Word: padilla
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...similar vein, the arrest of Padilla, for all the frightening claims that Ashcroft made for his plot, may reveal a weakness in al-Qaeda's position rather than a strength. Al-Qaeda appears to be relying on irregulars--inexperienced, unsophisticated operatives like Padilla and, for that matter, Reid--rather than the highly trained, disciplined jihadis who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. In the view of many experts on Islamic terrorism, converts to Islam who grew up in the West sometimes lack the deep conviction of those born into the faith who grew up in its Arab heartlands...
There is nothing new about terrorist groups recruiting petty criminals like Padilla, a former Chicago gang member, or Reid, a drifter from south London. "If your goal is finding people able and willing to support or plan illegal acts," says a senior French law-enforcement official, "criminals are an obvious choice." The French should know; many of those involved in the mid-1990s wave of bombings in France orchestrated by the Armed Islamic Group were street criminals who had converted to radical Islam. Islamic terrorist leaders, says a French justice official, "go to the crook, the drug dealer, the troublemaker...
Though U.S. officials have less experience than the French with native-born al-Qaeda operatives, the phenomenon worries them. Padilla's case, says a senior intelligence official, proves that "just about anybody who's dysfunctional to start with can get wrapped up in this Islamic-extremist world." There have always been some Americans--or longtime residents of the U.S.--connected to al-Qaeda. For years there have been rumors of Americans in the Afghan terrorist camps, and an American, originally from Georgia, is reported to have died in 1998 while fighting with Islamic militias in Kashmir. But with the salient...
...plot to explode a "dirty bomb," a conventional explosive laced with a radioactive element. The U.S. government said that the threat of such an attack on an American city was minimal. The clarification followed U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's announcement of the arrest in May of José Padilla, an American citizen who converted to Islam and calls himself Abdullah al-Muhajir, and his incarceration in military custody as an "enemy combatant." 55 CANCRI Homely Star Planet hunters at the University of California have found the first solar system that resembles our own. The star, 55 Cancri...
...what has almost certainly been lost in the cacophony of a news week dominated by Jose Padilla, is the recognition that a major blow has been struck against al-Qaeda - in far-off Morocco...