03rd
June 2007
FBI
agents feared but never confirmed the three men accused
of plotting to attack John F. Kennedy International
Airport in New York were linked to one of the most
wanted al Qaeda leaders, Adnan Shukrijumah, known to
have operated out of Guyana and Trinidad.
Officials tell the Blotter on
ABCNews.com that they heard repeated references to "Adnan"
during the extensive wiretaps conducted on the suspects'
telephone conversations, including calls to Guyana and
Trinidad.
There is
a $5 million reward for information on Shukrijumah,
who officials consider extremely dangerous because of
the years he spent living in the Miami area and his
known ties to al Qaeda. Some of the 9/ll hijackers
attended a south Florida mosque run by Shukrijumah's now
deceased father.
Shukrijumah left the United States
just a few months before September 2001.
A FBI spokesperson in Miami said the
squad assigned to track Shukrijumah was aware of the
case but that "no connection" to the wanted al Qaeda
suspect was found in the JFK case.
The spokesperson said the best
available information is that Shukrijumah is with top al
Qaeda leaders along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Authorities in New York today
announced arrests in the ongoing counterterror
investigation of a plot to blow up the jet fuel pipeline
that runs through JFK Airport, officials said.
The plot, authorities stress, was not
at an operational stage, and the plotters, who included
a former airport employee, had no ability to execute it.
The investigation, which appears to
have been ongoing for at least two years, was brought to
a conclusion when one suspect was about to leave
jurisdictions where U.S. authorities had the ability to
monitor his activities.
Sources said the plotters had
"indirect" links to overseas terror elements, and the
plot had links to Guyana, Trinidad and possibly Germany.
ANOTHER
PRODUCT OF BROOKLYN'S FAROUQ MOSQUE
Adnan el
Shukrijumah was born in Guyana on August 4, 1975 -- the
first born of Gulshair el Shukrijumah, a 44-year-old
radical Muslim cleric, and his 16-year-old wife. In
1985, Gulshair migrated to the United States, where he
assumed duties as the imam of the Farouq Mosque at 554
Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. The mosque, as noted
earlier, has served for many years as a center for
terrorist activities and a recruiting station for
al-Qaeda
In 1995,
the Shukrijumah family relocated to Miramar, Fla., where
Gulshair became the spiritual leader of the radical
Masjid al Hijah Mosque and imam of the Boca Raton
Islamic Center. Adnan became friends there with such
wannabe terrorists: as Jose Padilla, who planned to
detonate a radiological bomb in midtown Manhattan; Imran
Mandhai, who was convicted of attempting to blow up
nuclear power plants in southern Florida; Moessa Shuyeb
Jokham, who was arrested for plotting to blow up Jewish
community centers and businesses; and a group of other
home-grown terrorists. Questioned about the aspiring
terrorists, Sofian Abdelaziz Zakout, director of the
American Muslim Association and a friend of the
Shukrijumah family, said: "I saw [Adnan el Shukrijumah,
Padilla and Mandhai] at different times in different
mosques, and I always said hello. Does that make me a
terrorist?"
TRAINED
FOR TERROR
Adnan
attended flight schools in Florida and Norman, Oklahoma,
along with Mohammad Atta and the other 9-11 operatives,
and he became a highly skilled commercial jet pilot,
although he, like Atta and the other terrorists, never
applied for a license with the Federal Aviation
Commission.
In April 2001, Adnan spent 10 days in
Panama, where he reportedly met with al Qaeda officials
to assist in the planning of 9-11. The following month,
he obtained an associate's degree in computer
engineering from Broward Community College, where
Mandhai and Jokhan had been enrolled as full-time
students.
SLICK AS
AN EEL
Shukrijumah came to appear as a blip on the FBI's radar
screen in March, 2001, after special agents in Miami
launched an investigation of the Darul Uloom Institute
and Islamic Training Center, which operates out of a
large storefront on the Hollywood/Pines Boulevard in
Pembroke Pines. The agents were interested in the
activities of Imran Mandhai, who frequented the mosque
and stated his intention to create a jihad cell that
would consist of 25 or 30 men, including his pal, Adnan
el Shukrijumah. The cell, Mandhai maintained, would
target electric substations, Jewish institutions, a
National Guard armory, even Mount Rushmore. "It was no
secret that [Adnan] was pretty radical," says a federal
law enforcement source, "and that Mandhai thought he
would be interested in what they were doing."
But Shukrijumah was too slick and smart
to become involved in the creation of a cell with a
loudmouth like Mandhai. He declined to join their plans
for jihad, correctly surmising that Mandhai already had
attracted too much attention. But his name had been
mentioned, and the federal investigators discovered that
Shukrijumah had lied on his green-card application
regarding a prior arrest. For this reason, a
confidential report with cursory information in his name
was opened at FBI headquarters. The record was filed and
quickly forgotten.
ADNAN'S
ADVENTURES
Between
1996 and 2000, Adnan became a jet-setter. He traveled to
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, where he met with Ramzi
Binalshibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and other members of
the al Qaeda high command. He also spent considerable
time within al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, where he
received training in explosives and special operations.
He traveled to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, where he met
with Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and other
al Qaeda leaders.. He also spent considerable time
within al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, where he received
training in explosives and special operations. He
traveled to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, where he met with
Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and other
members of the al-Qaeda high command. He also spent
considerable time within al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan,
where he received training in explosives and special
operations.
In May,
2001, he headed off to Trinidad, where his father
Gulshair had worked as an official for the Saudi Arabian
government. From Trinidad, he trekked to Tobago and
Guyana. He managed to amass passports from Guyana,
Trinidad, Saudi Arabia, Canada and the United States and
began to adopt a number of aliases, including Abu Arifi,
Jafar al-Tayyar, Jaafar at-Yayyar, Ja'far al-Tayar, and
Mohammed Sher Mohammed Khan (the name that appeared on
his official FBI file). Adnan also found time, according
to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, to take part in the 9/11
attacks as a"fixer," that is, a behind-the-scenes
operative who helped with the plans for hijacking the
aircraft.
A
NUCLEAR MISSION IN CANADA
Following the success of 9-11, Shukrijumah became
singled out by bin Laden and al-Zawahiri to spearhead
the next great attack on America -- a nuclear attack
that would take place simultaneously in seven U.S.
cities (New York, Boston, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles,
Las Vegas, and Washington D.C.), leaving millions dead
and the richest and most powerful nation on earth in
ashes.
To prepare for this mission, Shukrijumah
and fellow al Qaeda agents Anas al Liby, Jaber A.
Elbaneh, and Amer el Matti, purportedly were sent to
McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, a facility
that boasted a five-megawatt nuclear research reactor,
the largest reactor of any educational facility in
Canada. At McMaster, Adnan reportedly kept to himself,
made few new friends or acquaintances, kept strictly to
his studies, and left the facility at the same time as
his colleagues. He also managed to obtain employment at
the reactor - - allegedly as a guide. Adnan's"normal'
behavior on the Hamilton campus, a source said, gave him
entry to places where dangerous materials were stored
without raising undue suspicion. Bit by bit, the
al-Qaeda operative allegedly managed to pilfer
approximately 180 pounds of nuclear material from the
university - - enough to build several radiological
bombs.
According to Debka, an internet outlet for Israeli
intelligence, Shukrijumah was under surveillance by
Canadian officials in early October 2003, when he
suddenly stopped attending classes and failed to show up
for work. His disappearance aroused no concern, the
sources say, until a few days later when the nuclear
material was reported missing.
Jayne Johnson, a spokesperson for
McMaster University, declined to comment on the reports
of Shukrijumah and the other al-Qaeda agents at the
school. Other McMaster officials denied that any al
Qaeda agents were on campus and that any nuclear or
radiological material was missing from the campus. But
witnesses have verified Shukrijumah's presence in
Hamilton and the school, according to several sources,
has experienced radiological"leakage."
THE
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Upon
investigating the matter, Debka raised the following
questions concerning Shukrijumah at McMaster and
mind-boggling vanishing act:
-
Why
were there no agents observing the subject inside the
reactor? These sources did not disclose which security
agencies were responsible for the surveillance.
-
Who
gave Shukrijumah, a Saudi Arabian under suspicion,
access to the reactor? And how is it that no one
noticed increasing amounts of nuclear or radiological
materials were disappearing over a period of months?
-
How was Shukrijumah able to give his
watchers the slip?
-
Was the subject tipped off by an inside
source in the U. S. or Canadian security services?
Upon
their departure from Canada, Adnan and his terrorist
friends made their way to Buffalo where they may have
been harbored by some members of the notorious
Lackawanna (LA) Mosque, where Jaber A. Elbaneh had been
a prominent member. It is also possible that they may
have received monetary and logistical support from
Mohammed Albanna, who managed to escape under the radar
of the bust of the LA 6 (members of the Lackawanna
mosque who were taken into custody for serving al Qaeda
and other terrorist organizations) in 2002.
THE
POCKET LITTER
In the
wake of Operation Enduring Freedom (the U.S.-led
invasion of Afghanistan), CIA and military intelligence
officials discovered the reoccurrence of the names of
Jaffar al Tayyar ("Jafer the Pilot") and Mohammed Sher
Mohammed Khan in "pocket litter" -- documents and scraps
taken from prisoners and dead al Qaeda soldiers. In May
2002, U.S. intelligence and military officials starting
asking a pressing question to al Qaeda detainees who
were being interrogated at foreign prisons and secret
CIA and military facilities abroad."Whom," the officials
asked,"would al Qaeda pick to lead the next big attack
against U.S. targets?" Intelligence sources told U.
S. News and World Reports that several of the
detainees coughed up the same answer: "Jaffar al
Tayyar." The detainees said they had encountered "the
Pilot" during al Qaeda training exercises in
Afghanistan. Intelligence officers presented photos of
hundreds of suspected al Qaeda operatives to the
detainees. Several identified an individual who bore a
resemblance to Adnan el Shukrijumah. But the resemblance
was not reality, and it would take months before the FBI
and CIA teams, with their sophisticated equipment and
state-of-the-art search engines, would realize it. "We
were pursuing a lead," says one official, "that in the
end turned out to be a dead end. We found out we were
after the wrong person." Indeed, the teams might still
be searching for the wrong suspects and hitting
dead-ends, if not for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda's
military operations chief, who was captured, quite by
accident, in Karachi, Pakistan March 1, 2003.
THE PLOT
REVEALED
After
days of interrogation, coupled with severe sleep
deprivation, Mohammed told U.S. officials that bin Laden
was planning to create a "nuclear hell storm" in
America. Unlike other attacks, the terrorist chief said,
the chain of command for the nuclear attack answered
directly to bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and a mysterious
scientist called "Dr. X." Mohammed later admitted that
"Dr. X" was Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani father
of the Islamic bomb and the godfather of modern nuclear
proliferation. He further confessed that the field
commander for this operation was a naturalized American
citizen whom he also referred to as Mohammed Sher
Mohammed Khan and "Jafer al Tayyar" ("Jafer the Pilot").
Both names are aliases of Adnan el Shukrijumah.
Khalid Mohammed went on to say that Adnan
represents a"single-cell" - - a lone agent capable of
launching a solo nuclear or radiological attack on a
major American city. The news of such a cell reportedly
startled U. S. officials who assumed that al Qaeda cells
contained several members who were supported by broad
logistical back-up crews.
'DEMANDING, RUDE, AND OBNOXIOUS'
On March
21, 2004, Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI
Director Robert Mueller issued a BOLO
("be-on-the-lookout") alert for Shukrijumah and Amer
el-Maati, along with Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman
who received a biology degree from Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and penned a doctoral thesis on
neurological science at Brandeis University; Ahmed
Kalfan Ghailani (aka "Foopie"), who took part in the
1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania; Adam Yahiye
Gadahn (aka Adam Pearlman), a convert to Islam who grew
up on a goat ranch in Riverside County, California; and
Abderraouf Jdey, the leader of the al-Qaeda cell in
Toronto.
Several
days after the BOLO was issued, Adnan and Jdey were
spotted at a Denny's restaurant in Avon, Colo., where
one ordered a chicken sandwich and a salad. Samuel Mac,
the restaurant manager, described them as "demanding,
rude and obnoxious." They told Mac they were from Iran
and were driving from New York to the West Coast. Upon
calling the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., Mac
said the agent who answered the telephone said he had to
call the bureau's Denver office and declined to take
down any information. When Mac called the Denver office
of the FBI, he said he was shuttled to voice mail
because"all the agents were busy." It was five hours
before a seemingly uninterested agent called the
restaurant manager. This agent, according to Mac, took a
few notes and said she would pass the information along
to the field agents who were handling the case.
This promise represented the full extent
of the government's interest in the sighting even though
Shukrijumah had been labeled by FBI Director Robert
Mueller as"the next Mohammad Atta" and even though the
FBI had posted a $5 million reward for any information
leading to his capture. The federal and state law
enforcement officials failed to interview the restaurant
workers and the patrons, purportedly even those who were
willing to verify the presence of the terrorists in the
restaurant. No forensic evidence was obtained from the
scene by any law enforcement officials - - not even the
utensils that had been used by the suspects. When
contacted by The Denver Post, Monique Kelso,
spokeswoman for the Denver bureau, said the office had
received at least a dozen calls as a result of the BOLO.
The calls, Kelo said, were all taken seriously. She
added, "We follow up on every lead."
THE
WAZIRISTAN SUMMIT
Following the incident in Colorado, the diminutive
Shukrijumah resurfaced at a terrorist summit in the
lawless Waziristan Province of Pakistan in April 2004.
The summit has been described by the FBI as a "pivotal
planning session" in much the same manner as a 2000
meeting was held in Kuala Lumpur for the 9-11 attacks.
Attending the summit were Abu Issa al Hindi, a Pakistani
technician whose company contained plans for staging
attacks at financial institutions in New York, New
Jersey, and Washington, D.C., and Mohammed Babar, who
has been charged with buying materials to build bombs
for attacks in Great Britain. Babar is an American
citizen and resident of Queens, New York, where he was a
leading member of the Islamic Thinkers Society, a group
that burned the American flag during a demonstration
before the Israeli consulate in 2006 and held up
placards stating:"The mushroom cloud is on its way."
SHUKRIJUMAH SOUTH OF THE BORDER
On May 27, 2004, Adnan el Shukrijumah was
spotted at an Internet café in Tegucigalpa, the hilly
capital of Honduras, where he made calls to France,
Canada, and the U.S. He was described as badly dressed
and bearded. At his table were Mara Salvatrucha leaders
(jefes) from Panama, Mexico, Honduras, and El
Salvador. According to the café owner, who recognized
Adnan from photos in the newspaper, he spoke to the
jefes in English and Spanish. Shukrijumah's presence
at the cafe was later verified by the Honduran Security
Ministry, who confirmed that the elusive terrorists had
made telephone calls from there to France, the U. S.,
and Canada.
On June
12, Gulshair el Shukrijumah, Adnan's radical father,
died in Miramar as a result of a stroke. Some sources
attributed his demise to "the will of Allah." His
funeral was attended by around 1,000 people who "prayed
for Allah to accept their departed Sheik into his arms."
Ibrahim Dremali, the Imam of the Boca Raton Islamic
Center, said that Gulshair had"a positive effect on
people."
From
Tegucigalpa, Adnan made his way north to Belize in
British Honduras and, from Belize, to Mexico's Quintana
Roo State, south of Cancun. He remained in Mexico for
much of the summer of 2004. In late August, he was
spotted in the northern Mexican province of Sonora near
"terrorist alley," the main passageway for illegal
aliens, including OTMs (other than Mexicans) and
"Special Interest Aliens" - - to the land of Mickey
Mouse, MTV, and George W. Bush.
NUKES
ARRIVE IN MEXICO
Concern
about Shukrijumah's extended stay in Mexico was
heightened in November 2004 with the arrest in Pakistan
of Sharif al-Masri, a key al Qaeda operative. Al Masri,
an Egyptian national jihadist with close ties to al
Zawahiri, bin Laden's No. 2 man, informed interrogators
that al-Qaeda had made arrangements to smuggle nuclear
supplies and tactical nuclear weapons into Mexico. From
Mexico, the weapons were to be transported across the
border with the help of a Latino street gang. The gang
was later identified as Mara Salvatrucha, the gang that
Adnan had trekked across the North American continent to
meet in a Honduran café, and the plans that he discussed
with the gang leaders were the plans that had been
purportedly finalized at the terrorist summit in
Waziristan.
In
response to this information, U.S. officials began
monitoring all heavy trucks crossing the border, while
Mexican officials pledged to keep close watch over
flight schools and aviation facilities. Such precautions
may have been adopted too late. A Piper PA Pawnee crop
duster was stolen from Ejido Queretaro near Mexicali on
November 1, 2004. The plane's tail number was XBCYP. The
thieves, Mexican officials surmised, were either drug
dealers or al-Qaeda operatives, and clearly one was a
highly trained pilot who met the description of Adnan
el-Shukrijumah.
