Feds issue warning after alleged Boston terror plot is foiled
BOSTON - Just three days after police shot and killed an alleged ISIS sympathizer in Boston who was planning attacks on law enforcement, an intelligence bulletin has been sent to agencies across the country urging vigilance against plots involving "simple and easily accessible weapons," noting that social media has made it easier for extremist groups to recruit followers in the West, including the U.S.
The bulletin, obtained by CBS News, says, "The ability of terrorists overseas to communicate via social media or encrypted methods with HVEs [Homegrown Violent Extremists] in the West allows organizations such as the Islamic State to virtually recruit individuals or groups of individuals to carry out attacks in the West."
The bulletin notes that most ISIS-inspired attacks in the West, including the most recent alleged plot in Boston, involve "simple and easily accessible weapons such as firearms, vehicles, or knives."
It says major public events or mass gatherings throughout the summer involving military or law enforcement are "attractive targets for these jihadists."
Twenty-six-year-old Muslim Usaamah Rahim was fatally shot Tuesday as terror investigators in Boston who had been monitoring him tried to question him.
Surveillance video of the shooting has not yet been released, but Rahim's family viewed the video Thursday evening at the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office.
Some community leaders who already saw the video say it backs the police account and shows officers retreating as Rahim lunges at them with a military-style knife, then shooting when he refused to drop it.
The FBI said Rahim plotted to commit some kind of attack, and ordered three large knives on Amazon.com a week before he was confronted by the anti-terrorism task force that had him under 24-hour surveillance.
Boston Police said Thursday that Rahim had talked about beheading blogger Pamela Geller before deciding to target police officers.
Geller wasn't surprised that she may have been a target. She's a combative personality known for provoking Muslims by campaigning against a mosque near the World Trade Center site in New York, sponsoring inflammatory advertisements and organizing Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas.
"I'm the number one tarter for ISIS right now," Geller told CBS News.
The FBI said police confronted Rahim after he told his nephew, David Wright, in a telephone conversation they were monitoring on Tuesday that he had changed his mind about beheading an out-of-state victim and instead planned to kill local police officers either Tuesday or Wednesday.
"Yeah, I'm going to be on vacation right here in Massachusetts," Rahim allegedly said. "I'm just going to, ah, go after them, those boys in blue."
An FBI affidavit supporting a criminal complaint against Wright said "going on vacation" was their code for committing violent jihad.
Wright, meanwhile, was recorded saying something about "thinking with your head on your chest," the FBI said, explaining that this was a reference to the beheadings shown in Islamic State propaganda videos.
Nowhere in the evidence made public thus far in this case does either man actually say the word "beheading."
An attorney for Rahim's family said at a news conference Thursday that the family was "unaware of any radicalization and did not see any signs of radicalization" in the 26-year-old Rahim.
Rahim's older brother, Ibrahim Rahim, is a respected Muslim scholar known for preaching against violence after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings.
The Associated Press reports Rahim "liked" an Islamic State page on Facebook, but he also spoke out against the kind of violence that Islamic State extremists are fomenting across the Middle east.
Rahim knew he was being watched by the FBI. He posted online about that, too, back in 2012, writing that he had hung up on an FBI agent who called wanting to talk about some "allegations."
"If you let them get close, trust me, they'll have you making statements about things that could get you jail-time," he wrote. "Try again, monkey-boys."
He taunted the agents again later that day, after he said an FBI agent had asked a neighbor about him as well.
"They are persistent but guess what, they got nothing on me. Keep on coming, you stupid fools and I'll sue the crap out of you for harassment," he wrote.