Bloodthirsty Liberal

In listening to the announcement of the arrest of a domestic terrorist suspect in our own back yard—literally—I am moved, Columbo-like to scratch my forehead and ask just one question: why now?

A pharmacy college graduate conspired with two other men on a terror plot to kill two prominent U.S. politicians and carry out a holy war by attacking shoppers in U.S. malls and American troops in Iraq, prosecutors said Wednesday.
But their plans — in which the men used code words like “peanut butter and jelly” for fighting in Somalia and “culinary school” for terrorist camps — were thwarted in part when they could not find training and were unable to buy automatic weapons, authorities said.

Tarek Mehanna worked with the men from 2001 to May 2008 on the conspiracy to “kill, kidnap, maim or injure” soldiers and two politicians who were members of the executive branch but are no longer in office, authorities said, refusing to identify the politicians. Mehanna was arrested Wednesday morning at his parents’ home in Sudbury, an upscale suburb 20 miles west of Boston.

Prosecutors said the 27-year-old Mehanna — a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy in Boston, where his father is a professor — conspired with two other men: Ahmad Abousamra, who authorities say is now in Syria, and an unnamed man, who is cooperating with authorities in the investigation.

…

Mehanna, a U.S. citizen, was arrested in November and charged with lying to the FBI in December 2006 when asked the whereabouts of Daniel Maldonado, who is now serving a 10-year prison sentence for training with al-Qaida to overthrow the Somali government.

Indeed, Steve Emerson has a pdf file of the criminal complaint against Mehanna, dated November 7, 2008.

And his arrest was no secret to anyone paying attention:

After his arrest, Mehanna developed a cult following among Muslim civil rights groups and Web sites that believed Mehanna was wrongly arrested. Web sites like the London-based cageprisoners.com, a human rights group that advocates for prisoners at Guantanamo bay and other detainees as part of the U.S. war on terror, asked supporters to write Mehanna in prison to keep up his spirits.

The site MuslimMatters.org asked supporters to pray for his release and published a letter they said Mehanna wrote from prison.

MyPetJawa, among others, reported on his arrest at the time.

So, what’s new here? Had he been released from the previous charge and gone back to his terroristic ways, or are these old charges only finally being made public? It’s not really clear, and either answer has disturbing implications.

I’m in Sudbury frequently, and if I didn’t look at young Arab men there as potential terrorists before, I’ll make sure I do so from now on.