Download DEARBORN RAID ON WED OCTOBER 28, 2009 After a 2

DEARBORN RAID ON WED OCTOBER 28, 2009







After a 2-year investigation, FBI agents descended on a Dearborn [remember that
Dearborn has a very large Muslim community] warehouse
The raid was the culmination of a lengthy investigation by the Joint Terrorism Task Force
and the national security unit of the U.S. Attorney's Office.
shootout that caused agents to gun down Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53, leader of the
Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit.
"We're not any fake terrorists, we're the real terrorists," Abdullah once boasted to an
undercover informant, according to the affidavit.
Agents also raided two Detroit homes, one in the 4400 block of Tireman and the other
in the 9200 block of Genessee
conversations he had with undercover agents and federal informants that ranged from
talking about attacking Super Bowl XL in Detroit to blowing himself up as a final act of
courage.
"If they are coming to get to me, I'll just strap a bomb on and blow up everybody," he
said in a March 21, 2008, conversation.

According to the affidavit, Abdullah ran a mosque in a building on Joy Road in Detroit
until he was evicted in January for delinquent taxes, causing a move to the 4000 block of
Clairmount. Inside the mosque, authorities said, Abdullah conducted firearms training,
spewed hate and sometimes violently disciplined children by beating them with sticks.

Even as FBI investigators kept tabs on Abdullah through surveillance, he urged his
cohorts to learn of the agents' whereabouts. "Trail them, follow them, know where they
house is at, and everything else," he told an informant, according to the criminal
complaint. "You've got hundreds of agents right there off Michigan" Avenue. The
reference was to the McNamara Building, the headquarters of the Detroit FBI.

The warehouse is near the heavily commercial intersection of Miller and Michigan.

Imad Hamad, senior national adviser and regional director of the Dearborn-based ArabAmerican Anti-Discrimination Committee, said he received a call from the head of the
FBI's Detroit office midday to tell him about the raid. Hamad said FBI Special Agent
Andrew Arena told him that the case was "solely criminal" and had to do with
"smuggling and fraud." He said Arena revealed few details of the investigation, but said
it had been ongoing for about two years.

The three Ontario suspects were not found during Wednesday's raids. Mujahid
Carswell, 30; Mohammad Alsahi, 33; and Yassir Ali Khan, 30, are each facing a single
change of conspiracy to commit federal crimes. According to an FBI press release,
Carswell also resides in Detroit and is also known as Mujahid Abdullah. Alsahi is also
known as Mohammad Palestine. Khan is also a resident of Warren, Mich., just over 20
kilometres north of Detroit. Three men with Canadian connections are still at large,
according to the FBI. They are:



Mujahid Carswell (aka Mujahid Abdullah), 30, of Windsor, Ontario
Mohammad Alshai (aka Mohammad Palestine), 33, of Windsor, Ontario
Yassir Ali Khan, 30, of Ontario (city not specified)


Officials said the dog died after being struck by Abdullah's gunfire.
The dog was flown by FBI helicopter to a vet hospital, but it did not survive.

Abdullah's mosque is in a brick duplex on a quiet, residential street in Detroit. A sign on
the door in English and Arabic reads, in part, ''There is no God but Allah.''
Several men congregated on the porch Wednesday night and subsequently attacked a
photographer from The Detroit News who was taking pictures from across the street.






Ricardo Thomas had his camera equipment smashed and had a bloody lip from the
attack.
Abdullah had a wife and children, Walid said. A phone number for the family had been
disconnected.
In January 2009, members were evicted from a former mosque for failing to pay
property taxes. An FBI search turned up empty shell casings and large holes in the
concrete wall of a ''shooting range,'' Leone said.
Dar-Ul is also known as the Ummah,
"The Ummah is ruled by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, who
is serving a state sentence ... for the murder of two police officers in Georgia."
Brown came to prominence in the 1960s as a leader of the Black Panther Party.

Among Muslims, Imam Jamil Abdulah Al-Amin--the name Brown adopted when he
became a Muslim--is a well-known, well-liked national figure--leader of a national
organization of African-American Muslims, a frequent speaker at Muslim conferences,
and a member of the Islamic Shura Council, the unity council of the major national
Muslim organizations in America.

Brown changed his name when he converted to the Dar-ul Islam movement in the '70s while
serving a five-year sentence for his role in a robbery that ended in a shootout with New York
police.

His life as a Muslim began in prison as a convert to the Dar-ul Islam Movement. In the
late '60s and '70s, Dar-ul Islam was the major African-American Sunni Muslim
organization. It blended the rhetoric of Muslim movements of the East with the roughedged black militancy of the '60s, and espoused a careful adherence to mainstream
Islam. But despite having much in common, the movement and the growing immigrant
Muslim community had a rocky if not hostile relationship.

Soon after prison and his move to Atlanta to became imam--or religious leader--of a
small community there, Dar-ul Islam broke apart, much of its leadership deciding to
follow a Sufi sheik. In 1983, the remnants of the old movement came together and
elected Al-Amin as their national imam.

In 1987, the new organization took the name the National Islamic Community and later
the National Ummah. Growth has been slow but steady. The organization now has over
28 masjids, or mosques, and holds an annual convention that attracts about 700 people.
*This info is old from at least 2000.

An article from Jet Magazine (issue dated April 1, 2002] said Al-Amin leads one of the
nation’s largest Black Muslim groups, the National Ummah. The movement, which has
36 mosques around the nation is credited with revitalizing poverty-stricken areas such
as Atlanta’s West End, where Al-Amin owned a grocery store.

In the complaint, the FBI said Abdullah, also known as Christopher Thomas, was an
imam, or prayer leader, of a radical group named Ummah whose primary mission is to
establish an Islamic state within the United States. The group believes that a separate
Islamic state in the U.S. would be controlled by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly
known as H. Rap Brown, who is serving a life sentence in a federal prison in Colorado
for shooting two police officers in Georgia in 2000, Leone said. Al-Amin, a veteran of
the black power movement, started the group after he converted to Islam in prison.
The movement at one time was believed to include a couple of dozen mosques around
the country. Ummah is now dwarfed in numbers and influence by other African-
American Muslim groups, particularly the mainstream Sunnis who were led by Imam
W.D. Mohammed, who recently died.

The Detroit FBI release referred to the group as the "Ummah" and "the brotherhood."

More on Brown’s conviction here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/03/08/national/main503276.shtml


http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/28/us/AP-US-FBI-Raids-Michigan.html
http://www.freep.com/article/20091029/NEWS01/910290597/1318/Radical-mosqueleader-killed-in-FBI-shootout&template=fullarticle

http://toronto.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20091029/ontario_fbi_091029/200910
29/?hub=TorontoNewHome

Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/posted/archive/2009/10/29/fbishoot-and-kill-radical-muslim-imam-in-detroit-canadian-connections.aspx#ixzz0VKjfZrK4

http://www.freep.com/article/20091029/NEWS01/910290642/1322/Chopperrushing-shot-FBI-dog-to-vet-lands-in-John-R

http://www.dailytribune.com/articles/2009/10/29/news/srv0000006715353.txt


http://detroit.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel09/de102809.htm
http://books.google.com/books?id=Q8MDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=nation
al+ummah,+amin&source=bl&ots=XjJmYx4G2f&sig=Sl9SS7sLsGZsfV1OSiYleruhCaU&hl=e
n&ei=yqnpSq6VEdGVtgf2n507&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBIQ
6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=national%20ummah%2C%20amin&f=false