Disturbing

Via Michelle Malkin comes this news that should give us all pause:

Was Mahmoud Maawad a University of Memphis student and pilot-wannabe with a passion for flying small planes or an Arab terrorist looking to duplicate the suicide missions of 9/11?

Federal prosecutors in Memphis aren’t saying, but on Thursday they asked a U.S. magistrate to hold Maawad, 29, whose email logon is “pilot747,” without bond until trial. U.S. Magistrate Judge S. Thomas Anderson agreed with Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Parker, and Maaward becomes the second Memphis resident of Arab descent to be held without bond because of investigations by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. In April, Rafat Mawlawi was jailed in a separate investigation in which prosecutors have linked him to Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida. He is awaiting trial on October 3rd.

Maawad is charged in a criminal complaint with fraudulent use of a Social Security number which he used to get utilities and a credit card and enroll in school. He entered the United States at New York City from Egypt in 1998 and his visitor’s visa expired in 1999. He has been in the country illegally since then. His address is 3557 Mynders Avenue in Memphis, where he moved in June. He previously lived in Olive Branch, Mississippi for an unknown period. He is currently enrolled as an undergraduate student at the University of Memphis, registering as a transfer student from New Jersey but failing to register as an international student.

Maawad was cited on March 11, 2005, by Memphis police for selling alcohol to a minor at 1171 Chelsea in Memphis

Maawad was busted again this week after federal agents searched his apartment and computer on September 9th and examined his Internet purchases of flight instructions and pilot paraphernalia. Since June, Maawad ordered $3,300 of merchandise over the Internet from Sporty’s Pilot Shop in Batavia, Ohio, including a private pilot course, flight simulator software, a flight gear bag, several DVDs, a $239 Navy leather flight jacket, a $19.95 DVD on “How an Airline Captain Should Look and Act,” and instructional programs on “airplane talk.” His email address was pilot747_200@hotmail.com.

FishKite reminds us that this arrest is the third in Memphis this year:

Previously: terrorist suspects one and two.

When will we wake up?

Comments

[Presbypoet]

We know there was supposed to be a second wave. Is he one of them? Or just someone in the wrong place at the wrong time. Who's check from Al Qaeda didn't make it to the bank on time. I wonder what they are finding on the computer?

[Intelligence Summit]

FBI: Missing the newest trend in terrorism?

By John Loftus
http://www.intelligencesummit.org/news/JohnLoftus/JL091905.php

Special Agents in the street grumble that Al Qaeda is evolving again, while the Bureau's bosses pat each other on the back over yesterday's victories. Al Qaeda was a different beast before. First it was an alumni organization, recruiting combat veterans who had been schooled in the Afghan wars. Once the school rosters fell into American hands, the alumni were systematically hunted down, captured or killed. Good work.

But while the FBI applauded itself, Al Qaeda switched over to its second tier of recruits. Waiting in the wings were members of nationalist groups like the Moroccan madmen who bombed Madrid or the Jordanian fanatics of Al Zarqawi. These second tier terrorists were more like Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisees: they were independent operators who only borrowed the Al Qaeda name but were not subject to Al Qaeda control. As the EU and Arab states consolidate their anti-terror operations, the franchise terrorists are slowly becoming neutralized, isolated or exterminated. Ask Iraq.

In desperation, Al Qaeda has now devolved into its third iteration: a teenage fan club whose members correspond with each other over the internet as if they are playing a video game. But, as the London subway passengers discovered last July, sometimes the video games are a deadly dress rehearsal for the real thing.

For too long, western intelligence has dismissed the third tier of recruits as kiddy crime, the harmless posturing of Al Qaeda wannabees. The teens' twin terrorist organizations, Hizb ut-Tahrir and Al Mujaharoun ("Hut/Muj" for short) were laughed at as propaganda outlets of Sheik Bakri, a harmless little lunatic based in London at the Finsbury Mosque. But, as Bakri himself admits, during the 1990's both he and his assistant worked with the British Secret Intelligence Service setting up the Kosovo Liberation Army. They are not exactly virgins at recruiting kids to kill.

Hut/Muj usually targets 15 to 19 year olds, and indoctrinates them with private religious lessons for several years. Their naïve émigré parents think the kids are going to some sort of Islamic Sunday school, while they are actually attending Bin Laden's version of the Hitler Youth. After several years of bonding and brain washing, the kids, now in their early twenties, are ready for terrorist operations. Some live near you.

Hut/Muj cells have spread like a cancer to California, New York, Virginia and Oregon. Despite the fact that local police have made several arrests for planned subway bombings and terrorist training, the FBI still laughs the whole Hut/Muj phenomenon off. This, the feds assert, is protected freedom of speech, mosque based religious education, entirely harmless. That is what the British used to say before 7/7. The mental calendar of the FBI's top leadership seems permanently stuck on 9/10. Wake up or die, FBI.