At the center of the criminal terrorism case against Rafiq Abdus Sabir, a Florida doctor, is a May 20, 2005 meeting at co-conspirator Tarik Shah’s Bronx apartment, where Shah and Sabir took part in a ceremony swearing allegience to al Qaeda in the presence of an undercover FBI agent posing as an al Qaeda recruiter.
In the year and a half leading up to that meeting, Shah had been caught in hours of tape-recorded conversations confiding he wanted to open a martial arts studio for ‘jihad training’ and that he dreamed of being a ‘martyr on the battlefield,’ said Jennifer Rodgers, the federal prosecutor trying the case against Sabir.
Earlier this month, Shah and another defendant, Maryland cab driver Mahmud Faruq Brent, pleaded guilty to charges connected with the terrorist conspiracy.
A fourth defendant, Brooklyn bookstore owner Abdulrahman Farhane, previously was sentenced to 13 years in federal prison.
That’s the sort of account that should place various aspects of the GWOT — Patriot Act, NSA surveillance/wiretapping, etc. — into their rightful perspectives.
Unless, of course, you’re a walking zombie.
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Information Source: This article from al-Reuters.
