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INITIATIVE
Domestic Terrorism Post-9/11 (2001-2011)
During the ten years following September 11th, 2001 there were over 100 incidents of "home-grown" or domestic terrorism in the United States. To provide a valuable resource on this topic, the Crime Commission has compiled an extensive database of incidents including attacks, plots, support for, membership in, or connections with a terrorist organization. While information about terrorist incidents are available elsewhere, both on and off the Internet, the Crime Commission's database is unique in providing a centralized, concise, user-friendly, and visually engaging informational resource on domestic terrorism. read more »
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February 23, 2003
Florida & Virginia
Sami al-Arian,
Hatem Naji Fariz
Support: Material
Palestinian Islamic Jihad
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Palestinian Islamic Jihad
On February 23, 2003, Sami al-Arian, a legal U.S. resident from Kuwait, was arrested for being the North American leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad ("PIJ"). Federal prosecutors in Tampa, FL, accused al-Arian of raising money to finance PIJ, along with Hatem Naji Fariz, a U.S. citizen of Palestinian descent, and two other co-defendants.
Charges against al-Arian included conspiracy to murder or maim people overseas and conspiracy to commit racketeering. While al-Arian was a vocal opponent of Israel, he denied supporting terrorist activity.
On December 6, 2005, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida found al-Arian and Fariz not guilty on several counts, with a mistrial declared for those remaining (two other co-defendants were acquitted). Rather than be retried, both Fariz and al-Arian accepted plea agreements. The court sentenced Fariz to three years in prison on July 25, 2006, for conspiring to provide services to PIJ. On May 1, 2006, U.S. District Judge James Moody gave al-Arian the maximum sentence under the plea agreement, four years and nine months in prison, followed by deportation. Al-Arian served most of his time during the trial and while awaiting sentencing, but was held throughout 2007 on civil contempt charges, later increased to criminal contempt charges after al-Arian twice refused to testify in front of a federal grand jury. On September 2, 2008, he was released from prison and placed under house arrest. The contempt case is pending trial.
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March, 2003
New York, NY
Iyman Faris
Plot: Bomb
Al Qaeda,
Christopher Paul,
Nuradin Abdi
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Al Qaeda supporter plots attack on the Brooklyn Bridge
Iyman Faris, a truck driver and naturalized U.S. citizen from Kashmir, was arrested in March 2003 for collaborating with Al Qaeda on a plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge.
Faris attended a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan in late 2000. While there, he met with Al Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad to discuss various plots, including a plan to cut the suspension cords on the Brooklyn Bridge. When he returned to the U.S. in 2002, he examined the Brooklyn Bridge and used coded messages to communicate with Al Qaeda about the plot to destroy the bridge. Faris also plotted with two other Columbus, OH, residents, Nuradin Abdi and Christopher Paul, to bomb a shopping mall.
Faris pleaded guilty to casing the Brooklyn Bridge, as well as researching and providing information to Al Qaeda regarding possible terrorist attacks in the U.S. on May 1, 2003, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison on October 28, 2003.
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April 2003
Noonday, TX
Judith Bruey,
Edward Feltus,
William Krar
Plot: Chemical Weapon
Anti-Government,
White Supremacy
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Anti-government white supremacists stockpile firearms, pipe bombs and a chemical weapon
In April 2003 Noonday, TX, residents William Krar and his wife Judith Bruey were arrested after police searched their home and storage facilities and found machine guns, 60 pipe bombs, half a million rounds of ammunition and a poison gas bomb, consisting of 800mg of nearly pure sodium cyanide already packed into an ammunition canister. They were indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in May 2003 for possessing chemicals to make a dangerous weapon.
Authorities became suspicious of Krar and Bruey, both U.S. citizens, in fall of 2002 when they sent a package to U.S. citizen Edward Feltus, who was a member of the New Jersey Militia—a white supremacist, anti-government group. The package contained forged identity cards for places including the United Nations and the Defense Intelligence Agency and a note saying "we would hate to have this fall into the wrong hands." The package was delivered to the wrong address, and police were notified. Meanwhile, Feltus was creating his own stockpile of weapons in a Vermont safe house. It is not known if he was collaborating with Krar and Bruey. Authorities are still unsure what Krar planned to do with his weapons stockpile; Krar told authorities he was neither a terrorist nor a separatist and had no desire to hurt anyone.
Krar pleaded guilty in November 2003 to possessing a dangerous chemical weapon and on May 4, 2004, received a prison sentence of 11 years and 4 months, along with a fine of $29,600. Bruey pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess a chemical weapon and received a prison sentence of four years and nine months. Feltus pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the transportation of false identification documents and received one year and six months probation and a fine of $1,500.
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June 27, 2003
Virginia
Muhammad Aatique,
Hammad Abdur-Raheem,
Ali Asad Chandia,
Seifullah Chapman,
Ibrahim al-Hamdi,
Khwaja Mahmood Hasan,
Masoud Ahmad Khan,
Yong Ki Kwon,
Randall Royer,
Donald Thomas Surratt,
Ali al-Timimi
Support: Personnel
Lashkar-i-Taiba
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Virginia Jihad Network
On June 27, 2003, a federal grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia indicted 11 members of the Virginia Jihad Network for weapons offenses and conspiring to aid the terrorist group Lashkar-i-Taiba, who typically launch attacks in India or against Indian targets. Those indicted included: Muhammad Aatique, a legal U.S. resident from Pakistan; Khwaja Mahmood Hasan, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan; Yong Ki Kwon, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Korea; Ibrahim al-Hamdi, a legal U.S. resident from Yemen; and U.S. citizens Donald Thomas Surratt, Randall Royer, Hammad Abdur-Raheem, Masoud Ahmad Khan, Seifullah Chapman, and two others. U.S. citizens, Ali al-Timimi, who was the spiritual leader of the group, and Ali Asad Chandia, who provided material support to Lashkar-i-Taiba, were also later arrested.
Members of the Virginia Jihad Network trained with paintball guns in the woods and several members attended terrorist training camps abroad. Authorities arrested the men as a preventative measure after monitoring their communications and learning of their interest in terrorist activities.
All of the men were prosecuted in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Six members of the group pleaded guilty between August 2003 and January 2004. Three went to trial and were convicted. Between November 2003 and August 2005, the convicted members of the group received sentences ranging from just over three years in prison to life imprisonment. Two members of the group were acquitted, one of whom was later convicted of lying to a grand jury and obstructing justice and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Al-Timimi was convicted on April 25, 2005, for soliciting others to levy war against the U.S. and providing services to the Taliban. He was later sentenced to life in prison. Chandia was convicted in June 2006 of aiding a terrorist group and later sentenced to 15 years in prison.
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August 8, 2003
U.S. and Pakistan
Uzair Paracha
Support: Material
Al Qaeda
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Pakistani-American provides financial support to Al Qaeda
Uzair Paracha, a legal U.S. resident from Pakistan, was indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on August 8, 2003, on charges of conspiracy to provide and providing material support to Al Qaeda, conspiracy to provide and providing funds, goods, or services to Al Qaeda, and identification document fraud committed to facilitate terrorism.
Paracha assisted Majid Khan, a Pakistani Al Qaeda associate, by picking up and sending mail for him. He also used Khan's credit cards to make them appear active while Khan was out of the country, and contacted various governmental agencies in an attempt to obtain travel documents Khan needed to return to the U.S., allegedly for a plot to bomb gas stations. Paracha was introduced to Khan by his father, Pakistani real-estate developer Saifullah Paracha, who is allegedly a business associate of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The elder Paracha was taken into custody for questioning in Thailand in 2003 and has been held at Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp since September 2004 because of his connections to Al Qaeda.
Uzair Paracha was convicted on November 25, 2005, and on July 20, 2006, the court sentenced him to 30 years in prison.
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