard, court-tested evidence, such as seized documents compiled by the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee that make CAIR's terrorism connections plain as day.

A federal judge ruled in 2009 that prosecutors in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation (HLF) Hamas terrorism financing case had shown pieces of evidence that "create at least a prima facie case as to CAIR's involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas." The same judge also noted that there was "ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA (the Islamic Society of North America) and NAIT (the North American Islamic Trust) with … Hamas" – undermining Jalabi's contention that mainstream equals a clean record.

Lingering questions about CAIR's Hamas ties proved adequate for the FBI to end official ties with the group in 2008.

Jalabi also fails to mention the connection of CAIR's top executive, Nihad Awad, with virulently anti-Semitic individuals such as Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, who notably stated that Hitler was God's punishment on the Jews and who issued fatwas authorizing suicide attacks against Jews and Americans.

Court documentation from the HLF trial also help to establish the MSA's Muslim Brotherhood lineage.

Perhaps Jalabi should consider examining the primary evidence instead of trying to shut down the conversation because she and fellow like-minded individuals find what is being said inconvenient to their ideology.

Bragging about joining the extremist Islamist censorship campaign only serves to further prove our point.

Al-Qaeda in Syria Reaches Israel's Border

Violence from the Syrian Civil War has periodically spilled over onto Israeli territory. Now, Syrian Islamist fighters hoist the al-Qaida flag and praise Osama bin Laden just a few miles from Israeli troops.

According to the Jerusalem Post, a video posted by al-Qaeda's Nusra Front shows the terrorists in sight of Israeli vehicles patrolling the border.

"This view reminds us of the lion of the Mujahideen, Osama bin Laden, on the mountains of Tora Bora", stated a leader of the Nusra Front in the video.

Last year, rebels briefly conquered the Quneitra border crossing with Israel.

The rebels currently control many rural villages in the surrounding area.

Western intelligence sources believe approximately 60 insurgent groups are fighting in southern Syria and are relatively better coordinated than the divided rebel groups in the north.

However, radical Islamist terrorist organizations including the Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham are strengthening and undermining the larger rebel brigades supported by Saudi Arabia.

Roughly 2,000 Nusra Front terrorists are operating in the area, demonstrating significant organizational skills in contrast to the infighting characterizing the more secular rebel groups.

Nusra terrorists control dozens of checkpoints from the Golan Heights to the Derraa on the Jordan border, supplying their fighters with basic necessities and garnering more popular support. Residents say that Nusra courts are now focused on various legal and humanitarian issues, including family disputes and transferring financial assistance to the poor.

As the more moderate rebel groups lose popular support, Islamist terrorist organizations will likely continue to strengthen. Al-Qaeda's expanding territorial control on the border with Israel is an extremely concerning development in the Syrian Civil War.

Ottawa City Hall Hosts Palestinian Exhibit Honoring Terrorists

According to the Toronto Sun, Canada's capital Ottawa's city hall has no plans to take down an exhibit that honors Palestinian terrorists.

Toronto-based artist Rehab Nazzal created the exhibit featuring pictures of "lost artists, activists, writers and leaders." The pictures feature the face of Abu Iyad, a founder of the Black September terrorist organization responsible for the murders of 11 Israelis at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics.

Dalal Mughrabi is also featured in the exhibit. Mughrabi orchestrated the 1978 Coastal Bus attack that killed 38 Israelis, including 13 children.

The mastermind of the Ma'alot school massacre, Khalil Nazzal, is also honored. The terrorist attack, which took place 40 years ago this month, resulted in the deaths of 22 children and 3 adults. The Israeli Embassy in Ottawa says that the exhibit's creator is a relative of Khalil Nazzal.

Numerous other terrorists are also featured. Abu Jihad, the former head of Fatah's military wing, led the 1975 Tel Aviv Savoy Hotel attack, killing eight innocent civilians, and the 1978 Coastal Bus Attack.

Israeli Ambassador Rafael Barak said that he is not demanding that the exhibit be taken down, but wants the Canadian public to understand that some of the artists and leaders are terrorists who have murdered innocent civilians.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad Open to Unity Government

Palestinian Islamic Jihad's (PIJ) top leader says he welcomes the reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah even though his group is not a party.

PIJ, which is devoted to Israel's destruction, is widely regarded as more violent than Hamas but has been an outlier in the reconciliation process between the two larger Palestinian factions. Still, it might be willing to join the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) under the right conditions.

"… [W]e welcome the reconciliation and any step that serves our people and our cause on the condition that it does not violate any of our national fundamentals," PIJ Secretary General Ramadan Shallah told the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper.

Shallah, whose previous position involved teaching state university students in Florida and was set up by Sami Al-Arian, noted that PIJ would not participate in any scenario that is "part of Oslo's political framework," referring to the 1994 peace deal between Israel and the PLO that created the Palestinian Authority.

"The common denominator in this case is that it does not lead to any move to perpetuate the reality of the occupation, open the door to more concessions, or abrogate or withdraw the weapons of resistance, which is a red line for us," Shallah said.

Dawoud Shehab, a PIJ spokesman, similarly told Iran's Press TV, "However, what we are concerned about is that they build a real national unity and a strategy based on resistance as the way to freedom. The reconciliation should end the process of negotiation with occupation."

If Hamas has its way, PIJ will get exactly what it is looking for. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said Tuesday that the terrorist group would continue its violent campaign against Israel, and said no compromises would be made.

"The reconciliation does not mean an end to our resistance against the invaders, resistance will continue as long as the occupation exists," Meshaal said.

The Hill: Obama Looks to Outsource Counterterrorism Efforts

An increase in funding for the Pentagon's "Section 1206" counterterrorism programs, aimed at training and equipping foreign militaries to fight terrorism, suggests a shift in the Obama administration's strategy, The Hill reports.

This shift could mean a decreased reliance on drone strikes against al-Qaida targets and U.S. Special Forces raids like the one that killed Osama bin Laden. The drone program has garnered significant criticism from foreign governments as well as from people on the left and the right at home.

The Hill examined the Pentagon's "Section 1206" budget request for 2012 and found it increased more than $71 million in 2014, to $290 million.

White House officials deny they are relying more on foreign militaries than in the past, but President Obama's own comments may suggest otherwise.

"Beyond Afghanistan, we must define our effort not as a boundless 'global war on terror' but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America," Obama said. "In many cases, this will involve partnerships with other countries. Much of our best counter-terrorism cooperation results in the gathering and sharing of intelligence and the arrest and prosecution of terrorists."

But critics note that many of the partner countries have been largely ineffective in combating al-Qaida despite the funding they have received from the U.S.

A March 2013 General Accountability Office (GAO) study, for example, found that "State and DOD have little objective evidence to show that the [Section 1206 funded] programs have been effective" in improving Lebanon's ability to fight terrorism.

"In Yemen, our partner has been overall ineffective in really going after Al Qaeda there," Katherine Zimmerman, a senior analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, told The Hill. "Honestly I think that we don't need to implement a boots-on-the-ground strategy but we need to be very clear about what our partners are able to do and what they are not able to do."

Money given to Iraq has been similarly ineffective in preventing western Iraq from becoming a safe haven for jihadists.

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told The Hill that support for foreign governments was not a "substitute for American counterterrorism expertise."

Supporters, however, suggest that helping other countries to fight terrorism is a better solution for a country as war weary as the U.S. than the prior strategy of regime change.

"It's increasingly about coaching, training and mentoring other nations' forces, and assisting them with intelligence, airlift and logistics," said Daniel R. Green, an al-Qaida expert and defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Daily Beast: Americans Already Returning From Syrian Jihad

Westerners flocking to join jihadist groups in Syria are a growing concern for Western intelligence agencies – and U.S. intelligence officials in particular.

Recent U.S. intelligence estimates suggest that more than 100 Americans have joined the jihadist cause, The Daily Beast's Eli Lake reports. As many as a dozen of them have returned to the United States, and intelligence officials are having trouble keeping track.

"We know where some are," a U.S. intelligence official told The Daily Beast. "The concern is the scale of the problem we are dealing with."

At least two Americans are known to have been killed fighting alongside the jihadists. Last July, a Pittsburgh man, identified as Amir Farouk Ibrahim, was reportedly killed fighting in Syria. Nicole Lynn Mansfield, a white convert to Islam from the Detroit area, was killed while fighting in June.

Some such as Nicholas Teusant, who was charged by the FBI in March of plotting to fight alongside the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), have been intercepted before they reached the battlefield.

It's not a problem limited to the United States. An estimated 3,000 people from an assortment of European nations are believed to have joined the jihadists in their fight against the Assad regime.

National security officials worry about what happens when these people return home from the battlefield.

In February, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson warned that American jihadists returning from Syria posed a serious threat to homeland security.

U.S. intelligence officials particularly worry that jihadists who are traveling on U.S. passports or those issued by other Western nations could slip through the cracks, Lake reports. There are simply too many people for intelligence agencies to track them all.

The story points to Faisal Shahzad as an example. Shahzad, a Pakistani-American who received training in Taliban training camps in Pakistan, later attempted to detonate a car bomb in Times Square in 2010.

A federal court charged former Army Private Eric Harroun with firing a rocket-propelled grenade alongside Al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra in June 2013, after he posted videos of himself with fighting alongside the terrorist group.

"This raises our concern that radicalized individuals with extremist contacts and battlefield experience could return to their home countries to commit violence or participate in al-Qaida-directed plots aimed at Western targets outside of Syria," Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NTC), told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March.

Imam Critical of 9/11 Film Faces 15 Years for Tax Fraud

A New York imam who was at the forefront of a protest to change a short film about al-Qaida at the new National September 11 Memorial Museum, faces up to 15 years in prison for swindling at least $140,000 while working as a "tax preparer" at an Ethiopian restaurant, the New York Daily News reports.

Mustafa Elazabawy handled the state tax returns for the Queen of Sheba restaurant in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood between 2005 and 2009. He was indicted in January on second and third-degree larceny charges.

Elazabawy also serves as imam at Masjid Manhattan. He, along with other Islamists, objected to portions of a 7-minute film, "The Rise of al-Qaeda" at the new September 11 museum because of the film's references to jihad and Islamist violence.

The film "would greatly offend our local Muslim believers as well as any foreign Muslim visitor to the museum," if those references were not changed, Elazabawy wrote in a letter to the museum leadership last month. "Unsophisticated visitors who do not understand the difference between Al Qaeda and Muslims may come away with a prejudiced view of Islam, leading to antagonism and even confrontation toward Muslim believers near the site."

The museum opens Wednesday, and it does not appear the film will be changed.

Despite being a religious leader concerned about intolerance, Elazabawy has expressed harsh anti-Semitic views in sermons. During a December 2008 sermon called "Children of Israel," Elazabawy said Jews "killed the Prophets and Messengers" and are a "cancer … in every generation as they get in power." A recording of the sermon is still posted on the mosque's website.

Prosecutors suspect that Elazabawy was "actually making up the numbers of the sales tax returns" despite having access to the restaurant's records.

Prosecutors also claim Elazabawy cheated on his own taxes, making about $3,000 over two years. Elazabawy has pleaded not guilty and his attorney has called the charges "totally bizarre" and claimed the imam is "a person of great repute."

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