Category Archives: Middle East

Militant Islam Mentoring Program in U.S. Prisons

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A senate hearing in 2006 delivered focused testimony on terror cells forming in U.S. prisons. The complexities of Islam in prison came to the fore in the United States through the disruption of an alleged terrorist plot in Los Angeles in 2005.  Prosecutors charge the plot was hatched in prison by a group of Muslim converts.   The case added to the national debate on how Islam is taught in our prisons, as well as on the American approach to incarceration itself.

This is not a new phenomenon however, it is much worse today. An clear example of the prison conditions is found in this indictment from California in 2004. Then there is yet another from New York which has many moving parts and a host of militants.

This brings us today. This particular person proves the dramatic change and mentoring to militant Islam. The Department of Justice promotes faith-based programs and outreach to Imams and mosques where the DoJ clearly has the history of cases from Jose Padilla, al Qaeda and all prior terror cases.

Gangster-turned-radical imam may have radicalized dozens behind bars

A former U.S. Marine who became a Muslim radical, gang leader and bodyguard to the blind sheik behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing is so adept at turning fellow prisoners into potential extreme jihadists that Florida prison officials have kept him in shackles and in solitary confinement for the last three years, and federal authorities want a judge to tack on another three decades.

Marcus Dwayne Robertson, a Muslim extremist also known as Imam Abu Taubah who once led a murderous New York gang dubbed “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” before resurfacing decades later as a radical imam at a Florida mosque, has been held at the John E. Polk Correctional Facility in Seminole County, Fla. Currently imprisoned on a weapons conviction, he faces sentencing on June 26 for a tax fraud conviction. Federal authorities want him locked up and kept away from other inmates out of fear he will turn them into dangerous jihadists, as he converted a number of fellow inmates including a white supremacist.
“He is good at selling the dream.”
– Former associate of Marcus Dwayne Robertson
“The United States believes that the defendant is still an extremist, just as he was in the early 1990s,” prosecutors said in recent court filings in which they alleged Robertson continues to be a terrorism threat. “The only differences are that the defendant is now focused on training others to commit violent acts as opposed to committing them himself, and the violent acts are to occur overseas instead of inside the United States.”

Robertson, 46, who served time in the 1990s for crimes related to his days as a Brooklyn gang leader, has been imprisoned in Florida in 2011 on a gun charge. In just one year behind bars and among the general population, he allegedly radicalized 36 fellow inmates. Prison officials moved the persuasive imam into solitary confinement in 2012, where he has remained since. He faces sentencing later this month on a tax fraud conviction that prosecutors hope will keep him in prison for more than three decades. The U.S. attorney is using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to seek an enhanced sentence for Robertson.

Robertson’s attorney wants his client, who has been held for four years, released immediately with time served, but federal authorities are believed to fear that, if freed, Robertson could use his Orlando-area mosque to convince more young Muslims to go overseas and take up arms against the west.

“He is good at selling the dream,” said one of Robertson’s former colleagues.


Robertson’s Orlando-based Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary is not taking students while he fights charges against him. Robertson has been held in a windowless cell in an otherwise empty wing of the prison facility and kept shackled to the floor with an armed guard assigned exclusively to him around the clock, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit he filed against the government pro se in 2012 that was ultimately dismissed. A person familiar with Robertson’s case confirmed the conditions and told FoxNews.com prison officials fear Robertson’s military skills, which include special operations training, make him a threat to escape.

A prison spokeswoman told FoxNews.com that Robertson was put in solitary confinement “for his own protection” and is now held there by his own choice. But the tight security around Robertson extends outside the prison, with at least a 7-car armed caravan of federal marshals escorting him to his court appearances. Robertson’s attorney said his client believes he was put in solitary confinement in retaliation for filing a federal lawsuit against the government.

“Marcus Robertson has never tried to radicalize anyone,” said Robertson’s attorney Daniel Brodersen, who believes his client should be released immediately. “He’s tried to practice his religion in prison to the best of his ability.”

Over the last 30 years, Robertson has traveled a bizarre path that has seen him serve in the U.S. military, lead a murderous New York gang, consort with top Al Qaeda associates, go undercover for the FBI in Egypt, Africa and the U.S., and ultimately end up in a federal lockup facing more than 30 years in prison. Those who know him say Robertson became disenchanted while in the military, where he claims to have served in the elite counter-terrorism unit Joint Special Operations Command before leaving the service as a conscientious objector.

National Archives records confirm Robertson’s service from May 16, 1986 to May 1994, in the U.S. Marine Corps 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company as a field radio operator, but records indicate he was released from active duty in March 1990, discharged in the rank of corporal with training in radiotelegraph, scuba diving, marksmanship, parachuting, terrorism counteraction, surveillance, infantry patrolling and finance.

In early 1991, Robertson joined with other former Muslim security guards to form a robbery gang they called the ‘Forty Thieves’ with Robertson as the leader known as “Ali Baba.”

They 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.

Robertson also served as a bodyguard to Omar Abdel Rahman, nicknamed the “Blind Sheik,” who was part of the extremist Islamic group accused of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Government records claim Robertson donated more than $300,000 in stolen funds to mosques he attended.

After he was arrested in 1991 along with most of the other members of the Forty Thieves gang, Robertson cut a deal with prosecutors, serving just four years in prison while others remain behind bars.

Part of the pact involved Robertson going undercover for the FBI to document terrorists’ plans and networks in Africa, Egypt and the United States.

According to a source familiar with Robertson’s history, Robertson was thrown out of the program in Feb. 8, 2007 after he attacked his CIA handler in Africa.

Robertson quickly reinvented himself, founding the Orlando-based Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary in 2008 and taking his Muslim name. He traveled the world, teaching at universities, including some in the United States. Videos of his lectures show him preaching against gays, “devil worshipers,” non-Muslims and such American pop culture icons as cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants, who he says is “gay.”

Under Islamic law, the Brooklyn-born Robertson married two women, Zulaika and Itisha Wills. Between them, and children he fathered outside these marriages, Robertson has 15 children. Through his teachings, videos and social media, he recruited an extensive network of followers in Florida and New York, an estimated 150 who reportedly are a concern for federal law enforcement.

Robertson was arrested on a firearms charge in 2011 and pleaded guilty in January, 2012. Just two months later, federal authorities charged him in with conspiring to defraud the IRS. Through wiretaps, the federal government documented interactions between Robertson and one of his student, Jonathan Paul Jimenez, who Robertson allegedly instructed to file false tax returns to obtain a tax refund to pay for travel to Mauritania, Northwest Africa, for study and violent jihadist training.

Jimenez, who reportedly knew Robertson for 11 years and, by his own admission, trained with the imam 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, pleaded guilty Aug. 28, 2012, to making a false statement to a federal agency in a matter involving international terrorism and conspiring to defraud the IRS, and was sentenced April 18, 2013, to 10 years in federal prison.

While Robertson has been awaiting sentencing in the tax fraud charge, prosecutors have built a case against him for enhanced sentencing, alleging he’s involved with terrorism activities.

Robertson denies sending Jimenez overseas “to commit violent jihad.”

“The prosecution is attempting to characterize me as a ‘Teacher of Terrorists.’ … They are attempting to twist my statements to fit into a terrorist plot,” he said in a statement that appeared on his website. In reality, they know I am not a terrorist teacher.”

Baltimore Mayor Partners with Islamic Terror Group

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Terror Group: 

Islamic Relief gave $118K to terror-linked groups
September 21, 2014
New tax documents reveal that Islamic Relief USA (IR-USA), the largest Islamic charity in the United States, gave over $118,000 in grants in 2013 to entities with previous connections to terrorism.

IR-USA’s 2013 tax return, which was filed in July 2014, showed that the charity gave $45,495 in grants to the Florida branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the successful 2007 prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for financing the terrorist organization Hamas.

Their form 990 also shows that IR-USA gave $40,000 to the radical mosque Dar Al-Hijrah in Falls Church, Virginia, for a “zakat partner program.” Deceased terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki served as the mosque’s imam leading up to and immediately following the 9/11 attacks.

The tax schedule also documented almost $32,909 in grants to Services for Human Advancement and Resource Enhancement (SHARE) affiliates in Atlanta and Indianapolis of the Muslim Alliance of North America (MANA), a group which was founded by an unindicted co-conspirator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

IR-USA has been involved in several scandals in recent years: Money Jihad previously reported that IR-USA gives about $5 to $10 million per year to its parent charity Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), which has recently been banned from Israel for funding Hamas. IR-USA was also implicated in fraudulent multi-million dollar valuations of its drug stockpiles. More recently, Islamic Relief affiliates have described their own partnerships with the pro-Hamas front charity IHH to conduct operations in rebel-controlled territory in Syria.

Baltimore Mayor:      

Baltimore’s “Space to Destroy” Mayor Working w/Terror Linked Islamic Group

If you want to create “Space to Destroy”, why not go all the way?

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlins-Blake is all about creating “Space to Destroy” for misguided youth. But most of Baltimore still hasn’t been destroyed. It’s time to bring in the talented folks who destroyed Syria to get the job done.

Ann at the invaluable Refugee Resettlement Watch blog has the story.

Islamic Relief USA is helping immigrants and refugees to find promising opportunities as instruments of economic and community growth in Baltimore.

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlins-Blake recognized the successes of this program at a local film screening this past Wednesday. She congratulated prospective home buyers and urged non-profits to continue supporting this work.

In Next City’s film “Building Resilience in Baltimore through Immigration,” immigrants are portrayed as key actors in societal change.

Islamic migrants are unquestionably key actors in social change. Just ask the Christians of Syria… if you can find them.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced at her inauguration in December 2011 that she would work to grow the city by 10,000 families within a decade.

“I am inspired by the optimism, determination, and resilience of immigrant communities living in our city and their ability to rebuild a brighter future after great adversity,” Rawlings-Blake said in a statement.

And nothing says great adversity like Baltimore. Now with more Afghans and Sudanese.

The IRC building sure had its share of energy! The place bustled with Bhutanese, Sudanese and Afghans, IRC staff, volunteer tutors and people dropping off donations of clothing and household items.

The latest census delivered good news for Baltimore: for the first time in 60 years, the city’s population increased. Many people, including Ruben, attribute that to the initiative to attract and retain immigrants and refugees. But the population increase was small, and it’s not clear yet whether or not the mayor’s plan will revive the city. Critics worry that immigrants are actually a drain on the economy.

Elements of the Islamic Relief Worldwide network has been accused of being linked to terrorist groups. The UAE and Israel have outlawed it. Obama works closely with Islamic Relief USA and its leadership is interlinked with the Brotherhood’s front groups such as the Muslim American Society and ISNA.

But I guess you can ask their public relations director about it.

Sheikh Omar Shahin identified himself as IRUSA’s Public Relations Director in 2010 and a bio stated he held the position in 2007.

Shahin raised money for the Holy Land Foundation and also held a position with KindHearts, both charities shut down for funding Hamas. He also hosted events by the Islamic Association for Palestine, a Hamas-tied group that is now defunct.

In 2002, Shahin preached: “Prophet Mohammed peace be upon him said: ‘You will keep on fighting with the Jews until the fight reaches the east of Jordan river then the stones and trees will say: oh Muslim, oh (servant) slaves of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him…’”

Or better not ask him. If the Pakistani settlers in Baltimore hoping for talking rocks and trees to lead them to the Jews, they’re going to be disappointed.

Reprinted from: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/baltimores-space-to-destroy-mayor-working-wterror-linked-islamic-group/

 

Bergdahl Case Delayed, 10 More Detainees Approved

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Bowe Bergdahl’s court martial was to begin in July and has been postponed until September, reasons cited is more time needed for discovery. Yet his lawyer is using lawfare on behalf of his client.

Not only did Bergdahl’s platoon mates know without question of his desertion in 2009, but the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen himself knew the exact details as did General McChrystal. There was in fact a private meeting that took place where details by his platoon mates were explained and non-disclosures were also forced to be signed.

Bergdahl wants court to disqualify courts-martial general

WASHINGTON (AP) – Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl (boh BURG’-dahl), the soldier who left his post in Afghanistan and was held by the Taliban for five years, is asking a military appellate court to disqualify the general with broad discretion in his case.

Bergdahl’s attorney, Eugene Fidell, says Bergdahl filed the request Friday in the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals in Washington.

Bergdahl wants the court to disqualify Gen. Mark Milley because he has a personal interest in being confirmed as the next Army chief of staff.

The Idaho native, who is charged with desertion, was exchanged last year for five senior Taliban officials held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Bergdahl’s preliminary hearing, which is similar to a civilian grand jury, is set for September. From there, his case could be referred for trial.

*** Meanwhile the release of the Taliban 5 that were swapped for Bergdahl has been delayed until more monitoring and managing details can be worked out between the United States, the Taliban and Qatar. Then 10 more Gitmo detainees are chosen to be released by the end of this month, June.

Expect Up to 10 Guantanamo Transfers Within Weeks

The Obama administration intends to transfer up to 10 detainees from the Guantanamo detention center to other countries this month, a senior defense official told Defense One. These would be the first since transfers came to a pregnant pause in January.

“You’re likely to see some progress in June,” the defense official said Wednesday. “I just talked to the National Security Council and State [Department], so we can say maybe up to 10 — no specific timeframe, but in the near future. And then we’re actively engaged with a number of countries in additional negotiations regarding the 57 that are eligible. But sometime this summer, maybe June, up to 10.”

Of the prison’s 122 detainees, 57 have been cleared for transfer to other countries by the Pentagon as part of an interagency review.

Last year, the Obama administration sped up transfers in a race to empty the detention center before the Republican-led Congress could block attempts to close it. Those transfers came to a halt in January. In April, the Washington Post reported they might start again, and today, the official told Defense One that some June transfers are likely.

These would be the first prisoners to leave Guantanamo under new Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. In February, he replaced Chuck Hagel, who clashed with the administration over his recalcitrance to approve transfers. Ultimately, Hagel transferred 44 Guantanamo detainees — more than half of those in the weeks before he stepped down in November. Still, that was ten times more than his predecessor, Leon Panetta, who transferred just four.

 

Carter wants to close Guantanamo. “He has also said that he wants to take a holistic approach,” the official said. “So he wants to focus on the 57 who are cleared for transfer, but he wants to see what we’re doing with the rest of those. So he’s thinking about all 122, not just the 57.”

The official said Carter was working hard on the issue. “I think it’s fair to say he’s fully engaged in all things Guantanamo — transfers, dealing with the Senate and the House and the Hill, talking with the White House on a regular basis,” the official said.

For Carter and others in the Obama administration, the official said, “There’s a been a lot of oversight and follow-up on the Hill, explaining why a specific transfer meets the statute; why somebody, who hypothetically is in Guantanamo because they’re not a choir boy, that threat can be substantially mitigated.”

On Wednesday, the Senate began considering the 2016 defense authorization bill, or NDAA, which over the years has become the main battleground for the fight to keep or close the prison.

Both existing versions of House and Senate NDAA would extend current restrictions on transferring prisoners to the United States, and restore stricter provisions stripped out in past years. In some cases, they would also add new obstacles, essentially blocking many of the third-party transfers. The House version would withhold 25 percent of Carter’s budget as punishment for what House Armed Services Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, characterized as foot-dragging on providing documents related to the detainees swapped for Bowe Bergdahl.

The Senate Armed Services Committee inserted a compromise provision drawn up by Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.: the president can close the prison if he can draw up a plan that gets Congressional approval; if not, stricter restrictions go into effect.

“This legislation contains a bipartisan compromise on how to address the challenge of the detention facility of Guantanamo Bay,” McCain said in his opening statement on the floor Wednesday. “President Obama has said from day one of his presidency that he wants to close Guantanamo, but six and a half years into his administration, the President has never provided a plan to do so.”

SASC Ranking Member Jack Reed, D-R.I., voted against the bill and spoke against it on the floor. “One problem is the familiar, oft-debated and very complicated challenge of Guantanamo,” he said. “While we have had some carefully crafted compromise language in this bill, there are other provisions that reverse progress, particularly on the overseas transfers of detainees.”

The White House has threatened to veto the NDAAs as drafted, arguing they not only move backward rather than forward on closing the facility, but that portions are unconstitutional infringements on the executive.

“The bill also continues unwarranted restrictions, and imposes onerous additional ones, regarding detainees at Guantanamo Bay,” the administration policy statement on the Senate NDAA reads, repeating the veto threat. “These provisions undermine our national security by limiting our ability to act as our military, diplomatic, and other national security professionals deem appropriate in a given case.”

The administration also specifically rejected the provision touted by McCain, who has long supported closing the facility, saying, “This process for congressional approval is unnecessary and overly restrictive.”

Blumenthal Benghazi Testimony Date Set

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Without media, behind closed doors…but under oath?

A Interim Benghazi investigation report dated May 2015 by the Congressional Benghazi committee is found here.

Hillary Clinton’s next appearance before the committee is delayed due to the State Department slow walking document request production.

“The State Department has told the Committee that it cannot certify that it has turned over all documents responsive to the Committee’s request regarding the former Secretary’s emails. Absent access to the server that housed the former Secretary’s private emails, the Committee has no way to verify the assertions: (1) the former Secretary has produced the full universe of emails related to Benghazi and Libya; and (2) the server has been wiped clean and is currently void of any data that may reflect any email sent or received during her tenure as Secretary of State, including during the relevant time frame….,” the report said.

Because the State Department has been slow rolling the release of the Hillary emails, a judge determined the exact dates for release for which the State Department must comply.

“It is difficult to conduct a fact-centric congressional investigation when the Administration impedes the Committee’s progress by repeatedly failing to answer the Committee’s requests or to provide information in a timely manner,” wrote the South Carolina Republican.

“The largest impediment to being able to write the final, definitive accounting of what happened before, during and after the terrorist attacks in Benghazi is the Executive Branch itself.”

But Gowdy, who also has asked Clinton to appear before his panel, credits his committee with uncovering thousands of new emails and documents related to the administration’s handling of the attack that left four Americans dead.

Gowdy also said the panel wants to interview at least 60 more current and former officials, including Clinton, Susan Rice, Patrick Kennedy and three of Clinton’s top aides during her tenure as secretary of State: Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan and Huma Abedin.

Clinton has indicated she is willing to appear before the panel, but only once. Gowdy and the committee have requested two sessions, and Gowdy has also insisted she turn over to a third party the personal email server she used to store emails while at State.

Democrats on the GOP-controlled committee again on Friday dismissed the probe as little more than an attempt to smear the former secretary of State amid her presidential campaign.

“At every turn, the Select Committee comes up with a new excuse to further delay its work and then blames its glacial pace on someone else,” said ranking member Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., in a statement. “Like the investigation itself, this memo is short on substance, short on accomplishments, and short on a plan for how to get this investigation done.”

Ex-Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal to testify in private on Benghazi

A former aide to Hillary Clinton has agreed to testify in private later this month before the House panel investigating the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

Sidney Blumenthal, a long-time associate of the Clinton family, will appear for a closed-door witness deposition on June 16 at 10 a.m. The deposition with the House Select Committee on Benghazi will come just three days after Hillary Clinton launches her presidential campaign during a rally in New York.

The State Department made about 300 emails public last month that showed Clinton received about 25 memos from Blumenthal regarding Libya while she was secretary, including one that blamed the 2012 Benghazi attack on a “sacrilegious” Internet video depicting the prophet Mohammad. Blumenthal sent another memo the next day citing “sensitive sources” who believed it was an act of terrorism.

Blumenthal, who previously worked for former President Bill Clinton’s administration, most recently worked as an employee of the Clinton Foundation and served as an informal adviser to Hillary Clinton when she was in President Obama’s Cabinet. He also had business transactions with Libya’s transitional government.

The emails released to the public showed that Clinton forwarded some of Blumenthal’s missives to her senior staff at the State Department without identifying him as the source.

One exchange between Clinton aide Jake Sullivan and Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who died in the Benghazi attack, referred to Blumenthal as “HRC friend.”

The Benghazi panel, which is chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), has not yet announced when it will call Hillary Clinton to testify.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the Benghazi Committee’s top Democrat, has accused the GOP of tactics “straight out the partisan playbook of discredited Republican investigations” by leaking news of the subpoena before it was served and using two armed U.S. marshals to deliver it to Blumenthal.

Clinton downplayed Blumenthal’s influence on her tenure as Secretary of State when asked about the relationship last month.

“I have many, many old friends, and I always think that it’s important when you get into politics to have friends that you had before you were in politics and to understand what’s on their minds. He’s been a friend of mine for a long time — he sent me unsolicited emails, which I passed on in some instances, and I see that that’s just part of the give-and-take,” Clinton told reporters.

The Clinton Foundation paid Blumenthal about $10,000 a month while he worked for the organization, according to reports.

 

Obama Regime, Full Anti-Semite

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It’s Nuclear: On Iran, Obama and the Scope of Anti-Semitism

Does the president understand the depths—and destructive implications—of the ayatollahs’ radical views on Jews?

Yesterday, Jeffrey Herf, a professor of modern European history at the University of Maryland and the author of a number of books on Nazi Germany, published an article in The Times of Israel called “Obama and his American critics on Iran’s anti-Semitism,” which is worth a read. In it, Herf examines the “unusual” public discourse that has begun to swell—a chorus he breaks down bit by bit, who wonder about the bounds of Obama’s understanding of anti-Semitism, and “how his view on that subject affects prospects for a nuclear deal to stop the ayatollahs from getting the bomb.”

Herf argues that Obama, “apparently stung by criticism that his approach to Iran is facilitating rather than preventing its path to the bomb and that he bears primary responsibility for the tensions in American-Israeli relations,” has gone on the offensive by giving an interview to The Atlantic‘s Jeffery Goldberg (read our coverage here), then hitting up Adas Israel in Washington, D.C., in what CNN called “foreign policy damage control.” Herf then cites Michael Doran’s essay in Mosaic, “A Letter to My Liberal Jewish Friends,” in which the author argues that the existence of shared values”—a tenet of Obama’s speech—”though important, was not the key issue. It was, instead, the necessary criticism of Obama’s policies towards Iran’s nuclear program.”

Herf has longed for Obama to publicly discuss his views on “the role of anti-Semitism in the government in Tehran.” He was pleased when Goldberg told Obama about his concerns in negotiating with people who are “captive to a conspiratorial anti-Semitic worldview not because they hold offensive views, but because they hold ridiculous views.” Continue Reading→