Chicago Al Qaeda

Chicago is no stranger to jihad; Jose Padilla was arrested in Chicago on charges related to his planning to set off a dirty bomb, his communications with Al Q, and other Al Q terrorists ratting him out. This set off a firestorm of controversy as years and years of endless hearings and an avalanche of court documents attest. Luckily, despite the leftist terror bar, Padilla was convicted in a civilian court in 2006.

Now we have a foreign import version hitting the airwaves: a Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) plot to launch terror attacks in India and on Denmark’s Jylland Posten for having published the Mohammed cartoons.¹ Yes, folks, the outrage from Islamists about the publication of those cartoons continues to this day.

LeT’s plot was to proceed with the help of two Pakistan-born men who lived in Chicago.

Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) is listed by the State Department as one of the three terrorist groups in Kashmir.² The two men are both Pakistani-born: David Coleman Headley, 48; and Canadian Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48. Rana has been a Chicago resident for just about ten years. Headley changed his name from Daood Gilani to a more American-sounding one, presumably to avoid suspicion.³

A criminal complaint, unsealed in a Chicago federal court on October 27, 2009, charged David Coleman Headley, 49, with conspiracy to commit murder and maim in a foreign country and with providing material support to terrorists. Federal authorities unsealed a criminal complaint against Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48, for conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorism conspiracy. Prosecutors added an additional charge against Rana the next day for providing material support to terrorist acts.⁴

Headley was arrested on his first leg of a trip to Pakistan on October 3, 2009, at Chicago O’Hare International Airport. Feds arrested Rana and raided his immigration business’s Chicago offices and the halal butcher he owned in Kinsman, Illinois, two weeks afterward.

Rana made his bail application in front of Judge Nan R. Nolan this past Friday, and then prosecutors informed the court about the discovery in October of the Al Qaeda videos.⁵

The probe is part of an international intelligence operation involving the FBI and two intelligence agencies from India: 1) the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and 2) the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). The two jihadi operatives, according to court documents, were planning attacks on the National Defence College in Delhi, Doon School in Dehradun and Woodstock in Mussourie, and other locations at LeT’s behest. Authorities have particular interest in Headley, who had made several trips to Pakistan and was in constant touch with LeT leaders.⁶

Rana is charged with supporting a conspiracy that started in Pakistan in late 2008.

The videos, one of which is called “Bombing of Denmark Embassy”, were produced by As Sahab Media, Al Qaeda’s media arm and featured Osama Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda characters.

The video on the Danish Embassy was 54 minutes long on “a DVD recovered from the living room of defendant Rana’s home on October 18, 2009″, said the feds. It was narrated by Abu Yahya al-Libi, the Libyan Al Qaeda terrorist who in 2005, walked out of (escaped from) Baghram AFB in Afghanistan along with some other high profile detainees.⁷ The video incites retaliation against Denmark for the publication of the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The DVD is also purported to show the June, 2, 2008 suicide car bomber who attacked the Danish embassy. It expressly targets the cartoonist and the Danish Prime Minister.⁸

Early in the video, footage of then Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who defended the caricatures as freedom of expression, are featured prominently. Strong comments then followed from the narrators, condemning the US, Denmark and Jewish people. (Deccan Herald)

The second “video begins with a speech by Osama bin Laden, and profiles the lives and deaths of four men who were described as jihadists, fighting for Islam. The video also included remarks by Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, who appeared on the Denmark video,” the affidavit said.

Rana admitted he and Headley were angry about the Mohammed cartoons in Jyllands-Posten.

Rana’s lawyers on Friday submitted a new bail application before the court wherein lawyers argued with definitional harisplitting; claiming that that an attack on a newspaper does not involve or promote a crime of terrorism.

Federal prosecutors disagreed; an attack on a newspaper meets the definition of the crime of terrorism.⁹

If convicted, the two of them face some stiff possible sentences: Headley: life in prison; and Rana: 30 years.