Word: denvers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...think Najibullah Zazi would stand out on the high, dry plains southeast of Denver, where the earth is as flat as a starched shirt and mere wrinkles count as topography. But if heartland suburbs were ever enclaves of uniformity, that day is long gone. Aurora, Colo., is a city of people from somewhere else, a low-slung municipality of 315,000 that includes extremes of both poverty and prosperity. Aurora is vast - nearly 154 sq. mi. (400 sq km) - and dense, with a high concentration of multifamily housing units, apartment buildings, townhouses and condominiums. Those homes contain a patchwork...
...SUVs in the driveway and a pile of plastic flip-flops on the front stoop, no one answers the door. Neighbors said the family kept to itself even before the arrests, and other Afghan-American families who came from southeastern Afghanistan said the Zazi family never interacted with Denver's tight-knit Muslim community. "I used to see this guy Najibullah at the mosque from time to time," says Emanudin Ghiasi, an Afghan American and a founding member of the Colorado Muslim Society, which serves the estimated 15,000 Muslims in the Denver metro area. "But he never spoke...
...appearances can be deceiving. Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed details of the case against Zazi, accusing him of receiving bomb-making education from al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan, of purchasing components in beauty-supply shops around the Denver suburb of Aurora for mixing explosives, and of traveling to New York City to advance an as yet undisclosed terrorism plot. Arrested along with his father Mohammed Wali Zazi and a New York City cleric, he could face up to life imprisonment if convicted...
...complex with its black dome and narrow minaret. Other regular worshippers agreed that he never spoke to anyone and usually rushed off immediately once the service ended. Many are suspicious of the charges against Zazi but say that, if true, Najibullah Zazi could not possibly have been indoctrinated in Denver. "He was like an outlier," says a mosque official who didn't want his name used. "This is a community that is very close, and if al-Qaeda were active here, we would know about...
Since Zazi's arrest, many Denver-based Muslims have quietly braced for a public blowback. "Of course we are not happy if he was really doing these things," says Shohaib Ghori, a Karachi native. "But when there is so much publicity, it makes us all feel guilty by association, despite the fact that 99.9% of our community are law-abiding citizens...