Who is al Qaeda figure linked to NYC bomb plot?
Although 34-year-old al Qaeda fugitive Adnan Shukrijumah has been among the FBI's most sought after suspects for some time (7 years), this is the first time that formal, public charges have been levied against him. However, the scope the charges against Skurijumah, compared to his large al Qaeda profile, are rather small, limited to actions in the 16 months covering the time frame of the Najibullah Zazi-led NYC subway plot of 2009, from Sep. 2008 to Jan. 2010. (Interestingly, a sixth defendant's name has been redacted from the new indictment).
English speaking, Saudi-born Shukrijumah has been a subject of intrigue and worry for years - profiled in 60 Minutes II in 2003, a focus of a famous sound-the-alarm newser by former Attorney General John Ashcroft and (still) FBI Director Robert Mueller in 2004. He lived in the U.S. for 15 years, mostly in Florida, attending the same mosque as Al Qaeda recruit and alleged would-be "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, and has carried passports from Canada, Guyana, and other countries.
The Jan. 7th arrest of Zazi co-defendant Adis Medunjanin - the one of the Zazi trio of Queens high school classmates who has not pleaded guilty - came after what was reported at the time as a car accident, possibly while trying to shake surveillance. Now, the government alleges that Medunjanin intentionally crashed his car into other vehicles on the Whitestone Freeway as a desperate suicide attack, disclosing in the indictment, that he called a 911 operator immediately before to say: "We love death." That is new.
Though the tie to the foiled 2009 Zazi-led NYC subway attack tops the headlines, Brooklyn federal prosecutors last week also loosely tied Shukrijumah to the foiled 2007 JFK airport gas tank/gas line plot, alleging that the defendants now on trial sought a meeting with Shukrijumah when he was believed to be hiding out in Trinidad and Tobago. Prosecutors did not allege that such a meeting occurred and did not confirm that he was living there at the time.
The new charges - which also allege a communication role by a co-defendant (aka. "Ahmad") with Zazi and two would-be terrorists in the U.K. - come on the fifth anniversary of the 7/7 London Transit bombings that killed 52 people on this day in 2005. (Is that a coincidence?) Rashid Rauf - mentioned in the DOJ press release and the indictment -- has previously been implicated as a bomb-making trainer in the 2006 foiled U.K.-based trans-Atlantic liquid bomb planes plot. Rauf was reportedly killed by a drone missile attack in Pakistan in Nov. 2008.
In his guilty plea hearing in Brooklyn on Feb. 22, Zazi told the court, "I received more training from al Qaeda about how to construct the explosives for attack in the United States or to carry martyrdom operation." He didn't mention publicly the "then-leaders al Qaeda's external operations" Rauf or Saleh al-Somali by name. The Sukrijumah indictment mentions Rauf and "Saleh" as recruiters.
These developments come as Jeffrey Knox, the Brooklyn federal prosecutor at the helm of terror unit for the Eastern District of New York, has announced his departure for a new post with Justice Department headquarters in Washington. Knox was profiled today in the New York Times.