So I have been following somewhat closely these two terrorism suspects in the news recently. The most popular one is about Najibullah Zazi, the 24 year old shuttle driver and coffee server,who apparently is at the center of an Al Qaeda cell that tried to launch a domestic terror attack on sept 11. In brief:
An FBI affidavit says Zazi admitted under questioning to receiving weapons and training from al-Qaeda, and a series of searches in New York City turned up evidence that Zazi may have been looking to manufacture either truck or backpack bombs.
Apparently they found videos of how to make a make on his computer and he hit up hair supply distributors in order to get chemicals to make a liquid bomb. (ignore the dumb articles saying the bomb was made out of hydrogen peroxide - thats idiotic, H2O2 is not explosive, how it IS a reagent for making triacetone triperoxide).
Meanwhile another couple of kookoos had their goals set for blowing something up. Michael Finton and Hosam Maher Husein Smad, separately, and unrelatedly also wanted to blow some shit up on sept 11.
How were these guys caught?
Well Zazi had decided to go to Pakistan (ok, guess what, if you are born in Afghanistan and are going to travel to Pakistan for "pleasure", you are getting flagged). Then while under surveillance, he started hitting up places where you can get hydrochloric acid, pure hydrogen peroxide (consumer H2O2 is only about 30% pure), and acetone. After that he rented a car and headed for NYC where he was intercepted. I'm sure between wire taps and other surveillance methods they had plenty on this guy.
Finton had a different story. He got out of jail for robbery and aggravated assault. He had told the guards that he had converted to islam, then he received money from someone in Saudi Arabia for a plane ticket. Finton spent a month there.
Finton had been monitored by this time. At this point the feds seem to have a standard procedure that they keep using. You and I would call in entrapment, probably because we are not familiar with the intricacies of the law. they do this as a practice so i doubt its illegal. Nor do I care. I think this is OK.
Basically they passed themselves off as al Qaeda operatives and got him a bomb to blow up in a federal building. Finton went ahead and did it. The bomb was fake. When Finton called the number that was supposed to blow up the bomb, he just called the FBI.
Anyway, I didn't really intend on rehashing the news.I dont even want to jump to the conclusion that these three people are actually guilty. The FBI have made plenty of mistakes with regard to terrorism. I just wanted to point something out here. They were able to catch three terrorism suspect, who may have caused a lot of damage.
And they did it without any torture.
