GlobalmbWatch: US media has announced the appointment of Zaki Barzinji, age 27, as the new liaison to the Muslim American community under the White House Office of Public Engagement. According to a Huffington Post report:
May 26, 2016 With Islamophobia rampant in communities across the US, Muslim Americans now have a chief ally at the White House.
Zaki Barzinji, former Deputy Director of Intergovernmental Affairs for Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-Va.), recently assumed the new role as liaison to the Muslim American community under the Office of Public Engagement, the White House director of specialty media told The Huffington Post this week. In his new post, Barzinji will plan outreach to Muslim Americans, as well as Sikhs, Buddhists, and Hindus, working to ensure that these communities are represented at the federal level.
‘A big part of this role is making sure the national conversation about these communities is not framed through a single lens, but covers the full range of issues that Muslims and other Americans face,’ Barzinji, 27, said in a statement to The Huffington Post.
Zaki Barzinji, 27, recently began as liaison to the Muslim American community under the White House Office of Public Engagement. The Virginia native and former president of Muslim Youth of North America has experience bringing underrepresented groups into the public arena. While working in the governor’s office, Barzinji served as a liaison to the Virginia Asian Advisory Board and prior to that directed outreach to Arab American and Asian American and Pacific Islander communities for McAuliffe’s 2013 campaign.”
Read the rest here.
It would appear that in reality, it is not “Muslim Americans” who now have a chief ally at the White House but rather the US Muslim Brotherhood. Among other things, Zaki Barzinji is the grandson of the late Jamal Barzinji, of one of the most important founders of the US Brotherhood. As we noted in October 2015 in our obituary for Jamal Barzinji, according to a history of the US Muslim Brotherhood (USMB), authored by the GMBDW editor:
Three individuals—Ahmad al-Haj Totonji, Dr. Jamal al-Din Barzinji, and Dr. Hisham Yahya al-Talib—played key roles in the founding and development of MSA [Muslim Student Association]. All were born in the Kurdish, northern part of Iraq, and may have met there or possibly later in Britain, where all three received their undergraduate education in engineering An FBI memo has identified Barzinji and al-Talib as members of the Muslim Brotherhood prior to establishing a residence in the US. The Washington Post adds that [Barzinji] fled Iraq in 1969 when the Ba’athist regime started executing fellow Islamists. After completion of their studies in Britain, the three came to the United States, ostensibly for graduate study but also to continue organizing Muslim youth activities
As the above report goes on to explain, Dr. Barzinji went on to play key roles in the founding of the Saudi World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), said by US government agencies and officials to have helped spread Islamic extremism and terrorism around the world, as well as most of the important organizations comprising the US Muslim Brotherhood including the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and perhaps most famously the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). In January 2014, the GMBDW reported that elements of the US Muslim Brotherhood had organized a dinner in honor of Dr. Barzinji and the IIIT. In May of this year, we reported that the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) awarded the organization’s “Muslim Democrat of the Year” award posthumously to the late Jamal Barzinji as well as to his colleague, the late Taha Jabir Al-Alwani, another founding figure of the US Muslim Brotherhood and both co-founders of CSID. CSID itself was founded in 1998 in what appears to have been a cooperative effort among the US Muslim Brotherhood, the US State Department and Georgetown University academic Dr. John Esposito with the aim of promoting “Islamic Democracy.”
Zaki Barzinji himself has participated actively with US Muslim Brotherhood organizations including as noted above the Muslim Youth of North America (MYNA) associated with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and, as the GMBDW reported in 2008, appearing as a MYNA representative alongside important leaders of the US Muslim Brotherhood. Zaki Barzinji joins a long list of individuals tied to the US Muslim Brotherhood who have been invited by the Obama Administration to serve as important advisors including:
- Mazen Asbahi- On August 1 2008, the GMBDW (then known as the GMBDR) ran a post identifying Chicago lawyer Mazen Asbahi as an adviser to the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) and NAIT as part of the US Muslim Brotherhood and which was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorist trial, as was NAIT board member Jamal Said. The post also listed Mr. Asbahi’s connection to the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). The GMBDW ran a second post on the same day that identified Asbahi’s ties to two further US Muslim Brotherhood organizations- the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and an Illinois LLC called SA Consulting. At this time the GMBDR was private and the post received very little attention until August 6th when the Wall Street Journal published an article revealing that Mr. Asbahi had resigned from the Obama campaign after the Journal had queried him about his USMB ties. The Journal credited the GMBDR for breaking the story.
- Dahlia Mogahed- On April 12 2009, the GMBDW reported that one of the two Muslim members appointed to the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships was Dahlia Mogahed, a protege of John Espositio, perhaps the best known academic supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and with strong ties to Saudi Arabia. Although the report on the appointment was not exclusive to the GMBDW, we were the only publication to note that Ms. Mogahed is the daughter of Elsayed Mogahed, an Egyptian immigrant who is a former engineering scientist at the University of Wisconsin and director of the Islamic Center of Madison (ICM). The website of the ICM links mainly to US Muslim Brotherhood organizations and Souheil Ghannouchi, the President of the Muslim American Society (MAS), was ICM Imam and President for several years. The MAS is part of the US Muslim Brotherhood and closest to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
- Huma Abedin– On February 7 2010, the GMBDW reported that that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had addressed students at the Dar El-Hekma women’s college in Saudi Arabia, known to have been co-founded and patronized by an individual designated as a terrorist by the US as well as by important Saudi bankers and members of the Bin Laden family. As part of that story, we noted that the Vice Dean of institutional advancement at Dar El-Hekma is Saleha M. Abedin who was one of the founders of the College, as well being the mother of Huma Abedin, a Deputy Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton. We also reported that Saleha Abedin, along with her late husband Syed Z. Abedin, were founders of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, a London organization that is known to have been close to the Saudi Muslim World League. We subsequently reported that Saleha Abedin was serving as a board member of the International Islamic Council for Dawa and Relief (IICDR), an umbrella group for 86 Islamic organizations, many of which are associated with the global Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas fundraising, or support for Al Qaeda. We also delved into the ties of Huma Abedin’s brother Hasan Abedin who was an officer of the Oxford Center of Islamic Studies, chaired by Dr. Abdullah Omar Naseef, a Saudi with his own extensive ties to Islamist organizations. A variety of other actors later claimed credit for unearthing the information about Human Abedin’s parents that was first reported by the GMBDW.
- Rashad Hussain- On February 14 2010, the GMBDW reported on the US Muslim Brotherhood connections of Rashad Hussain, a White House attorney who was President Obama’s newly appointed envoy to the OIC. Those connections including ties to the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), the Muslim Student Association (MSA), and the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS). The post also revealed that an annual MSA conference, Mr. Hussein appeared along side the daughter of Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian and labeled Al-Arian’s prosecution “politically motivated persecution.” The post further noted that the sentences pertaining to Mr. Hussein statement had been removed from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) report on the MSA conference but were still available at the Internet Archive. The story was subsequently “appropriated” by another media outlet who only belatedly and partially credited the GMBDW as the original source of the story.
- Mohamed Elibiary– On October 30 2010, the GMBDW reported that the Department of Homeland Security had sworn in three new members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council one of whom was Mohamed Elibiary, who we exclusively identified as the President and CEO of the Freedom and Justice Foundation, an organization with ties to the US Muslim Brotherhood and the US Hamas infrastructure. Since that time, Mr. Elibiary has been widely discussed in a variety of venues and described as a “noted Islamist” though he was virtually unknown until the GMBDW highlighted his background.
Despite the above, the GMBDW is on record as rejecting the suggestion, widely popular in certain circles, that the presence in the Obama Administration of so many individuals tied to the US Muslim Brotherhood is proof that the government has been “infiltrated” by the Brotherhood. As we have argued in the past:More recently, an additional challenge has emerged, namely the use of GMBDW research to spin unsubstantiated and fanciful stories about the same networks we have so carefully tried to document. The most egregious example is the claim, since gone viral, that the Muslim Brotherhood has “infiltrated” the Obama administration. Stories based on this alleged infiltration typically feature rogues galleries of “Muslim Brotherhood operatives” said to be whispering in the ear of the Obama administration and aimed at causing the downfall of the United States. In most cases, the stories include high-profile individuals first identified by the GMBDW as tied to the Global Muslim Brotherhood using criteria we have long since publicly explained.
We refer readers to that post where we debunk the notion of such “infiltration” and provide an alternative explanation for the presence of these individuals in the US government but it is important to repeat our caution at the end that:
….there remains the pertinent issue of what influence, malign or otherwise, these individuals may have had on Obama Administration policy toward the Middle East or in other relevant policy arenas
That said, the newly announced appointment of Zaki Barzinji is particularly interesting to us as we believe it is evidence of a long-standing cooperation between the US Government and the Muslim Brotherhood. This topic however is far beyond the scope of this post and will hopefully be the subject of a future report.
Category Archives: Insurgency
Europe has an Unaccompanied Children Crisis Too
New World Dis-Order
Unaccompanied child refugees: ‘These children aren’t seen as children’
A network of 30 European NGOs supporting missing and exploited children have come together to tackle the rising problem of missing refugee children
Guardian: Human smugglers increasingly combine smuggling with exploitation and their victims are often children,” says Federica Toscano. “At chaotic border situations, it happens that smugglers deliberately separate refugee children from their parents to exploit them.’’
“We also hear that families at the border between Greece and Macedonia have been forced to ‘pay’ smugglers with one of their children,” continues Toscano. “Smugglers have come to realise they can make much more profit by taking advantage of vulnerable people. And the most vulnerable people are children.”
Toscano is well-placed to know. She works for Missing Children Europe, a network of thirty European NGOs that are active in the field of missing and sexually exploited children. Since its foundation in 2001, MCE has focussed on different groups of missing children (pdf). Half of the cases of children that disappear in Europe are runaways: those who run away from home or institutions after a history of violence or abuse. More than a third are abducted by parents.
Related reading: Invisible refugees: ‘You are the only organisation that has ever visited us’
But the most recent category is unaccompanied child refugees. “This group only makes up 2% of cases, which is a low percentage,” says Delphine Moralis, the secretary general of MCE, “but that doesn’t say anything about the magnitude of the problem. These children are seldom reported as missing. That’s why we find it so important to focus on this problem too.’’
Earlier this year Europol stated that at least 10,000 unaccompanied child refugees have gone missing in Europe. A recent EU report warned that these children have become targets for criminal gangs, who exploit them in the sex industry or force them to beg, steal or smuggle drugs.
But MCE believe the true number to be far higher than 10,000. Toscano says that “in Italy alone 5,000 refugee children have gone missing. And Germany reported that in 2015 almost 6,000 of these children have disappeared.’’
The organisation has been aware of the problem for some time. “As far back as 2005 a Belgian study showed that one fourth of unaccompanied children seeking asylum went missing within the first 48 hours upon arrival. So it’s no news to us.”
But for a whole range of reasons, many of these disappearances go unreported. “First of all, there’s no sense of urgency,” explains Toscano. “When a child refugee goes missing, the general assumption is that he or she has a plan, and that the child is resilient. The police and social services don’t feel the same sense of urgency as when the child is from their own country. They are not aware of the risks these children run, that they might fall victim to exploitation. So nothing is really done.’’
The lack of formal procedures when these children disappear is another problem. “Much depends on the goodwill of the single professional involved,” says Toscano. “There is no common system to collect information about missing children in Europe. There are good practices, but they’re very local. So the traffickers just go to another area.’’
MCE was founded fifteen years ago in 2001, when it became clear that European cooperation on this issue was seriously lacking. “I was working for a Belgian NGO at the time when two Belgian girls went missing,” says Moralis. “On the third day of their disappearance a judge called us and said: ‘We have no idea where these children are, they could be anywhere in Europe, we really need your help now.’ There was no other way to tackle the problem but by contacting one by one all the 309 European organisations working in this field. That’s when we realised it was necessary to create a network of contact points for missing children.”
The organisation facilitates training of professionals to respond better to the disappearance of child refugees. It also exerts pressure on European institutions to provide clear rules and legislation to protect these children. This year, MCE has published a handbook (pdf) on good practises to help prevent and respond to unaccompanied children going missing.
“We try to be as practical as possible,” says Toscano. “You can do so much to prevent a child from disappearing. Just a simple example: when a child arrives in a shelter and is given food, he may think he has to pay for it. When he has no money, he will try to escape as soon as possible. Workers should take time to explain everything to the child … Sometimes these children don’t even realise it when they are exploited. Their traffickers tell them all kinds of lies to make them extra vulnerable. They say: watch out for authorities, they will lock you up.’’
They also closely monitor development throughout Europe. Toscano has been collecting information on missing children in Europe through the EU co-funded SUMMIT project (pdf). This included a study into interagency cooperation around unaccompanied migrant children done through surveys and interviews with hotlines for missing children, professionals at refugee reception centres, guardians and law enforcement in the UK, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Belgium and Ireland.
As a result they are hearing from the frontlines. “We know that there are networks of child traffickers that operate in different countries,” says Toscano. “For example, when a refugee child has been exploited in Eritrea and claims asylum in the Netherlands, there will be another criminal gang waiting to exploit him there. Traffickers have excellent lines of communication. When a child has a history of trafficking, the risk that he will be trafficked again is very high.”
According to Moralis, the closing of borders means that lots of refugees are stuck in bad conditions: “This makes them more vulnerable and creates more opportunities for criminals. How is it possible that all this is going on in Europe and nobody seems to know where these children are?”
“Our main aim is to raise awareness that these children are children,” says Toscano. “It’s very simple. You’d think that everyone would be aware of this, but it is certainly not the case. Not for authorities, not for members of the civil society, nor for the general public. These children usually aren’t seen as children, but as people who just come here and use resources that we want to use for something else.’’
Militant Islam, Obama Admin Forbidden Terms
A distinction needs to be made. Radical extremists are for the force multipliers, those like Anwar al Awlaki. The militants like Mohammed Emwazi are born from the radicals and they are the deadly enforcers of the Islamic doctrine and Sharia.
Don’t blame the FBI for failures, with particular regard to the worst terror attack in American by a gunman, Orlando. Blame the White House. All the Q&A sessions, congressional testimony and press briefings by FBI Director James Comey have had an underlying message, a cry for help, attention and support.
Don’t blame the intelligence community including CENTCOM and the Pentagon for battlefield or rules of engagement failures. That belongs to the entire White House national security team. The Office of National Intelligence has also been affected.
This is not political correctness at all, it is a Barak Obama edict, sensitivity to Islam across our homeland and across the globe. Obama has had a strident mission since he assumed the Oval Office to create a Muslim protective shield. This is beyond dispute.
While not in any chronological order, there are some very key decisions that were made and continue to be made by the Obama administration that affect our national security and this generational war titled the Overseas Contingency Operation.
In April of 2009, Barak Obama delivered ‘The New Beginnings’ speech. In this presentation he spelled out his full agenda in what was to become the long-term mission to elevate Muslims and their organizations at home and globally. The White House objectives have been successful and consequential.
With the new beginning announced, Obama extended his same purpose throughout government agencies, law enforcement and policies as a mandatory doctrine.
‘Just before that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I was ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland Security to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These types of records are the basis for any ability to “connect dots.” Every day, DHS Customs and Border Protection officers watch entering and exiting many individuals associated with known terrorist affiliations, then look for patterns. Enforcing a political scrubbing of records of Muslims greatly affected our ability to do that. Even worse, going forward, my colleagues and I were prohibited from entering pertinent information into the database.’ Philip Haney, The Hill.
Directly after the 9/11 attack, the Bush administration did reach out to the Muslim communities to determine who was with peace and national security and who perhaps gave clues of a larger and hidden condition that could be festering that would prove clues to more domestic security challenges.
Then came the Holyland Foundation trial in 2007/2008. The material facts and conditions of the domestic threat, people, money, collaboration and global consequence all converged in a courtroom in Texas.
During the Holy Land trial, FBI Agent Lara Burns testified in court that CAIR was a front for HAMAS. One trial exhibit submitted by federal prosecutors – and stipulated to by the defense in the case – explained that these organizations were dedicated to a “civilizational-jihadist process” to destroy America from within and replace the Constitution with sharia (Islamic law):
The Ikhwah [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions. (p. 21)
Federal prosecutors specifically cited this internal Muslim Brotherhood planning document as the strategic goal of these U.S.-based Islamic groups – the very same group advising the Obama Administration. The federal judge in the Holy Foundation case agreed with the case presented by the federal prosecutors had made regarding these organizations, stating in one ruling that “the Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations with CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF…and with HAMAS.” (p. 14-15) More important details here from the CounterjihadReport.
The Department of Justice under Eric Holder was included in the full protection of the terror networks and associated people. Congressman Gohmert of Texas challenged AG Holder to no avail in a chilling exchange.
Here is where the ‘words matter’ material documentation began. The Obama administration took this agenda to new standard.
In 2009, DHS published via the Office of Intelligence and Analysis Assessment a ‘Rightwing Extremism’ document, pinpointing those that may challenge the Obama Muslim doctrine. Additionally, DHS posted The Department of Homeland Security launched a ‘Do’s and Dont’s bulletin.
The entire complexion of the Department of Homeland Security began to change with new personnel and outreach under Secretary Janet Napolitano. The outreach extended to law enforcement agencies of which LAPD demonstrates.
The order to purge documents, training materials and database was made. The proof is here.
Barak Obama was not finished. In 2015, the White House introduced a strategy for CVE, Counter Violent Extremism.
Then comes the foreign policy of Obama. All deference to Iran began before Obama assumed the White House in 2009 and continues today. Secret back channels to Iran using Ambassador Burns began in 2008. Further, there is Iraq and Syria with Islamic State. Documents here on ISIS prove the intelligence and forecasts were known, available and delivered.
This would not be complete without mentioning China, Russia or North Korea where policies are non-existent.
The Paris attack was a slaughter and Obama found it wise to snub the solidarity march with other world leaders.
Obama touted Yemen as one of his successes but the country collapsed. Finally, the Obama policy doctrine crumbled and the cause was fully explained here. Obama wilfully recoiled as he and Hillary did on Benghazi.
It really no longer matters that Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton or John Kerry refuse to use key terms to describe militant Islam, the entire well verse and informed world have defined it for them. What does matter beyond the words are the policies and refusals of missions, strategies and conditions to keep America, her interests and allies safe.
It is no wonder there is no global respect for the Obama administration and there is much less to fear from her.
In summary, Obama owns this terror, owns this jihad and owns the death as well as the genocide. This is his legacy, he owns it as his own scarlet letter.
Who is Mir Seddique the father of Omar Mateen?
The Taliban is in the building, including U.S. federal buildings, meaning Seddique Mir Mateen was granted access to the Obama administration.
Seddique Mir Mateen is a life insurance salesman who started a group in 2010 called Durand Jirga, Inc., according to Qasim Tarin, a businessman from California who was a Durand Jirga board member. The name refers to the Durand line, the long disputed border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Related reading for comprehensive details, summary from Washington Post.
Seddique uses the Dari language, and not Pashto, the language of Pushtuns. More here.
Tarin said Seddique Mir Mateen had a television show on which they discussed issues facing Afghanistan.
THE DURAND JIRGA, INC. has been set up 11/28/2010 in state FL. The current status of the business is Active. The THE DURAND JIRGA, INC. principal adress is 519 SW BAYSHORE BOULEVARD, PORT ST. LUCIE, FL, 34983.
Details: = jirga (Pashto: لويه جرګه, “grand assembly”) is a special type of jirga that is mainly organized for choosing a new head of state in case of sudden death, adopting a new constitution, or to settle national or regional issue such as war.
Details: = Durand Liine The Durand Line (Pashto: د ډیورنډ کرښه) is the 2,430-kilometre (1,510 mi) long boundary between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was established in 1893 between Sir Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat and civil servant of British India, and Abdur Rahman Khan, the Afghan Amir, to fix the limit of their respective spheres of influence and improve diplomatic relations and trade. Afghanistan ceded various frontier areas to British India to prevent invasion of further areas of the country. Afghanistan was considered by the British as an independent princely state at the time, although the British controlled its foreign affairs and diplomatic relations.
Durand: “Our brothers in Waziristan, our warrior brothers in [the] Taliban movement and national Afghan Taliban are rising up. Inshallah the Durand Line issue will be solved soon.”
*****
Mateen had also been granted a corporate license by the State of Florida to operate his group called The Provisional Government of Afghanistan.
Related reading: Father of Orlando massacre suspect Omar Mateen supports Taliban on his TV show
Related reading: Father’s Facebook page
Sabrina Seddique
Active Fort Pierce, FL
—
Director for The Durand Jirga, Inc.
Sabrina Seddique is currently associated with one company, according to public records. The company was incorporated in Florida five years ago.
Companies
The Durand Jirga, Inc.
Current roles include:
Director
Incorporated
Florida in 2010
Active Status
6 Years in Business
9 Officers Found
Connections
A connection is made when two people are officers, directors, or otherwise associated with the same company. Sabrina has eight known connections and has the most companies in common with Mustafa Aurakzai.
Mustafa Aurakzai
Director for The Durand Jirga, Inc.
Abdul Hadi Katawazi
Officer for The Durand Jirga, Inc.
Seddique Mateen
Director for The Durand Jirga, Inc.
Mary Seddique
Director for The Durand Jirga, Inc.
Abdul-Rahman Ahmadi
Previous Director for The Durand Jirga, Inc.
Suraya Khadim
Previous Director for The Durand Jirga, Inc.
Abdul G Ashrat Modjaded
Previous Director for The Durand Jirga, Inc.
Qasim Tarin
Previous Director for The Durand Jirga, Inc.
*****
In part from Associated Press: Some of Seddique Mir Mateen’s shows were taped and later posted on YouTube. During one episode, a sign in the background read: “Long live the U.S.A! Long live Afghanistan. … Afghans are the best friends to the U.S.A.”
But a former Afghan official said the “Durand Jirga Show” appears on Payam-e-Afghan, a California-based channel that supports ethnic solidarity with the Afghan Taliban, which are mostly Pashtun. Viewers from Pashtun communities in the United States regularly call in to the channel to espouse support for Pashtun domination of Afghanistan over the nation’s minorities, including Hazaras, Tajiks and Uzbeks, the official said.
The “Durand Jirga Show” expresses support for the Taliban, has an anti-Pakistan slant, complains about foreigners in Afghanistan and criticizes U.S. actions there, the official said. Seddique Mir Mateen lavished praise on current Afghan President Ashraf Ghani when he appeared on the show in January 2014, but he has since denounced the Ghani government, according to the official, who said that on Saturday, Seddique Mateen appeared on the show dressed in military fatigues and used his program to criticize the current Afghan government.
He also announced on that show that he would run in the next Afghan presidential election, said the official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be linked to coverage of the shooting.
Death is the Sentence, Orlando Mosque, Seminary, Gangs
Father of Orlando shooter hosted political show on Afghan-Pakistan issues
Reuters: The Afghan-born father of Omar Mateen, the man police identified as the gunman who killed 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Florida on Sunday, hosted a political show on an U.S.-based Afghan satellite channel that took a hard anti-Pakistan line.
ijreview
In an interview with NBC News on Sunday, Seddique Mateen, also known as Mir Siddique, said his son’s rampage had “nothing to do with religion.”
He described an incident in downtown Miami in which his son saw two men kissing in front of his wife and child and he became very angry.
“We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident,” NBC News quoted him as saying. “We weren’t aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country.”
Seddique Mateen lives in Florida, according to public records, but it was not immediately known when came to the United States. He did not immediately return messages left on his phone, which appeared to be turned off, or respond to an email.
Omar Khatab, the owner of the California-based satellite channel Payam-e-Afghan, said in an interview that Seddique Mateen occasionally bought time on his channel to broadcast a show called “Durand Jirga,” which focused in part on the disputed Durand Line, the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan demarcated by the Indian subcontinent’s former British rulers.
“Three or four times a year, he would show up in Southern California,” Khatab said in a phone interview on Sunday. “He’d talk for about two to three hours. He’d buy his own time and come here and broadcast and leave within a day.”
Khatab said Seddique Mateen’s political views were largely anti-Pakistan.
One of Seddique Mateen’s videos refers to the “killer ISI” – the acronym for Pakistan’s main military-run intelligence service – and says the agency is the “creator and father of the world’s terrorism.”
U.S. officials have accused Pakistani intelligence of backing violence against U.S. targets in Afghanistan, although Pakistan denies the allegations.
A U.S. congressman said Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old Florida resident and U.S. citizen, may have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group.
U.S. officials cautioned that they had no immediate evidence of any direct connection with Islamic State or other foreign extremist group, nor had they uncovered any contacts between the gunman and any such group.
Fifty-three people were wounded in the rampage. It was the deadliest single U.S. mass shooting incident, eclipsing the 2007 massacre of 32 people at Virginia Tech university.
Seddique Mateen interviewed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in January 2014, according to a video posted on his YouTube channel. The interview touched on economic development and youth unemployment in Afghanistan. Khatab said Mateen conducted the interview in Kabul and brought it to California for broadcast.
*****
The connections are deeper, they include an American suicide bomber that the Orlando shooter Omar met with face to face. Then there is al Nusra and the Khorasan Group. The suicide bomber was Abusalha and his father is a Palestinian. Read the whole story here.
Omar Mateen had been investigated by the FBI twice before, in 2013 and then in 2014. The first investigation took place in 2013 when he made inflammatory comments to co-workers that indicated sympathy for terrorists. He was investigated and interviewed twice but the FBI was “unable to verify the substance of his comments,” FBI Assistant Special Agent In charge Ronald Hopper said.
Then in 2014, Hopper said,Mateen was investigated and interviewed again, this time for suspected connections to Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, an American citizen who became a suicide bomber in Syria in 2014. Hooper said Mateen’s contact with Abu-Sallah was minimal and it was deemed that “he did not constitute a substantive threat at that time.
*****
FNC: The gunman who murdered at least 50 people in a Florida nightclub early Sunday morning was a follower of a controversial gang leader-turned-bank robber who was released from prison last year despite warnings from prosecutors that he would recruit people to carry out violent acts, sources told FoxNews.com.
Omar Mateen, whose bloody siege inside a packed Orlando gay nightclub ended when SWAT teams stormed the building and killed him, was a radical Muslim who followed Marcus Dwayne Robertson, a law enforcement source said.
Marcus Dwayne Robertson, a former U.S. Marine known to his supporters at his Orlando-based Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary as “Abu Taubah.”
“It is no coincidence that this happened in Orlando,” said a law enforcement source familiar with Robertson’s history of recruiting terrorists and inciting violence. “Mateen was enrolled in [Robertson’s online] Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary.”
Robertson and several associates were rounded up for questioning early Sunday, according to law enforcement sources, a development his attorney refused to confirm or deny.
“No comment,” Corey Cohen said in an email reply when asked if his longtime client was in custody. Police also did not confirm or deny picking up Robertson.
This undated image provided by the Orlando Police Department shows Omar Mateen, the shooting suspect at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., Sunday, June 12, 2016. The gunman opened fire inside the crowded gay nightclub early Sunday before dying in a gunfight with SWAT officers, police said. (Orlando Police Department via AP) (The Associated Press)
FoxNews.com has reported extensively on Robertson, a former U.S. Marine who served as a bodyguard to the Blind Sheik involved in the 1993 World Trade Center Attack and led a gang of New York bank robbers called “Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves” before resurfacing in Orlando, where he started an Islamic seminary.
The school, recently renamed the Timbuktu Seminary, is operated by Robertson, a 47-year-old firebrand known to his thousands of followers as Abu Taubah.
Robertson, who recently spent four years in prison in Florida on illegal weapons and tax fraud charges before being released by a Florida judge one year ago, has openly and enthusiastically preached against homosexuality. The targets of Mateen’s bloody rampage were members of the gay community of Orlando, an hour’s drive from the 29-year-old’s home in Fort Pierce.
Prosecutors said wiretaps from 2011 proved Robertson instructed one of his students, Jonathan Paul Jimenez, to file false tax returns to obtain a tax refund to pay for travel to Mauritania for terror training.
Jimenez studied with Robertson for a year in preparation for his travel to Mauritania, where he would study and further his training in killing, suicide bombing, and identifying and murdering U.S. military personnel. He pleaded guilty in 2012 to lying to authorities and conspiring to defraud the IRS and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.
Robertson was arrested on a firearms charge in 2011 and pleaded guilty in January 2012. On March 14, 2012, federal authorities charged him with conspiring to defraud the IRS, which he was convicted of in December 2013.
While in the John E. Polk Correctional Facility in Seminole County, Robertson was considered so dangerous, he was kept in shackles and assigned his own guards. Whenever he was transported to court, a seven-car caravan of armed federal marshals escorted him. He was initially moved into solitary confinement after prison authorities believed he was radicalizing up to 36 of his fellow prisoners.
In seeking enhanced terrorism charges during sentencing for the two crimes, prosecutors said Robertson has been involved with terrorism activities, “…focused on training others to commit violent acts as opposed to committing them himself” … “overseas instead of inside the United States.”
Yet efforts by federal prosecutors to tack on another 10 years to his sentence, based on enhanced terrorism charges under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, were not persuasive enough for U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell, who freed Robertson in June 2015 with time served.
Robertson had denied being involved with terrorist activities, in court and in postings on social media and in statements from his attorney to Fox News.
Federal law enforcement has been familiar with Robertson since 1991.
As a former U.S. Marine who became the leader known as “Ali Baba” of a notorious New York gang “Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves”, Robertson and his crew robbed more than 10 banks, private homes and post offices at gunpoint, shot three police officers, and attacked one cop after he was injured by a homemade pipe bomb.
During the same period, federal authorities claimed Robertson served as a bodyguard to Omar Abdel Rahman, nicknamed the “Blind Sheik,” who led the terrorist group that carried out the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and donated more than $300,000 in stolen funds to mosques he attended, both claims Robertson denied. Robertson has adamantly denied the claims.
After he was arrested in 1991 along with most of the other members of the gang, prosecutors cut a deal with Robertson, and let him serve four years in prison before going to work undercover for the FBI between 2004 and 2007 to document terrorists’ plans and networks in Africa, Egypt and the United States.
Many of the court’s filings, including Robertson’s own testimony from his most recent criminal case, remain under federal seal, which means only prosecutors, the judge and the defense can review the records.
Cohen told FoxNews.com in a statement that his client “never taught or condoned violence in any way.”
“In fact for his federal case the judge did not find terrorist acts, which led to his sentence of time served,” Cohen sai
