Adnan el-Shukrijumah

[Petronas]

WANTED

Adnan G. El Shukrijumah

Up to $5 Million Reward

Date of birth: August 4, 1975
Place of birth: Saudi Arabia
Height: 5'3" to 5'7"
Weight: Unknown
Build: Medium to Heavy
Hair: Black
Eyes: Black
Complexion: Olive
Sex: Male
Characterisitcs: El Shukrijumah occasionally wears a beard. El Shukrijumah carries a Guyanese passport, but may attempt to enter the U.S. with a Saudi, Canadian, or Trinidadian passport.
Aliases: Adnan G. El Shukri Jumah; Abu Arif; Ja'far Al-Tayar; Jaffar Al-Tayyar; Jafar Tayar; Jaafar Al-Tayyar

Adnan G. El Shukrijumah is wanted in connection with possible threats against the United States.

On March 26, 2003 the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia issued a Material Witness Warrant for his arrest.

El Shukrijumah is possibly involved with al-Qaeda terrorist activities and, if true, poses a serious threat to U.S. citizens and interests worldwide.

http://www.rewardsforjustice.net/english/wanted_captured/index.cfm?page=El_Shukrijumah

[Petronas]

Adnan el-Shukrijumah's was born in Guyana and could easily pass as hispanic. One of his nicknames is "Jaafar the Pilot" - he has taken extensive flying lessons. Reportedly he also has received extensive explosives, and possibly WMD related, training. He lived in the United States for 15 years and speaks fluent English. He attended the same mosque as Jose Padilla. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed during interrogation reportedly said Adnan el-Shukrijumah was designated to lead the next big attack inside the United States. Adnan el-Shukrijumah was spotted in an internet cafe in Tegucigalpa, Honduras in May 2004. Later in 2004, he allegedly crossed from Belize into Mexico's Quintana Roo province. In Mexico he was rumored to be negotiating a deal with Mara Salvatrucha (MS 13) for assistance to Al Qaeda members in crossing the US-Mexican border.

Sheriff denies hearing about terrorist sighting
But couple insists they told top cop they spotted 'next Mohamed Atta'
March 3, 2006

A California sheriff denies two citizens informed him they spotted an al-Qaida operative, but the witnesses insist they spoke with the officer and hand-delivered a report that was filed with his office. Responding to WND's story yesterday, Kern County Sheriff Mack Wimbish said he knows of no reports resembling the claim of two U.S. citizens who say they saw Adnan el-Shukrijumah, the al-Qaida operative identified as "the next Mohamed Atta," at a location near Bakersfield, Calif.

"We take these things very, very seriously," Wimbish told WND yesterday. "We spent several staff hours today working on this, and we are still researching it. If something has happened that has fallen through the cracks, we'll follow it up." The FBI has a $5 million bounty on Shukrijumah's head.

One of the two witnesses, a husband and wife who wish to remain anonymous for security reasons, told WND yesterday he spoke with Wimbish Oct. 7 and hand-delivered his report. Wimbish said he has "no recollection" of that.

The husband said he and his wife encountered el-Shukrijumah and other potential al-Qaida operatives, including Aafia Siddiqui [MIT degree in biology, wanted for questioning by the FBI], in a small café near Lake Isabella Sept. 7, 2005. They described him as small (approximately 5'4"), thin (about 130 pounds), and clean-shaven with a prominent nose, dark eyes and black hair. They noted that he appeared nervous and spoke English to his Middle Eastern companions without an accent.

The couple said that several weeks later, they spotted the suspects near the same location and managed to jot down their license numbers. Wimbish responded: "If he still has the license plate number, we'd love to have it, and the name of the café. The FBI is asking the same questions. We would be glad to follow up."

The sheriff noted he has people appointed full time to a terrorism task force. "We follow up on hundreds of tips every month," he said. "Some are minor, yet this (claim) is a major thing." If he had received such a report, Wimbish said, "that day, we would have been out there investigating."

It was not the first time a citizen has complained of law enforcement officials ignoring an alleged sighting of el-Shukrijumah. In 2004, the manager of a Denny's in Avon, Colo., said it took five hours for a seemingly uninterested FBI agent in Denver to return his message after he thought el-Shukrijumah and another al-Qaida suspect, Abderraouf Jdey, had eaten at his restaurant. Samuel Mac reported the two men said they were from Iran and were driving from New York to the West Coast, Mac said. Mac's restaurant was just off Interstate 70.

The owner first called the FBI in Washington, D.C., but Mac said the man who answered the telephone instructed him to call the Denver office and declined to take down any of the information, the Denver Post reported. When he called the Denver office, he was forwarded to voice mail because the agents were busy, Mac said. The alleged sighting came the same day, May 28, that Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller showed photos of seven suspected terrorists – including el-Shukrijumah and Jdey –during a news conference on what they said was credible intelligence indicating an attack by al-Qaida in the U.S. was possible that summer.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49083

[al-Canine]

A Mystery Man Who Keeps the FBI Up at Night

Officials hunting virtually full time for a Florida computer technician see him as the ultimate 'sleeper agent' in the post-9/11 world.

By Josh Meyer
Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-manhunt3sep03,1,5192654.story?
)

September 3, 2006

CHARLIEVILLE, Trinidad and Tobago — Five years ago, as 19 Al Qaeda operatives in the United States put the finishing touches on what would become the Sept. 11 attacks, a frail, asthmatic computer engineer from South Florida paid a visit to this tiny Muslim enclave where he'd lived as a boy.

Adnan Gulshair Muhammad el Shukrijumah, then 25, kept a low profile over the course of the week. He hung out with a small circle of devout older men who were leaders of the local Islamic community. They prayed in mosques, went fishing and enjoyed long walks and leisurely dinners, recalled one of the hosts, Imtiaz Mohammed.

Shukrijumah spoke fondly of his father, an influential Islamic scholar and Charlieville community leader two decades earlier. He also spoke of his family life in Miramar, Fla., his computer technician business and his travels to the Middle East and other exotic locales.

But Shukrijumah said nothing about why he was in Trinidad, nor what his plans were, acquaintances here say.

Two years later, the FBI put out an urgent all-points bulletin for Shukrijumah, depicting him as one of Al Qaeda's most well-trained, intelligent and deadly operatives. He was described as the ultimate "sleeper agent," intent on attacking the U.S., possibly with weapons of mass destruction.

Law enforcement officials and terrorism experts now believe Shukrijumah is one of several young, street-smart leaders of Al Qaeda handpicked by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, to keep the terrorist network alive and humming in the face of U.S.-led efforts to unravel it.

To be sure, the FBI's record on identifying terrorist plotters since Sept. 11 includes some widely publicized failures. In some cases, law enforcement officials have alleged that suspects were centrally involved in plots, only to back off those assertions when cases moved toward court.

And officials concede that there is much they do not know about Shukrijumah, including what he was doing in Trinidad. Within days of the alert in March 2003, agents arrived on the island looking for him, but he was long gone.

Terrorism authorities both inside and outside the government say they believe Shukrijumah is a major Al Qaeda figure, and the hunt for him is intense, with an FBI team tracking him virtually full time. So far, their quarry has remained elusive.

Whereas Al Qaeda's core followers are young, poor and relatively uneducated, Shukrijumah has attended college and is comfortable with technology. He's also a naturalized U.S. citizen whose appearance would allow him to pass as Latino, Indian or Middle Eastern and who speaks English with no discernible accent, officials say.

That background makes Shukrijumah especially threatening, counter-terrorism authorities say. He is dangerous "because he is so trusted in the organization and because he has traveled in the Western world and is familiar with its customs and procedures," said Joseph Billy Jr., assistant FBI director for counter-terrorism.

Shukrijumah is believed to be "the guy who was reared to replace" Mohammed as an Al Qaeda senior trainer, facilitator and propagandist, playing a central role in the development of hundreds of the network's future soldiers, said Sajjan Gohel, director for international security at the London-based AsiaPacific Foundation. "He is part of Al Qaeda Stage 2." The foundation consults on terrorism assessment for governments.

Shukrijumah has not been charged with a crime, but federal grand juries in Virginia and South Florida are hearing evidence about his activities.

Agents working on the investigation were reluctant to provide many details because of those probes, but the FBI does say that Shukrijumah trained at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan before Sept. 11. There, he learned to handle AK-47s, M-16s, Uzis and other automatic weapons and studied topography, communications, camouflage, clandestine surveillance and explosives, including C-4 plastic charges, dynamite and mines, they say.

The FBI believes Shukrijumah used that training to fight for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Investigators also believe he was present at a meeting of Al Qaeda leaders in March 2004 near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where it appears attendees discussed upcoming terrorist operations in Europe and the United States.

But much of Shukrijumah's life remains a mystery. And the search for him has been through a maze of false leads and vague glimmers.

An Intriguing Lead

The hunt for Adnan Shukrijumah began with a mysterious character called "the South American."

A year after the Sept. 11 attacks, interrogators were desperately trying to determine what other plots might be in the works, and where.

While questioning an Al Qaeda detainee in Pakistan, they got an intriguing lead. An operative known only as the South American had been discussing with Al Qaeda leaders new ways of attacking U.S. citizens, including blowing up apartment buildings with natural gas and spraying people with cyanide in nightclubs, the prisoner said.

Authorities knew little about this person except that he was well trained by Al Qaeda, connected to its top leadership and on the loose, perhaps plotting an attack on U.S. soil.

And their anxiety was growing. By early 2003, detainees held overseas and at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were telling interrogators that Al Qaeda leaders had sent new terrorist operatives into the United States to launch follow-up attacks.

Unlike the Sept. 11 hijackers, the detainees said, these new teams included second-generation immigrant Muslims who had lived in the U.S., understood its customs and could operate under the radar of law enforcement.

When asked which operative was most likely to launch a U.S.-based attack, many captives mentioned one particular figure with an almost mythical reputation as a ruthless militant. His nom de guerre was Jaffar al Tayyar, a reference to an Islamic hero who had fought beside the prophet Muhammad.

But his identity, too, was a mystery.

The pieces began to come together in early March when Mohammed was captured in Pakistan and his computers, phones and other electronic gear were seized.

The evidence confirmed that Mohammed had been sending "Westernized" Al Qaeda soldiers on missions into the U.S. and other countries.

And when Mohammed was shown a photograph of Shukrijumah, he identified him as Tayyar, U.S. counter-terrorism officials said.

By then, U.S. authorities were concluding that Shukrijumah was also the shadowy South American, an apparent reference to his time spent in Trinidad and nearby Guyana.

To their dismay, they realized that one of Al Qaeda's best-trained operatives had been lurking — and perhaps plotting — in the United States since long before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Father a Missionary

Many Al Qaeda devotees came to the cause of militant Islam as young men; Shukrijumah grew up in it.

His father, Sheik Gulshair el Shukrijumah, was a Muslim missionary from Guyana who worked for the government of Saudi Arabia.

In the early 1990s, Sheik Gulshair was assigned to the Al Farouq Mosque in Brooklyn, some of whose congregants were soon linked to two Islamist terrorist plots: the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and an unsuccessful conspiracy to blow up the United Nations, Holland Tunnel and other landmarks.

Sheik Gulshair came to the FBI's attention because of translation work he did for a blind cleric named Omar Abdel Rahman, who was implicated in the first World Trade Center bombing. Abdel Rahman, head of an Egyptian terrorist organization linked to Al Qaeda, was sentenced to life in prison for his lead role in the plot to bomb the tunnel and other New York City landmarks.

Sheik Gulshair, who denied any affiliation with terrorists, retired from service to the Saudi government in 1995 and moved his wife and six children to Miramar, southwest of Fort Lauderdale, where he had been given a small stipend to run the Masid al Hijra Mosque.

By the late 1990s, some of his followers had attracted the attention of the FBI's counterterrorism squad in Miami. One of them was his eldest son, Adnan.

Adnan was born in June 1975 in either Saudi Arabia or Guyana. After the family moved to Florida, he attended Broward Community College, where he excelled in chemistry and biology, as well as computers, according to the FBI.

He also suffered from asthma, which required him to use an inhaler, his mother said in a recent interview. As a result, he often remained indoors, she said, tending to his studies, his computer business and his scholarly work.

Sometime in the late 1990s, Shukrijumah started leaning toward more radical Islamist views, authorities say. The FBI believes he was inspired by a group of Muslim men in South Florida who gave him books and videotapes about jihad in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kashmir and Afghanistan.

In late 1999, Shukrijumah began traveling to Pakistan and Afghanistan. To get into an Al Qaeda training camp, he needed a sponsor. The FBI says Shukrijumah found one in Ismael Faiz of Lahore, Pakistan. U.S. officials believe Faiz is a member of Al Qaeda and the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has been connected to recent alleged terrorist plots in Canada and London.

At the camps, Shukrijumah was initially rejected for training. Instead, he started at the bottom, doing dishes and menial work before earning the right to train with weapons and tactics, agents say.

He had trouble getting along with fellow trainees. Shukrijumah was said to be "difficult to work with: temperamental, confident in his ability to the point of being egocentric," said a senior FBI official close to the investigation.

His mother attributes his headstrong personality to his having to assume a father-figure role to his younger siblings because Sheik Gulshair was away so often doing missionary work.

After he started traveling to Pakistan and Afghanistan, however, Shukrijumah began to change, say friends and associates interviewed by the FBI. He would take off for long periods, to places overseas he would not discuss.

"Every time he came back, he was a different person," the FBI official said. "He was more calm, more cool and more purposeful in his actions."

By 2001, the FBI was investigating Shukrijumah in connection with two suspected terrorist plots, one of which involved a group apparently using South Florida as a base from which to recruit militants and finance attacks and assassinations in the Middle East.

But agents were never able to connect him to either plot. They later came to believe that he had been deliberately keeping his distance because, as one agent put it, "it was felt in the [Al Qaeda] community that he was in for bigger and better things."

After the Sept. 11 attacks, federal agents swarmed South Florida looking for clues and connections they might have missed. As many as 15 of the hijackers had spent their last months there, training for and planning the suicide mission.

The FBI ultimately took several of Shukrijumah's acquaintances into custody on terrorism or immigration charges.

Agents also went looking for Shukrijumah. But by then, he was gone and had left few clues.

'He Could Be Anywhere'

When Shukrijumah reemerged in the FBI's consciousness in March 2003, Pasquale "Pat" D'Amuro, then the FBI's senior counter-terrorism official and a veteran Al Qaeda tracker, felt an acute sense of dread.

"We thought he was a grave danger to the security of the United States," D'Amuro recalled recently. "We thought he could be anywhere."

On March 20, 2003, the same day the U.S. began bombing Iraq, the FBI went public. With TV news crews on their heels, more than 50 federal agents and local police officers descended on Shukrijumah's neighborhood.

Armed with a warrant for his arrest as a material witness, FBI agents knocked on doors, showing photographs and asking whether he had been seen in Florida recently.

They scoured his mail, credit cards, bank records and phone bills.

By then, however, Shukrijumah had been away from his family home for almost two years.

In the months before Sept. 11, he had traveled widely through the United States and Canada, scouting potential terrorist targets, say FBI officials, who believe he spent about a week each in New York, Washington, Chicago and Montreal.

Since the attacks, her son had called just once, to check in, Zuhrah Abdu Ahmed told the agents.

The agents asked whether her son knew lead hijacker Mohamed Atta and others she had seen on TV. They wanted to know whether he had ever mentioned Al Qaeda or trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Ahmed said her memory was hazy, but she insisted that her son was innocent.

Sitting on the front stoop of the family home, Ahmed — a tiny woman with warm brown eyes and a big smile, dressed in a flowing black robe and head scarf — said her son didn't like South Florida's freewheeling singles scene and the nightclubs and bikinis.

"But he like America so much," she said. "People, he say, [are] very nice and kind. If only they more decent, he say, this would be the best place on Earth."

Ahmed, whose husband died in 2004, conceded that it was possible her son might have fallen in with the wrong crowd.

"I recognize a lot of people do evil stuff in the name of the religion," she said, and then paused. "He's a young guy. Maybe they try to trap him, without he even knew what was going on around him. Who knows?"

The FBI also began chasing Shukrijumah through the back alleys of cyberspace. Within hours of the FBI's public announcement, Shukrijumah might have given them a lead.

Just after midnight that day, an e-mail popped up in the guestbook section of MasterArabic.com, a website that Shukrijumah had set up to promote his father's Arabic tutoring business and Islamic teachings. Routed to obscure the identity of the sender, the message said only, "I am safe."

Tracking Down Leads

In their hunt for Shukrijumah, the FBI dispatched teams of agents to Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Yemen, where he had relatives. Agents also tracked leads through Europe, Asia and South America.

One of those leads took them to Charlieville, Trinidad, where a Muslim cleric had called federal agents to say Shukrijumah was traveling to and from the island and "had company." Agents fanned out across the dirt streets of Charlieville and found several men Shukrijumah had spent time with.

One of them, Imtiaz Mohammed, told The Times recently that he had two lengthy, sometimes testy, interviews with FBI agents. He told them that he, Shukrijumah and others in Trinidad did talk about world politics, but that Shukrijumah never said anything suggesting he was a militant, and never explained his travels.

In March 2004, after a year of inconclusive leads, the FBI got wind of a Shukrijumah sighting. Intelligence had placed him at a summit of the so-called second-generation Al Qaeda leaders in the rugged mountains of Waziristan, an area along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border where much of the Al Qaeda brain trust — including Osama bin Laden — was believed to be hiding.

Working together, authorities in Pakistan, Britain and the United States arrested some of the attendees and seized several computers.

The evidence indicated the attendees were discussing future terrorist operations in Europe and the U.S. At least one had compiled video footage of the New York Stock Exchange, a Newark, N.J., insurance building and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund buildings in Washington.

On May 26, 2004, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft went public again, singling out Shukrijumah as the most dangerous of seven Al Qaeda operatives suspected of planning strikes in the U.S.

Citing "credible intelligence from multiple sources," Ashcroft described Shukrijumah as "a clear and present danger" who might be trying to enter the country.

More tips and rumors continued to pour in. Most were maddeningly vague. They persisted through the elections in November, but nothing ever happened.

Then Shukrijumah appeared to drop off the radar screen again. There hasn't been a publicly disclosed sighting since.

Nearly two years later, senior FBI and intelligence officials say they still debate where Shukrijumah might be. Their best guess is that he remains in Waziristan.

In July, the U.S. government, which is offering a $5-million reward, began handing out fancy green matchboxes in Pakistan bearing a photograph of Shukrijumah.

"You give us Adnan G. el Shukrijumah and in return we will give you rewards," the boxes say in Urdu and Pashto. "We assure you that all information would be kept secret."

Meanwhile, Shukrijumah continues to cause many a sleepless night.

Special Agent Andrew Lenzen, the lead case agent and a veteran of the FBI's Miami counter-terrorism squad, has amassed an encyclopedic knowledge of Shukrijumah's actions and personality quirks. He has even compiled a timeline of his life, beginning with the day he was born.

"I know him almost like his mother," said Lenzen. "I've lived, slept and dreamed him for the past three years."

[al-Canine]

NATION NEWS

Trinidad, Guyana alert for terrorist

Published on: 9/5/06.


ONE OF THE WORLD'S most wanted terrorists, Al Qaeda operative Adnan Gulshair Muhammad el Shukrijumah, may be hiding in Trinidad and Tobago or Guyana and has, in his possession, a T&T passport.

Shukrijumah, 31, is one of the most wanted terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which said he was "wanted in connection with possible terrorist threats against the United States".

He has several "personal ties" to both Trinidad and Guyana, the FBI said, according to an Los Angeles Times Sunday. US law enforcement described the elusive terrorist as an "ultimate sleeper agent".

The LA Times report quoted FBI sources as saying that Shukrijumah could be anywhere, including Trinidad and Guyana, because of his ties in both places and the fact that he is believed to have passports of both countries. The FBI also believes that Shukrijumah may attempt to enter the United States using a Trinidad passport.

Several Muslims in the twin island republic have already been questioned by the FBI about their links to Shukrijumah.

Meanwhile, Commissioner of Police Darwin Dottin told the DAILY NATION that although no official request was made to his department, to date there was no record that the wanted terrorist had entered or had passed through any of Barbados' ports of entry.

He noted that since Shukrijumah was blacklisted locally, there would have been automatic checks done on the fugitive.

Yesterday, Trinidad law enforcement officials said they were aware that Shukrijumah was in Trinidad and confirmed they were contacted by the FBI for assistance in the matter.

However, they declined to go further into the matter "because of its nature".

http://www.nationnews.com/story/286962763692968.php

[al-Canine]

edit: oops, double post. Apologies.

[Petronas]

This article is a year old, but I thought it might be of interest because of all the recent focus on El Shukrijumah. It provides some interesting background, such as his flight training (in fact, one of his nicknames is "Jaafar The Pilot"), but I recommend taking the claims that he already smuggled a nuclear weapon into the U.S. and that he stole 180 lbs of nuclear material from McMaster university with considerable skepticism.

America's real 'most wanted'
September 6, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern

Forget the FBI's "America's Most Wanted" list. The most dangerous fugitive in the U.S. is neither James Bulger, the Boston drug dealer who is wanted for 18 counts of murder, nor "Pepe" Lopez-Orozo, the illegal alien who murdered a young mother with two children (ages 2 and 4) in Elmore County, Idaho. It's not even Osama bin Laden, although the emir's name for some strange reason appears on the list. Bin Laden is not living in the U.S. but remains safe and secure within the valley of Dir in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan.

The individual who merits the distinction of the "America's most dangerous" fugitive is Adnan el-Shukrijumah, a diminutive, 30-year-old terrorist who stands at 5-foot-4 and weighs 140 pounds.

El-Shukrijumah represents the perfect "sleeper agent," since he speaks English without the slightest hint of an accent and possesses the uncanny abilities to blend into a crowd, to alter his looks, and to assume a multitude of identities. He is the proverbial Mr. Cellophane. Nothing about el-Shukrijumah indicates his radical Islamic orientation. He remains clean-shaven and never wears a long shirt or chews a toothpick. He has been known to have a beer on occasion (like an average American Joe), to smoke an occasional Camel and even to carry rosary beads in his pocket.

El-Shukrijumah's face does not appear on the nightly news, even though a BOLO ("Be-On-the-Lookout") was issued March 21, 2004, by FBI Director Robert Mueller and former Attorney General John Ashcroft. He is neither the subject of feature articles in leading newspapers nor of special reports on CNN and Fox News, let alone the three major networks. But no one is more of a threat to the lives and well-being of every man, woman and child within the United States than this ferret-faced terrorist.

Adnan el Shukrijumah, a trained nuclear technician and accomplished pilot, has been singled out by bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to serve as the field commander for the next terrorist attack on U.S. soil, a nuclear event that is known among al-Qaida planners as "the American Hiroshima." The terrorist was last seen in Mexico, where, on Nov. 1, 2004, he allegedly hijacked a Piper PA Pawnee cropduster from Ejido Queretaro near Mexacli to transport a nuclear weapon and nuclear equipment into the U.S. The plane's tail number was XBCYP.

Adnan el-Shukrijumah was born in Guyana Aug. 4, 1975 – the first born of Gulshair el-Shukrijumah, a 44-year-old radical Muslim cleric, and his 16-year-old wife. In 1985, Gulshair migrated to the United States, where he assumed duties as the imam of the Farouq Mosque in Brooklyn.

The mosque, located at 554 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, has served as a hive for terrorist activities. It has raised millions for the jihad and has served as a recruiting station for al-Qaida. Many of the planners of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, including blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, were prominent members of this notorious "house of worship."

In 1995, the Shukrijumah family relocated to Miramar, Fla., where Gulshair became the spiritual leader of the radical Masjid al-Hijah Mosque, and where Adnan became friends with Jose Padilla, who planned to detonate a radiological bomb in midtown Manhattan; Mandhai Jokhan, who was convicted of attempting to blow up nuclear power plants in southern Florida; and a group of other home-grown terrorists.

Adnan Shukrijumah attended flight schools in Florida and Norman, Oklahoma, along with Mohammad Atta and the other 9-11 operatives, and he became a highly skilled commercial jet pilot, although he, like Atta and the other terrorists, never applied for a license with the Federal Aviation Commission.

In April 2001, Shukrijumah spent 10 days in Panama, where he reportedly met with al-Qaida officials to assist in the planning of 9-11. He also traveled to Trinidad and Guyana, where virulent al-Qaida cells have been established. The following month, he obtained an associate's degree in computer engineering from Broward Community College.

During this time, he managed to amass passports from Guyana, Trinidad, Saudi Arabia, Canada and the United States. He also began to adopt a number of aliases, including Abu Arifi, Jafar al-Tayyar, Jaafar At Yayyar, Ja'far al-Tayar, and Mohammed Sher Mohammed Khan (the name that appeared on his official FBI file). He traveled to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, where he met with Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and other members of the al-Qaida high command. He also spent considerable time within al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, where he received training in explosives and special operations.

Following the success of 9-11, el-Shukrijumah became singled out by bin Laden and al-Zawahiri to spearhead the next great attack on America – a nuclear attack that would take place simultaneously in seven U.S. cities, leaving millions dead and the richest and most powerful nation on earth in ashes.

To prepare for this mission, el-Shukrijumah, along with fellow al-Qaida sleeper agents Anas al-Liby, Jaber A. Elbaneh, and Amer el-Matti, was sent to McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, a facility that boasted a five-megawatt nuclear research reactor, the largest reactor of any educational facility in Canada. At McMaster, where they may have enrolled under aliases, el-Shukrijumah and his associates reportedly wasted no time in gaining access to the nuclear reactor and stealing more than 180 pounds of nuclear waste for the creation of radiological bombs. Jane Johnson, a spokesperson for McMaster University, declined to comment on the stay of the al-Qaida operatives at the school. She insisted that such information was confidential.

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46158

[JaneDoe]

http://akajanedoe.us/images/elshukrijumah1.jpg

[Vancouver]

Matches distributed by the US embassy in Pakistan, July 2006.
http://www.almalaf.net/upload/original/16035_12597.jpg

[SmokedYourDSM]

Matches distributed by the US embassy in Pakistan, July 2006.
http://www.almalaf.net/upload/original/16035_12597.jpg

Van, I don't get it. Is that supposed to be in SUPPORT of Adnan? Or some sort of 'Wanted Poster', as the article states the matches were handed out by the US Embassy?

I'm lost :confused:

[SmokedYourDSM]

NM, thanks anyways.


http://english.people.com.cn/200607/05/eng20060705_280345.html

U.S. Embassy to Pakistan starts match boxes distribution of wanted al-Qaeda men http://english.people.com.cn/images/3zoom.gif printResizeButton(); http://english.people.com.cn/images/plus.gif (javascript:void(0);)http://english.people.com.cn/200607/05/images/spacer.gif http://english.people.com.cn/images/minus.gif (javascript:void(0);)
The United States (http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/data/usa.html) Embassy in Islamabad Wednesday started distribution of match boxes, which inscribed with photographs of most wanted al-Qaeda men.
The match boxes were distributed to local journalists by the American ambassador to Pakistan (http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/data/pakistan.html).
The match boxes carry the photograph of senior al-Qaeda figure Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, who is wanted in connection with possible threats against the United States.
The Rewards For Justice Program of United States Department of State, has offered a reward of up to 5 million U.S. dollars for information leading directly to the capture of Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) website.
On the back side of the match boxes, a message states, "the U.S. administration offers up to 30 crore rupees reward for those who will provide information that can help in the arrest of wanted al- Qaeda activists."
Contact telephone numbers in the United States and Islamabad as well as two e-mail addresses have also been published at the end of the match boxes.
Source: Xinhua

[SmokedYourDSM]

Adnan was possibly spotted in Austin, trying to rent a home.

link (http://ace.mu.nu/archives/196887.php)

[Vancouver]

Van, I don't get it.It's like the Deck of Cards: report this guy if you spot him. The matchbox carries a phone number to which to report any info. Note that these matches went out in early July of this year, in Pakistan.

[Vancouver]

More about the possible sighting of Adnan, at Dread Pundit:
http://dreadpundit.blogspot.com/2006/09/did-this-al-qaeda-terrorist-try-to.html

Here's a photo of Hamid Mir and what he claims are Talibanskis.

[Petronas]

Al-Qaeda general 'in the UK'
October 16, 2006

AN al-Qaeda general believed to be plotting dirty bomb attacks on seven US cities could be in Britain, FBI sources said yesterday. Adnan El Shukrijumah, who has a £2.5million bounty on his head, is suspected of planning a spectacular attack using bombs that spread radioactive waste.

The FBI are investigating the 31-year-old Saudi-born scientist’s UK links, including connections to the Midlands and Birmingham. A US source said: “He has travelled extensively in the last seven years, and we believe this includes the UK.”

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006480097,00.html

[Petronas]

Jihadis Warn (Again) of Impending Attack; SWAT Interested In Shukrijumah?
October 17, 2006

That's the cat whose face is always in my sidebar now. The guy supposedly plotting a radiological bomb detonation in the US.

Jihadis again say an attack is coming in Ramadan. Probably just goosing morale, of course, but every once in a while one of these threats is based on something more than opitimism for the chance of killing innocent civilians.

Meanwhile, the My Pet Jawa commenter Melissa (also a commenter here from time to time) who thought she spotted Shukrijumah says she got an interesting visit:

I was greeted this morning at my office by a member of the local SWAT team.
They are looking for an Arab male, passing himself off as hispanic. Judging by the picture they showed me, this guy could definitely pass as Mexican.

This is getting rather strange.

A while ago a reader, who I'll call DT (as I don't know what he'd want me to call him), sent me his efforts at creating a composite of Shukrijumah -- this terrorist with different possible looks. It's an amateur job, but hey, it could help:

12337

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/201002.php

[Petronas]

Brother of Terror
March 22, 2007

Nabil El-Shukrijumah lives with the dubious distinction of having a family associated with terrorism. His father was the spiritual leader of one of the most dangerous mosques in America and a character witness for an explosives expert convicted for his involvement in a plot to blow up New York’s Lincoln and Holland Tunnels. His brother, a jihad camp trainee, is said to be the fugitive leader of a terror cell charged with carrying out the next wave of 9/11-style attacks on U.S. soil. Is Nabil’s terrorist pedigree enough to push him towards the same? If his websites are any indication, then the answer is yes.

Gulshair El-Shukrijumah had been an imam at Masjid Nur Al-Islam, located in Brooklyn, New York. He was sent there as a missionary by the Saudi government, in 1986. One of his congregants, Clement Rodney Hampton-El, was a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan War, an explosives expert, and possibly the one that taught the cell how to build the bomb used in the ’93 World Trade Center attack. Gulshair, as well, was a translator for Omar Abdel-Rahman (a.k.a. The Blind Sheikh), who was the local spiritual leader of the group associated with the bombing conspiracy, Maktab Al-Khidmat.

Prior to Hampton-El’s and Abdel-Rahman’s convictions in 1996, Gulshair had taken his wife and kids out of Brooklyn and brought them to Miramar, Florida, where he was to become the imam of the Al-Hijrah Mosque. Nabil, his son, was 13, at the time. Aside from the father, the family had only been in Brooklyn for a short stay. The wife, Zuhra Abdu Ahmed, and children had previously been residing in Saudi Arabia.

Adnan El-Shukrijumah was the eldest of the children. When he was born, in 1975, his mother was just 16 years old, a child herself. His father was 47. Shortly after arriving in Florida, Adnan enrolled in classes at Broward Community College, studying engineering. According to school records, he was a student there till 1999. Adnan was widely known throughout the South Florida Muslim community, having spent time in numerous area mosques and Islamic centers. He was a devout Muslim and was well versed in Quranic teachings, often imparting that knowledge to those younger than himself.

In May of 2001, Adnan left Florida for Trinidad, where he had family – according to his father, to sell Islamic garments. Nabil, his brother, was 18, at the time. He would not return, as authorities gathered intelligence that Adnan was being groomed by Al-Qaeda to become the next Mohammed Atta, with whom it is believed he (Adnan) had dealings while in the States. That intelligence came, in part, from the operational commander of the September 11th attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Other terrorists Adnan has been associated with include: “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla, Hamas and Al-Qaeda fundraiser Adham Hassoun, and convicted terrorist Imran Mandhai. Padilla and Hassoun are currently awaiting trial in Miami. Today, Adnan is alleged to be part of an Al-Qaeda nuclear bomb plot. When word got out about his terror ties, his father was released from his duties as imam of Al-Hijrah, in March of 2003.

Gulshair didn’t have to wait long to find a new job, as he soon became a director at the Shamsuddin Islamic Center, located in North Miami Beach. The mosque had recently moved across the street from its original location, at the same address as the American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA). AMANA’s director, Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, was previously the Vice President of the Health Resource Center for Palestine (HRCP), a “charity” that was shut down, after it had been exposed for having ties to Hamas.

Besides his profession as an imam, Gulshair was also an Arabic language teacher. He even tutored Mandhai, before he (Mandhai) went to prison. Prior to his disappearance, Adnan had set his father up with a website that would be used to sell Gulshair’s books and tapes on how to learn Arabic. The website was appropriately titled, “Master Arabic.” On it, Adnan stated, “My father is the narrator of a system designed to take you from as basic as the alphabet to constructing words to conversation to Arabic [sic] grammer… Go ahead and click your way to mastering Arabic.”

The site contained a guestbook within it. The very first signatory in it was AMANA’s Zakkout. Soon after him, an individual by the name of Bilal Philips signed. Years before, Philips had been placed on the U.S. Attorney’s list of potential co-conspirators of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. He wrote, “Salaam alaykum Ibn Shukri, Mabrook on the website and special salaams to your father and prayers for his good spiritual and physical health. He was one of my first teachers in Arabic and is a dear friend, though geography and world politics has separated us. Tell him that, as always, I love him for the sake of Allaah. Was salaam, Bilal.” Gulshair’s site also contained a picture of another “unindicted co-conspirator” of the ’93 bombing, Siraj Wahhaj.

Adnan’s tribute to his father would end in July of 2003, when the website would be taken down. [The internet address for the site is set to expire in June of 2008.] However, recently, Adnan’s brother, Nabil, would honor Gulshair with his own tribute site – of the same title.

Nabil, who runs a print company out of his parents’ home, like his brother before him, has proficient web design skills. Within My Space, an online community that allows you to keep in contact with friends and family, Nabil created a new “Master Arabic” page for his father. On the page, he placed numerous pictures of Gulshair. One is of Gulshair teaching two young boys at his Brooklyn mosque. One of the lines on the blackboard reads, “The human being is under the oppression of the kuffar (unbelievers).”

Gulshair’s words were not the only disturbing message on this web page. In December of 2006, Nabil posted the following, with severe implications: “As Salaam Alaikum Dad, you're still living among all of us, will see you later but not that much later.”

In addition to his father’s page, Nabil created his own personal My Space page. He uses the name “El-Shukri.” [Shukrijumah is the combination of Shukri and the last name of the family, Jumah or Juman.] On the site, one finds many examples of how he has sought to follow in his father’s and brother’s extremist footsteps.

Numerous pictures that Nabil put on his page are of a jihadist nature. One of them can easily be construed as a threat to Israel’s existence. It states, “Oh Jerusalem, we are coming” and shows a terrorist with rifle on horseback watching as the city burns in flames. Another picture depicts scenes of dead American soldiers. Under one of the scenes, it says, “These are the armaments of the enemy, who are disgraced.” The picture, which contains a militant holding a rocket launcher, is from an Iraqi “resistance” group. Above the picture are large images of Saddam Hussein.

Two pictures on the page are from a Muslim rap group called Soldiers of Allah. They both include the black Islamic flag of war, which has been made popular by the banned British Islamist organizations, Al-Muhajiroun and Hizb-ut-Tahrir. As well, when one opens Nabil’s page, he/she is treated to Soldiers of Allah’s song, ‘1924.’ It contains the following quotes: “I am not going to give one inch of Palestine to the Jews… I would rather have my flesh be cut up than cut out Palestine from the Muslim land…” and “When the west was training Muslim scholars for hire, Jews were setting Al-Aqsa mosque on fire!”

One other picture on Nabil’s page is not worrisome for what it has on it, but for where it came from, www.arab3.com. The site is registered to Yousif Al-Olayyan, a former student at the University of Florida. Al-Olayyan is also the registered agent and the editor-in-chief for www.alsakher.com, a site that features in-depth discussions about Al-Qaeda, including from those that claim to be affiliated with the organization’s leaders. One individual, who goes by the title ‘Al-Am’ or ‘The Pains,’ stated, “I was with Sheikh Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri to launch attacks in the Arab country…”

What’s even more troubling is the fact that, in October of 2002, Al-Olayyan was an invitee to a Homeland Security program dealing with “corrosion in reactors and nuclear power systems.” The event was co-organized by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which, according to its website, “helps to ensure the safety of the nuclear weapons stockpile and reduce the threat of terrorist attacks on our homeland.” [PDF]

Along with the many pictures, Nabil placed a video on his My Space about how America attacked itself on 9/11. This is outrageous, given the fact that his brother Adnan, who is nicknamed Jafar the Pilot, is suspected of flight training with the perpetrators of 9/11.

My Space allows people to join others’ My Space pages as “friends.” Every “friend” needs to be approved by the owner of the site. As well, My Space allows you to place your favorite set of “friends” on your homepage, along with their pictures or logos. On Nabil’s site, there are numerous suspect individuals. His favorites include: a 23-year-old resident of Hollywood, Florida named Yusuf Abdullah, who calls the El-Shukrijumah family “a blessing in my life.”

Abdullah’s page sports a background picture of a Quran and a Kalashnikov rifle alongside one another. Additionally, on his site, one finds audio and video of the song ‘Ghurabaa’ by Saad al-Ghamdi. In the piece, it is repeated, “So let us make jihad, and battle, and fight from the start.”

Also featured in Nabil’s favorites is a My Space page dedicated to the deceased Chechen terror warlord, Omar Ibn al Khattab. Khattab, who was closely aligned with Osama bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda network, was responsible for the murders of scores of Russian soldiers. The page is called “Hattab – The Lion of Islam,” and it contains an abundance of footage from Chechen terror operations, as well as the Hamas logo and a poem stating, “It is Islam, [it has] returned. In the path of Allah, we have walked and announced Jihad. We have returned with a machine gun.”

Another “friend” of Nabil is Vegeta (a.k.a. Saiyan). On Vegeta’s site, visitors can see photographs of Hamas and Hezbollah terror fighters, including children dressed in terrorist garb. Nabil posted a comment on the site, calling Vegeta “my Muslim Brother” and approvingly stated, concerning an anti-Israel video Vegeta had posted, “Very good, Masha’ Allah.”

Nabil enjoys posting comments on other people’s sites, including numerous statements containing the highly offensive term “nigga.” He has also posted religious material, such as a flyer for the Nur-Ul-Islam children’s Academy. Nur-Ul-Islam was co-founded by Raed Awad, a former agent for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), a “charity” that raised millions of dollars for Hamas. In addition, it was Awad that is believed to be responsible for the conversion to Islam by Jose Padilla.

Web design skills within the El-Shukrijumah family are not just limited to Adnan and Nabil. Aidah, their 22-year-old sister, has her own My Space page, as well. On it, she pays tribute to her lost brother with photographs. On one, she refers to him as “Big bro.” In another, she and her siblings are sitting outdoors next to their father, holding a sketch of Adnan. The photo was taken outside the CBC Building in Toronto, one of Adnan’s known stomping grounds. The picture is labeled “Memories.” Long forgotten, it seems, was the time, in 1997, when “Big bro” was arrested for biting Aidah. That was then.

Today, Aidah has a new life with her husband, who from the looks of one of his shirts, hails from the windy city of Chicago. Relocated, she is, awaiting her soon-to-be born baby, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, thousands of miles from the family’s Miramar home.

Does she know where her brother, Adnan, is? Who can say? Does any of the family know? If they do, they’ve been careful not to slip up. The mother has admitted to telling him not to return, for fear of him being brought to justice.

One thing is for certain, though. Whether Adnan comes back or not, the family has a new adult jihadi to keep the legacy alive – Nabil El-Shukrijumah. Given the trouble the United States has had in locating his brother, one would think that he would be watched with at least the same interest and intensity.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=27437

[Vancouver]

Here are the myspace pages they are talking about:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=83792461
Nabil el-Shukri Juma'ah, brother of Adnan
نبيل الشكري جمعة

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=139423482
Gulshair el-Shukri Juma'ah, father of Adnan and Nabil.
قل شير الشكري جمعة
Gulshair is dead but the page is still maintained by Nabil it appears

[al-Canine]

In this evening's episode of "The Sopranos" on HBO, Adnan el-Shukrijuma actually played into the plot, in a quick mention by one of the characters.

The show, the highest rated on cable television, is coming to an end, with the last episode scheduled for next Sunday evening.

A recurrent sub-plot has involved a pair of Arabs involved in nefarious activities, tied in with a pair of FBI agents who were re-assigned from organized crime to counter-terrorism.

In addition to the mention of Shukrijuma, tonight's plot also featured a screen shot of Jamestown (http://www.jamestown.org/).

I predict that a nuclear terrorist attack on the NYC area will play into the final episode. If anything, this can only help in raising awareness of the possible diabolical intentions we all are trying to stay on top of here.... :add25: :add24:

Anyone else have any thoughts...?

[Petronas]

Dr. Williams's theory about the Al Qaeda nukes is certainly not without controversy, but there also is a lot of other interesting information in this article. I just met Dr. Williams last week at a conference in Dallas - he is currently being pursued by a Canadian Muslim organization with a multi-million dollar lawsuit.

The Search for Adnan El Shukrijumah
Dr. Paul Williams, PhD
February 6, 2008

FBI Director Robert Mueller and former Attorney General John Ashcroft have called Adnan el-Shukrijumah “the next Mohammed Atta,” who represents “a clear and imminent danger to all Americans.” Shukrijumah’s face has appeared on the front pages of newspapers and every televised news outlet throughout the United States and Canada.

A special office for information that might lead to his arrest -- replete with a 24 hour hotline -- has been set up in Miami, Florida.

Federal investigators have combed South and Central America with the hope of gleaning a scintilla of evidence that might shed light on his whereabouts. They even established an elaborate sting operation in Guyana, Trinidad, and New York (the JFK plot) to snag the elusive fugitive -- but the operation only resulted in the creation of a virulent terrorist organization south of the border.

The Justice Department has placed a $5 million reward for any information leading to Adnan’s apprehension, and the same bounty for each of his alleged accomplices: Amer el-Maati, Jaber A. Elbaneh, Anas al-Liby, and Abderraouf Jdey.

But if you assemble a team of bounty hunters and manage to collar Adnan el-Shukrijumah and his terrorist cronies, you will be hard-pressed to turn them over to law enforcement officials, let alone to collect the aggregate $25 million. The U.S. Department of Justice, even after posting rewards, setting up hotlines, and issuing BOLOs (“Be-on-the-Lookout” alerts) has failed to issue criminal warrants for their arrest. This means that the bounty hunters would have to leave Adnan and his friends strapped to lawn chairs, since members of state and local police departments remain without authorization to detain or question them, let alone take them into custody.

This oversight is mind-boggling. Adnan el-Shukrijumah has worked with Mohammad Atta and the other 9/11 operatives; he has masterminded a plan to launch a nuclear attack on American soil; he has attended leading al Qaeda gatherings, including the Waziristan Summit of 2004; he has conspired with Jose Padilla and others to blow up bridges and infrastructures in New York City; and the search for his present whereabouts is littered with corpses, including that of prominent Guyanese businessman Farouk Razac. Obtaining the necessary warrants would constitute the perfunctory matter of submitting a request to a federal judiciary. But this basic procedural step was not undertaken by the U.S. Attorney General, the FBI Director, or any other official within the Justice Department.

Federal law enforcement officials explain this oversight by insisting that the issuance of a BOLO (Be-on-the-Lookout) and a warrant for Adnan as a material witness is all that is required to collar Adnan. They point out that suspected terrorists, under the guidelines of the Patriot Act, need not be fugitives who have been indicted by grand juries in U.S. District Courts. This is all well and good if Adnan if cornered within the

U.S. But, if he is sitting in a café in Canada or Mexico, neither the BOLO nor the warrant as a material witness will be sufficient to take him into custody and to extradite him for questioning by the FBI or Homeland Security.

“A material witness warrant has no weight at all in Canada,” explains a retired RCMP official who opts to remain anonymous “Our law enforcement officials cannot do anything unless there is a criminal offense that is extraditable.”

The failure to obtain arrest warrants remains coupled with other oversights of equally staggering proportions. On October 31, 2006, members of a counter-terrorist research unit spotted Adnan el-Shukrijumah on the campus of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. They dutifully reported the sighting to the FBI and CSIS. At this writing, over one year later, they remain waiting for a response.

Similarly, a former Israeli intelligence official claims to have seen Shukrijumah on several occasions at a gas station in Toronto -- less than an hour’s drive from Hamilton. The Israeli says that he contacted FBI officials at four different locations only to be encountered by bureaucratic indifference. The sighting remains to be investigated.

On January 25, 2007, a witness reported to Canadian and US officials that Adnan was living in an apartment complex in southern Ontario and that he made daily visits to the regional airport. This tip also went unheeded despite concerns the witnesses (some of whom resided in the complex) expressed about their safety.

In October 2007, a former member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a Canadian police official, a computer tracker who served with Canada’s Internal Revenue Service, a licensed private investigator, and a team of journalist managed after months of intense effort to pinpoint Adnan’s present whereabouts. The task was accomplished by tracing e-mails from friends and family members, internet postings from Adnan that were made from various locations in the vicinity of his present address, newly acquired family photos and communiqués, and, of course, actual sightings.

The information was conveyed to high-ranking political figures, military officials, and federal investigators -- all of which expressed scant interest in the findings, and none of whom sought to validate the data. In short, it was cast into the proverbial black-hole that represents the core of U.S. intelligence.

And yet, the threat posed by Adnan el-Shukrijumah remains unaltered. He remains, according to British, Saudi, Pakistani, and Israeli intelligence sources (and even FBI bureaucrats), a “one-man terror cell” -- an al Qaeda operative, trained not only to build radiological weapons and to maintain tactical nukes but also to detonate such devices within major American cities without a logistical backup crew. This same claim has been verified by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the highest ranking al-Qaeda official to be taken into custody, Abu Zubaydah, another leading al-Qaeda op in federal custody, and dozens of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Introducing Adnan

For starters, he is a chameleon. Adnan possesses an uncanny ability to blend into a crowd, to alter his looks, and to assume a multitude of identities. He is the proverbial Mr. Cellophane. Few things about him indicate his Islamic orientation. He is often clean-shaven and never wears a long shirt or chews a toothpick. He has been known to have a beer (like an average American Joe), to smoke a Marlboro, and to carry rosary beads in his pocket. He has posed as an Italian-American, a Mexican-American, a Canadian, a Saudi, a Jamaican, an Arab, and a Latino from Trinidad. He stands somewhere between 5’4” and 5’6”; weighs 140 pounds; and suffers from severe asthma. He has black hair, dark brown eyes, an olive complexion, a mole on one cheek and a very prominent Mediterranean proboscis. A key distinguishing feature is a scar on the left side of his face below and forward of his earlobe.

Adnan is fluent in English, Spanish, Urdu, and Arabic. He is a trained pilot and a computer whiz. But, his central area of interest, training and expertise is nuclear engineering.

The Family Tree

Adnan gives proof to the adage that a rotten apple never falls far from a diseased tree. His father Gulshair was born in Guyana, where his grandfather Mohammad Jumah ran a general store. One of eleven children, Gulshair developed an interest in Arabic and began working as a tailor. At the age of 32, he moved to Cairo, where he studied at the radical al-Azbar University, and then Medina, where he enrolled at al-Madina al Manawarah (The Islamic University of Medina) and became stepped in the fanatical writings of Ibn Taymiyah and Sayyid Qutb.

In Saudi Arabia, Gulshair taught at several madrassahs, and, at the age of 42, met and married Mareed Zubrah Abu Akmed. Mareed, having just celebrated her 14th birthday was barely pubescent. Two years later, on August 4, 1975, Mareed gave birth to their first child Adnan. Three more children would be born to the couple before the family moved to Trinidad, where Gulshair received a monthly stipend of $1,500 from the Saudi government to spread the radical doctrine of Wahhabism. [1]

Bugaboo In Brooklyn

In 1986, Gulshair moved to Brooklyn where he became the imam of the newly created Majid Nur a-Islam mosque on 21 Church Street. Here he preached death to the West and recruited young blacks from New York’s mean streets. Members of his congregation came to include Abdul Rasheed and Clement Rodney Hampton-El, who were convicted in 1996 of plotting to blow up the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, the George Washington Bridge, and the United Nations building.

In 1990, Gulshair established close ties with blind sheikh Omar Abel Rahman, who was serving as imam of the Farouq Mosque at 554 Atlantic Avenue, several blocks from Majid Nur a-Islam. On the second floor of the Farouq Mosque, al Qaeda had opened an office under the name of the al-Kifah Refugee Center. It became one of Gulshair’s favorite haunts. When Rahman was taken into custody as the alleged architect of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Gulshair served as the blind sheikh’s translator and chief character witness. He also served as a character witness for Clement Rodney Hampton-El, whom he defended by stating that the defendant had fought in Afghanistan to “help his brothers, the Muslims” and that Hampton-El “was prepared to give his life for that, and that does not mean he was involved in any acts of terror…” [2]

In Brooklyn, Gulshair re-established ties with Bilal Philips, a Canadian convert to Islam, whom he had tutored in Saudi Arabia. Philips, an un-indicted c-conspirator in the WTC bombing, was credited with converting more than 3,000 US soldiers to Islam by setting up “tent revivals” in Riyadh during the Persian Gulf War. Returning to his home in Toronto, he became a favorite speaker on the Islam circuit by advancing the argument that Friday was the best day to conduct a beheading. [3]

Under The Saudi Sun

While Gulshair was developing ties with radical black Muslims in Brooklyn, Adnan was living with his maternal grandparents in Saudi Arabia. He completed his elementary and secondary school training in Medina and, like his father, taught at local madrassahs. By 1991, he had attracted the attention of the mujahadeen, newly returned to Saudi Arabia from Afghanistan, received training in guerilla warfare at an al-Qaeda camp in Khost, and assumed the bayat -- the oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden.

Adnan was sent to Yemen where his paternal grandfather had been born. He was given a code-name (Mohammed Sher Khan) and received training in special operations, including flight lessons. Eventually, Adnan became so adept at aviation that he earned the nickname “Jafar al-Tayar” (“Jafar the Pilot”).

The Family In Florida

In 1995, Adnan, now a full-fledged jihadi, rejoined his family in Brooklyn as a new missionary to the land of the free and the home of the brave, with a monthly stipend -- similar to that received by his father -- from the Saudi government. The reunited Shukrijumah clan now set out for sunny Florida, where Gulshair became the imam of the Masjid al-Hyrah Mosque in Miramar. Gulshair also came to serve as the spiritual leader of the Boca Raton Islamic Center (BRIC), where he established a close friendship with BRIC imam Dr. Ibrahim Dremali. [4]

Dremali, a professor of geology at Broward Community College, shared Gulshair’s militant fundamentalism. The two attended a rally where Israeli flags were burned and slogans, such as “With jihad we’ll claim our land, Zionist blood will wet the sand,” were shouted. On this occasion, Dremali advised the crowd “not to be sad for those who were martyred and to not be afraid to die for what they believe in” -- a clear reference to suicide bombers. [5]

In Florida, Adnan received legal permanent residency status -- a “green card,” which permitted him to acquire a federal passport. He never became a naturalized American citizen. In the course of the next five years, Adnan would obtain additional passports from Canada, Trinidad, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia.

Early Warning Signs

On October 12, 1997, Adnan became a blip on the radar screen when screams came from the Shukrijumah squat stucco house at SW 27th Street and the neighbors summoned the Miramar police. The younger siblings, Officer David Goetz wrote in the police report, had ‘’locked themselves in the bedrooms to protect themselves from their brother, Adnan, who had come home and found clothes laying all over the place, so he hit them.’’ Adnan’s 13-year-old sister Aida had a bite wound on her arm, according to the report, and Areeza, his youngest sister, had been struck in the face. Zubrah, the mother, Goetz added, ‘’conveyed to me that her son being male, he was expected to carry the role of disciplinarian.”[6]

During this time, Adnan taught Arabic at his father’s mosque and became engaged in raising funds the Global Relief Fund (GRF), a front for terrorist organizations. GRF, according to the Treasury Department, was responsible for funding the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He enrolled as an engineering/computer science major at Broward Community College, where Ibrahim Dremali served as his academic advisor. Adnan also made several trips to Saudi Arabia where he met with his al Qaeda mentors Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and terror financier Ramzi Binalshibh. [7]

The Jihad Club

Spreading the fire of jihad, Adnan attended services at the Masjid al-Iman mosque in Fort Lauderdale, where he became acquainted with a host of wannabe terrorists, including Jose Padilla, who planned to detonate a radiological bomb in midtown Manhattan; Imran Mandhai, who was convicted of attempting to blow up nuclear power plants in southern Florida; Moessa Shuyeb Jokham, who was arrested for plotting terrorist attacks against Jewish community centers and businesses; and Hakki Akksoy, who was jailed for ten years when a cache of deadly explosives was found in his home. [8]

Questioned about the aspiring terrorists, Sofian Abdelaziz Zakout, director of the American Muslim Association and a friend of the Shukrijumah family, said: “I saw [Adnan el Shukrijumah, Padilla and Mandhai] at different times in different mosques, and I always said hello. Does that make me a terrorist?” [9]

Zakout’s statement contains more than a hint of irony. He had served as the Vice President of a now defunct “charity” called Health Resource Center Palestine which served to solicit funding for the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP), a virulently anti-Semitic group that serves terrorist groups. “I am in support of the Hamas movement,” Nihad Awad, the former public relations director of the IAP, announced to the press. The Health Resource Center Palestine also listed Ibrahim Dremali as its Gaza coordinator. Both Dremali and Zakkout testified as character witnesses on behalf of Adham Hassoun, who was accused of using Benevolence International as a front for funding al-Qaeda. [10]

Another Alarm Unheeded

Adnan produced another blip on the crime monitor in March, 2001, when FBI special agents in Miami launched an investigation of the Darul Uloom Mosque in Pembroke Pines. The agents became interested in the activities of Imran Mandhai, a member of the mosque and another student at Broward Community College, who had stated his intention to create a jihad cell that would consist of 25 or 30 men, including Adnan el Shukrijumah. The cell, Mandhai maintained, would target electric substations, Jewish institutions, a National Guard armory, even Mount Rushmore. “It was no secret that [Adnan] was pretty radical,” says a federal law enforcement source, “and that Mandhai thought he would be interested in what they were doing.” [11]

But Shukrijumah was too slick and smart to become involved in the creation of a cell with a loudmouth like Mandhai. He declined to join their plans for jihad, correctly surmising that Mandhai already had attracted too much attention. But his name had been mentioned, and the federal investigators discovered that Shukrijumah had lied on his green-card application regarding a prior arrest. For this reason, a confidential report with cursory information in his name was opened at FBI headquarters. The record was filed and quickly forgotten. [12]

Adnan Unites With Atta

By 2000, Adnan had formed a fast friendship with two new Muslim arrivals to southern Florida -- Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, who began to attend Gulshair’s mosque. Adnan made arrangements for Atta and Shehhi to receive flight training at Hoffman Aviation in Venice. This site was ideal. 80% of the students at Hoffman were foreign nationals -- many from the Middle East. It was a facility that served Yeslam bin Laden, Osama’s brother, and his employees. It was also a place where Atta and Shehhi could obtain student visas to prolong their stay in the US. The two 9/11 ops registered on July 3, 2000.

Following the training at Hoffman, Adnan accompanied Atta and Shehhi to the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma, where Atta and Shehhi signed up for advanced training on commercial jet airliners. [13] In Norman, Adnan bunked up with Shehhi at the apartment of Majahid Abdul Quaadir Menepta. Menepta (Melvin Lattimore), an African-American convert to Islam. Menepta, who was finishing his studies in biochemistry at The University of Oklahoma, was a member of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, a terrorist agency with ties to al-Qaeda that had established paramilitary training compounds in rural areas throughout the United States. Also living in Menepta’s apartment was Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called “20th terrorist” of 9/11. During this time, Adnan appears to have met and befriended Wael Rabeh and Muhanned Debeh, two students from The University of Oklahoma with ties to an al-Qaeda cell in Toronto.

The Lure Of Canada

Southern Ontario now begins to loom large in the story of the quest. Menepta would head off to Toronto in the wake of 9/11 to further his studies into biochemistry. Toronto was also the headquarters of Dr. Bilal Philips, Gulshair’s old friend, and the mission to convert African-Americans into rabid Wahhabis. It was also a favorite place for the Shukrijumahs to visit. The family album contains photos of Gulshair and his smiling clan in front of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in the heart of downtown Toronto.

Moreover, McMaster University in Hamilton -- less than an hour’s drive from Toronto -- housed a five megawatt nuclear reactor, one of the largest for educational purposes in North America, and boosted an engineering faculty that consisted of a disproportionate number of Egyptian nationals with degrees from the University of Cairo and the University of Alexandria -- whose schools of engineering remained under the tight control of the Trade Union of Engineers, a stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood. [14] It presumably would serve as a magnet for any jihadi interested in launching a nuclear attack on a major American city.

Canada offered more allure for terrorists and terrorists’ wannabes. Anyone who arrives in the land of the maple leaf and requests political asylum (for any reason} is granted immediate entry and temporary residency status with no questions asked by customs officials and no documentation required by law enforcement officials. Forty thousand “refugees” -- many from terror-sponsoring countries -- have entered Canada during the past decade by making this request. None are screened for criminality, security, or health problems and even a bogus passport constitutes an entrance ticket. The new arrivals are simply given dates for hearings that may not take place for eighteen months. [15]

Meanwhile, In Miami

On January 10, 2001, Adnan was seen in the company of Atta and Ziad Jarrah, yet another 9/11 operative, at the Miami District Immigration Office, where Atta and Jarrah applied for visa extensions. [16] On May 2, 2001, he accompanied Atta to the Lake Lauderdale office of the Florida Department of Highway Safety, where Atta produced his Egyptian passport and an I-94 immigration form, took a driving test, and received his license.

In his spare time, Adnan established a website appropriately titled “Master Arabic,” so that his father Gulshair could discover a new market for his tapes and books. On the site Adnan proclaimed: “My father is the narrator of a system designed to take you from as basic as the alphabet to constructing words to conversation to Arabic grammer [sic]… Go ahead and click your way to mastering Arabic.”

The Gulshair website contained a guestbook where friends and admirers of the radical imam could post their encomiums. One of the first to sign the book was Bilal Philips, who wrote: “Salaam alaykum Ibn Shukri, Mabrook on the website and special salaams to your father and prayers for his good spiritual and physical health. He was one of my first teachers in Arabic and is a dear friend, though geography and world politics has separated us. Tell him that, as always, I love him for the sake of Allah. Was salaam, Bilal.”

From Panama To Pakistan

In April 2001, Adnan spent 10 days in Panama, where he met with al Qaeda officials to assist in the planning of 9-11. He went on to stay with his relatives in Charlieville on the island of Trinidad. [17] He also visited the Darul Uloom Islamic Center in Cunupia, a 45 minute drive from Port-of Spain, Trinidad’s capital, and made a trip to Georgetown in nearby Guyana, where he allegedly received funds from Swiss House Cambio, a money exchange owned by Faouk Razac.

Razac represented the Muslim godfather in Guyana. He not only ran an elaborate death squad but also engaged in such nefarious activities as money laundering, arms running, and drug trafficking, most specifically, the cocaine route from Guinea, Trinidad, and Tobago to Canada. As a radical Sunni, Razac became affiliated with Jamaat ul-Muslimeen, Trinidad’s homegrown terrorist group, and served to secure funding for jihadi ventures

Returning to the US, Adnan visited New York (including the Farouq mosque in Brooklyn), Washington, DC and the infamous Dar al-Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church, Virginia), Chicago, and Canada, where he made contact with Abderraouf Jdey, the head of a large al Qaeda cell in Montreal, and Abdelazziz Boussora, another member of the Montreal cell and a trained pilot. The purpose of the meetings with Jdey and Boussora was to arrange a second wave of attacks on US soil.

In June, he traveled to a Pakistan for advanced training in explosives under Muhammed Atef, the co-founder of al-Qaeda who was killed in Afghanistan during the first wave of Operation Enduring Freedom. At the training camp on the outskirts of Kandahar, Adnan met Jose Padilla, his friend from Florida. But the two quickly got on each other’s nerves, and Padilla was forced to admit that he couldn’t work with Adnan on a mission. [18]

The Nuclear Mission

In Pakistan, Shukrijumah became singled out by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to spearhead the next great attack on America – a nuclear attack that would take place simultaneously in seven U.S. cities (New York, Boston, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Washington D.C.), leaving millions dead and the richest and most powerful nation on earth in ashes. [19]

To prepare for this mission, a team of al-Qaeda operatives reportedly were sent by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to McMaster University in order to gain knowledge of nuclear technology and to obtain access to the reactor. Along with Adnan, the team consisted of Anas al Liby, an engineer from Libya and member of the al-Qaeda high command; Jaber A. Elbaneh, a Yemeni national and naturalized American citizen who worked closely with the Lackawanna Six domestic cell near Buffalo, New York; and Amer el Matti, a Canadian national and licensed pilot. Another visitor to the campus, according to several sources, was Abderraouf Jdey from the Montreal cell.

At McMaster, Adnan purportedly kept to himself, made few new friends or acquaintances, kept strictly to his studies, and left the facility at the same time as his colleagues. [20] He also managed to obtain employment at the reactor -- allegedly as a guide. [21] Adnan’s “normal’ behavior on the Hamilton campus, a source said, gave him entry to places where dangerous materials were stored without raising undue suspicion. Bit by bit, the al-Qaeda operative allegedly managed to pilfer approximately 180 pounds of nuclear material from the university -- enough to build several radiological bombs. [22]

According to Debka, an internet outlet for Israeli intelligence news, Shukrijumah was under surveillance by Canadian officials in early October 2003, when he suddenly stopped attending classes and failed to show up for work. His disappearance aroused no concern, the sources say, until a few days later when the nuclear material was reported missing. [23]

Jayne Johnson, a spokesperson for McMaster University, declined to comment on the reports of Shukrijumah and the other al-Qaeda agents at the school. Other McMaster officials denied that any al Qaeda agents were on campus and that any nuclear or radiological material was missing from the campus. But witnesses have verified Shukrijumah’s presence in Hamilton and the school, according to several sources, has experienced radiological “leakage.” [24] Reliable sources have confirmed that Adnan made use of the internet facilities at McMaster as late as October 2007.

Moreover, Adnan’s stay at McMaster allegedly was facilitated by Dremali, his mentor at Broward Community College. Dremali had formed associations with fellow Egyptian engineers at McMaster and allegedly retained an affiliation with a clandestine club in Ontario that had been formed, in part, to assist newly arrived Arabs in the acculturation process. (The connection between Adnan and Dremali remains to be fully investigated by the FBI. In 2005, Dremali left his teaching position at Broward to become the imam of a mosque in Des Moines, Iowa. He allegedly also left his wife Lamyaa who now resides at in Colombia, Kentucky).

In an interview pertinent to this report, Hamid Mir confirmed that he had received verification that Anas al-Liby was at McMaster and that Liby had been instrumental in the removal of radiological/nuclear material from the reactor. Mir further testified that nuclear weapons and materials had been forward deployed by al-Qaeda to the United States. [25] Despite Mir’s stature among journalist as the only reporter to interview Osama bin Laden in the wake of 9/11, federal officials have neglected to seek out the bases of his claims.

The Unanswered Questions

Upon investigating the matter, Debka raised the following questions concerning Shukrijumah at McMaster and mind-boggling vanishing act:

A) Why were there no agents observing the subject inside the reactor? These sources did not disclose which security agencies were responsible for the surveillance.

B) Who gave Shukrijumah, a Saudi Arabian under suspicion, access to the reactor? And how is it that no one noticed increasing amounts of nuclear or radiological materials were disappearing over a period of months?

C) How was Shukrijumah able to give his watchers the slip?

D) Was the subject tipped off by an inside source in the U. S. or Canadian security services? [26]

Upon their departure from Canada, Adnan and his terrorist friends made their way to Buffalo where they may have been harbored by some members of the notorious Lackawanna (LA) Mosque. Jaber A. Elbaneh was a member of the infamous Lackawanna Six, who provided material support to al-Qaeda, and members of the Elbaneh family served in positions of leadership at the LA Mosque. It is also alleged that Adnan and his accomplices received monetary and logistical support from Mohammed Albanna, who managed to escape under the radar of the bust of the Lackawanna Six.

The Pocket Litter

In the wake of Operation Enduring Freedom (the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan), CIA and military intelligence officials discovered the reoccurrence of the names of Jaffar al Tayyar (“Jafer the Pilot”) and Mohammed Sher Mohammed Khan in "pocket litter" – documents and scraps taken from prisoners and dead al Qaeda soldiers. [27] In May 2002, U.S. intelligence and military officials starting asking a pressing question to al Qaeda detainees who were being interrogated at foreign prisons and secret CIA and military facilities abroad. “Whom,” the officials asked, “would al Qaeda pick to lead the next big attack against U.S. targets?” Intelligence sources told U.S. News and World Reports that several of the detainees coughed up the same answer: "Jaffar al Tayyar." [28] The detainees said they had encountered "the Pilot" during al Qaeda training exercises in Afghanistan. Intelligence officers presented photos of hundreds of suspected al Qaeda operatives to the detainees. Several identified an individual who bore a resemblance to Adnan el Shukrijumah. But the resemblance was not reality, and it would take months before the FBI and CIA teams, with their sophisticated equipment and state-of-the-art search engines, would realize it. "We were pursuing a lead," says one official, "that in the end turned out to be a dead end. We found out we were after the wrong person." [29] Indeed, the teams might still be searching for the wrong suspects and hitting dead-ends, if not for the fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured, quite by accident, in Karachi, Pakistan March 1, 2003.

The Plot Revealed

After days of interrogation, coupled with severe sleep deprivation, Mohammed told U.S. officials that bin Laden was planning to create a "nuclear hell storm" in America. [30] Unlike other attacks, the terrorist chief said, the chain of command for the nuclear attack answered directly to bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and a mysterious scientist called "Dr. X." Mohammed later admitted that "Dr. X" was Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani father of the Islamic bomb and the godfather of modern nuclear proliferation. He further confessed that the field commander for this operation was a naturalized American citizen whom he also referred to as Mohammed Sher Mohammed Khan and "Jafer al Tayyar" ("Jafer the Pilot"). [31] Both names are aliases of Adnan el Shukrijumah.

Khalid Mohammed went on to say that Adnan represents a “single-cell” -- a lone agent capable of launching a solo nuclear or radiological attack on a major American city. The news of such a cell reportedly startled U.S. officials who assumed that al Qaeda cells contained several members who were supported by broad logistical back-up crews. [32]

On March 21, 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller issued a BOLO ("be-on-the-lookout") alert for Shukrijumah, Amer el-Maati, and Abderraouf Jdey. Four other suspected Islamic terrorists were added to the Seeking Information list: Ahmed Kalfan Ghailani (a.k.a., "Foopie"), who took part in the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania; Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, another participant in the bombings; Adam Yahiye Gadahn (a.k.a., Adam Pearlman), a Jewish convert to Islam who grew up on a goat ranch in Riverside County, California; and Aafia Siddiqui, who received a biology degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and penned a doctoral thesis on neurological science at Brandeis University. [33]

Siddiqui, a native of Pakistan, looms of importance in the search. She worked closely with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as a “fixer,” the central al-Qaeda operative who supported money and logistical support to Adnan and his associates in southern Florida. She also provided monthly payments to Gulshair. The money for the father and son, interesting to note, came from the Saudi embassy. [34]

'Demanding, Rude, And Obnoxious'

Several days after the BOLO was issued, Adnan and Jdey were spotted at a Denny's restaurant in Avon, Colo., where one ordered a chicken sandwich and a salad. Samuel Mac, the restaurant manager, described them as "demanding, rude and obnoxious." [35] They told Mac they were from Iran and were driving from New York to the West Coast. Upon calling the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., Mac said the agent who answered the telephone said he had to call the bureau’s Denver office and declined to take down any information. When Mac called the Denver office of the FBI, he said he was shuttled to voice mail because “all the agents were busy.” [36] It was five hours before a seemingly uninterested agent called the restaurant manager. This agent, according to Mac, took a few notes and said she would pass the information along to the field agents who were handling the case. [37]

This promise represented the full extent of the government’s interest in the By sighting even though Shukrijumah had been labeled by FBI Director Robert Mueller as “the next Mohammad Atta” and even though the FBI had posted a $5 million reward for any information leading to his capture. The federal and state law enforcement officials failed to interview the restaurant workers and the patrons, purportedly even those who were willing to verify the presence of the terrorists in the restaurant. No forensic evidence was obtained from the scene by any law enforcement officials -- not even the utensils that had been used by the suspects. When contacted by The Denver Post, Monique Kelso, spokeswoman for the Denver bureau, said the office had received at least a dozen calls as a result of the BOLO. The calls, Kelo said, were all taken seriously. She added, "We follow up on every lead.” [38]

The Ghost In Guyana

By early April, Adnan was -- once again -- safe and secure under the protection of Farouk Razac in Georgetown, Guyana. This time he was spotted at the Swiss House Cambio, Razac’s money exchange, by several witnesses, including George Bacchus, a law enforcement informant. [39] At the Cambio, Adnan met one of Razac’s closest clients -- Imam Muhammed Hassan Abrahemi, the director of the International Islamic College for Advanced Studies, a small Shiite school in Georgetown that received large amounts of revenue from the government of Iran. He became acquainted with Abdul Nur, a civil engineer, who ran errands for Razac; Abdul Kadir, who served as the assistant director at Abrahemi’s Islamic College; and Russell Defreitas, a member of the Guyanese Parliament and leader of Jamaat ul-Muslimeen. This new association would produce a trial of corpses leading to a plot to a botched FBI sting and an attempt to blow up the fuel line that feeds the JFK International Airport in New York.

The first victim was Abrahemi, who was kidnapped by two masked men as he was leaving the Islamic College on April 2, 2004. Several days later, his body was discovered within a shallow grave on the outskirts of Georgetown. The hit appeared to be professional. Abrahemi had been shot twice in the back of the head while assuming a kneeling position. His mouth had been taped shut with duct tape, and his hands and feet were bound by nylon cords. The perpetuators of the crime have never been caught.

By this time, the FBI had managed to infiltrate Jamaat ul-Muslimeen and made use of undercover agents to pose as jihadis and to work with Nur, Kadir, and Dufreitas in an attempt to lure the elusive Adnan into a trap. The undercover agents provided the terrorist group with money and logistical support, compliments of US taxpayers, to launch a plot to blow up a system of jet fuel supply tanks and pipelines that feed fuel to the JFK International Airport in Queens, New York.

Later, U. S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskoff would appear before the press to say that the planned attack represented “one of the most chilling plots imaginable” -- a plot which might have caused “unthinkable devastation.” In reality, the plot was a ploy since exploding the fuel tanks represented a technical impossibility. Jet fuel does not produce explosive force, and the pipelines and fuel tanks that are buried beneath Queens have safety valves to prevent any mishap. [40]

The FBI had assumed that a well-oiled scheme to blow up a massive international airport and an entire borough of Manhattan would lure Adnan from his hiding place. The assumption proved to be incorrect. Adnan failed to appear at any of planning sessions in Trinidad and Guyana, and the federal officials were left not only with a hefty bill for the cockamamie scheme but also the creation of a new and financially flush arm of Jamaat ul-Muslimeen.

Nur, Kadir, Dufreitas and Kareem Ibrahim, a fourth operative, were taken into custody albeit several the arrests were a result of entrapment. [41] “We thought he could be the invisible hand. He's always in the shadows, particularly in [the Caribbean]. He's passed through it, he's known, his name came up in the conversations. He would have been the prize."

On May 7, 2007, two months after the airport plot went array, Farouk Razac was found dead in his Georgetown home with a wound to his head and marks around his neck. An autopsy report concluded that he had died of asphyxiation due to ligature strangulation. Carol Ann Lynch, Razac’s wife, was later charged with the homicide but few observers believed that the petite Lynch, who served as the reigning Miss South America, was capable of the crime. [42]

The Waziristan Summit

Following the federal botch-up in Colorado, the diminutive Shukrijumah resurfaced at a terrorist summit in the lawless Waziristan Province of Pakistan in April 2004. The summit has been described by the FBI as a "pivotal planning session" in much the same manner as a 2000 meeting was held in Kuala Lumpur for the 9-11 attacks. Attending the summit were Abu Issa al Hindi, a Pakistani technician whose company contained plans for staging attacks at financial institutions in New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., and Mohammed Babar, who has been charged with buying materials to build bombs for attacks in Great Britain. [43] Babar is an American citizen and resident of Queens, New York, where he was a leading member of the Islamic Thinkers Society, a group that burned the American flag during a demonstration before the Israeli consulate in 2006 and held up placards stating: “The mushroom cloud is on its way.” [44]

Shukrijumah South Of The Border

On May 27, 2004, Adnan el Shukrijumah was spotted at an Internet café in Tegucigalpa, the hilly capital of Honduras, where he made calls to France, Canada, and the U.S. He was described as badly dressed and bearded. At his table were Mara Salvatrucha leaders (jefes) from Panama, Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador. [45] According to the café owner, who recognized Adnan from photos in the newspaper, he spoke to the jefes in English and Spanish. Shukrijumah’s presence at the cafe was later verified by the Honduran Security Ministry, who confirmed that the elusive terrorists had made telephone calls from there to France, the U.S., and Canada. [46] While in Honduras, the Ministry maintained, Adnan became engaged in a plot to blow up the Panama Canal. [47]

On June 12, Gulshair el Shukrijumah, Adnan’s radical father, died in Miramar as a result of a stroke. Some sources attributed his demise to "the will of Allah." His funeral was attended by around 1,000 people who "prayed for Allah to accept their departed Sheik into his arms." Ibrahim Dremali, the Imam of the Boca Raton Islamic Center, said that Gulshair had “a positive effect on people.” [48]

From Tegucigalpa, Adnan made his way north to Belize in British Honduras and, from Belize, to Mexico's Quintana Roo State, south of Cancun. [49] He remained in Mexico for much of the summer of 2004. In early August, he was spotted in the northern Mexican province of Sonora near "terrorist alley," the main passageway for illegal aliens, including OTMs (other than Mexicans) and "Special Interest Aliens" -- to the land of Mickey Mouse, MTV, and George W. Bush. [50]

On August 18, 2004, Texas and Arizona law enforcement officials were placed on alert for an attempt by Adnan to sneak into the country with the vast hordes of Hispanic illegal immigrants. The alert was issued by the U. S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso. “We don’t want him crossing into the United States because his plan is to conduct terror operations,” Art Werge, a spokesman for the FBI’s El Paso office told the press. [51]

Nukes Arrive In Mexico

Concern about Shukrijumah's extended stay in Mexico was heightened in November 2004 with the arrest in Pakistan of Sharif al-Masri, a key al Qaeda operative. Al Masri, an Egyptian national jihadist with close ties to al Zawahiri, bin Laden's No. 2 man, informed interrogators that al-Qaeda had made arrangements to smuggle nuclear supplies and tactical nuclear weapons into Mexico. From Mexico, the weapons were to be transported across the border with the help of a Latino street gang. The gang was later identified as Mara Salvatrucha, the gang that Adnan had trekked across the North American continent to meet in a Honduran café, and the plans that he discussed with the gang leaders were the plans that had been purportedly finalized at the terrorist summit in Waziristan. [52]

In response to this information, U.S. officials began monitoring all heavy trucks crossing the border, while Mexican officials pledged to keep close watch over flight schools and aviation facilities. Such precautions may have been adopted too late. A Piper PA Pawnee crop duster was stolen from Ejido Queretaro near Mexicali on November 1, 2004. The plane's tail number was XBCYP. The thieves, Mexican officials surmised, were either drug dealers or al-Qaeda operatives, and clearly one was a highly trained pilot. [53]

In His Brother’s Footsteps

In 2006, Nabil el-Shukrijumah, Adnan’s younger brother, established a new website for Gulshair -- this one to honor his memory. The site contains numerous photos from the family album, including a snapshot of Gulshair teaching young boys at his Brooklyn mosque. The words on the blackboard behind the kindly old jihadi read: “The human being is under the oppression of the kuffar (the unbeliever).” On the site, Nabil posted the following message: “As Salaam Alaikum Dad, you're still living among all of us, [we] will see you later but not that much later.” [54]

Nabil, who operates a print shop from the family homestead in Miramar, also created his own personal My Space page on the internet. Here he uses the name “El-Shukri.” [Shukrijumah is the combination of Shukri and the last name of the family, Jumah or Juman.] As soon as this page is opened, a visitor is treated to the infamous Soldiers of Allah’s song, “1924.” The song contains these haunting lyrics: “I am not going to give one inch of Palestine to the Jews… I would rather have my flesh be cut up than cut out Palestine from the Muslim land…” and “When the west was training Muslim scholars for hire, Jews were setting Al-Aqsa mosque on fire!” The page also contains a gallery of inspiring pictures. One with the caption, “Oh Jerusalem, we are coming,” shows a terrorist with rifle on horseback watching the City of David erupt in flames. There are also illustrations of the bloated bodies of dead American soldiers in the streets of Baghdad. A centerpiece of Nabil’s My Space is picture of a jihadi holding a US rocket launcher with the image of Saddam Hussein behind him. The picture contains this caption: “These are the armaments of the enemy, who are disgraced.”

The pictures are worrisome not only for what they represent but also for their place of origin. One, in particular, is from www.arab3.com. -- a site registered to Yousif al-Olayyan, a former student at the University of Florida. Al-Olayyan, a former student at the University of South Florida, is the registered agent and the editor-in-chief for www.alsakher.com, which features glowing reports of Al-Qaeda from individuals who claim to have a close ties to Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri It is disconcerting to note that, in October of 2002, al-Olayya was invited to a Homeland Security program dealing with “corrosion in reactors and nuclear power systems.” The event was co-organized by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which, according to its website, “helps to ensure the safety of the nuclear weapons stockpile and reduce the threat of terrorist attacks on our homeland.”

Finally, on his page, Nabil treats all visitors to a videotape of how 9/11 had been staged by the Bush Administration so that they can gain congressional approval for the invasion of Muslim lands.

Meeting With Special Agent Lenzen

On March 7, 2007, Sean Michels, a correspondent for Global TV and a member of this investigative team, met with FBI Special Agent Andrew Lenzen, who has been appointed to spearhead the search for Adnan. The meeting took place in Miami at the request of Mr. Michels.

Mr. Lenzen professes to have the only real insight into Adnan’s training as a jihadi and present whereabouts. “I know him almost like his mother,” he once told the press. “I’ve lived, slept and dreamed him for the past three years.”

During his conversation with Michels, Mr. Lenzen dismissed the findings of several leading investigative journalists and insisted that Adnan was neither a pilot nor an engineer. He further maintained that Gulshair and his family had no ties to southern Ontario not even to Belal Philips) and only made occasional visits to relatives in Montreal.

Mr. Lenzen’s assertions, however, are refuted by Adnan’s appearances at flight schools in Florida and Oklahoma, his academic records at Broward Community College, and the photographs from the Shukrijumah family album. For this reason, the Special Agent is either a disseminator of disinformation to lead the press and the public on a wild goose chase or a victim of the agency’s own misinformation.

Southern Ontario Sightings

In the summer of 2005, Adnan was spotted at a gas station on two occasions in Toronto by a former Israeli intelligence official, who reported the sightings to CIS and the FBI. He continues to wait for a response.

On October 31, 2006 -- The sight of Adnan without a Halloween mask on the campus of McMaster University scared the hell out of members of the Gerard Group, a New England security company. The company officials reported the sighting to the FBI but there calls to the hotline and various regional offices went unanswered.
On January 25, 2007, witnesses testified that Adnan was residing in an apartment complex within the quaint Canadian city of Guelph in southern Ontario. They said that Adnan and nine other Muslim men who lived in the building made daily visits to the regional airport where they believed he was working. The witnesses contacted the authorities and expressed concern about their personal safety, especially since several lived in the complex. But no officials appeared at their doorways to substantiate their claims.

Location Confirmed

Following the sightings, expert hackers, including a computer wunderkind who served with the government in Ottawa, managed to approximate Adnan’s present whereabouts by securing his screen name and gaining access to Adnan’s communications to family members, including Nabil in Florida and his sister Aida in Arizona, and fellow jihadis, including Gulshair’s former friends and associates in Brooklyn and Miramar. Several communications from Adnan were traced in internet posting sites. These included two universities in southern Ontario, the business center a major hotel, and radical Islamic mosques. Through these efforts, the technicians were able to triangulate Adnan’s whereabouts to an area of one kilometer. Such leads were investigated by former Canadian law enforcement officials, including a retired member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who decided in late October 2007 that the time was right to contact the FBI and to bring the long search to a salubrious end.

But the contact to the FBI was made with the stipulation that a criminal arrest warrant be issued for Adnan so that he could be collared, taken into custody, and extradited to the United States. This condition proved to be too taxing .Upon receiving the information, the federal officials -- once again -- failed to process the findings and to conduct an investigation.

And So It Goes

Despite the alerts and the warnings, the establishment of a hotline and command center, the expenditure of millions in cockamamie plots, Adnan is alive and well and living in southern Ontario. He has married and has several children. He communicates regularly with his friends and loved ones through Skype, a computer telephone service. He meets regularly with a band of radical Islamists at his apartment, attends a neighborhood mosque, and spends several hours every day at a local airport. He does not appear to be hiding from the long arm of the law. He knows, no doubt, that Canada will grant him asylum; that the Bush Administration has obtained no criminal warrant for his arrest; and that the FBI has not secured an order for his extradition.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that if you stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss will stare back. This report stands as a refutation to this assertion. The abyss will not stare back. The abyss, truth be told, is an abyss.


[1] Charles Strouse, “Muslim McCarthyism,” Miami New Times, April 3, 2003.
[2] Joe Kaufman mad Beila Rabinowitz, “Father Knows Terrorism Best,” Front Page Magazine, October 27, 2003, http://www.frontpagemag.com.
[3] “Bilal Philips: ‘Beheadings, Stonings, and Lashings Should Be Carried Out on Fridays,” Militant Islam Monitor, April 22, 2005, http.//www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/558
[4] Kaufman and Rabinowitz.
[5] Ibid.
[6] David Kidwell and Larry Lebowitz, “FBI Sees Terror, Family Sees Good Son,” Miami Herald, March 31, 2003.
[7] “A Really Bad Guy,” ABC News – Primetime, March 20, 2004.
[8] Daniel Eggen and Manuel Roig-Franzia, “FBI on Global Hunt for Al Qaeda Suspect,” Washington Post, March 21, 2003.
[9] Sofian Abdelaziz Zakout, quoted in “Texas and Arizona on Alert for Dirty Bomber Wannabe Shukrijumah, Officials Warn of Border Crossing,” Militant Islam Monitor, August 18, 2004, http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/249
[10]Belia Rabinowtitz and William A. Mayer, “Florida Trail of Terror,” Pipeline News, July 15, 2004.
[11] Chitra Ragavan, “A Hunt for ‘The Pilot,’” U. S. News and World Report, June 15, 2003.
[12] Ibid.
[13] “9/11 Terrorist Travel,” Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States,” August 21, 2004.
[14] Jane Corbin, Al-Qaeda: In Search of a Terror Network That Threatens the World (New Youth: Thunder Mouth’s Press/Nation Books, 2003), p. 117.
[15] James Bissett, “Learning from Canada’s Mistakes: Terror along the Border,” Chronicles Magazine, October 2005, http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/www.Chroniclees/2005/October2005/Bissett.html.
[16] Josh Meyer, “Five Years Later: A Mystery Man Who Keeps the FBI Awake at Night,” Los Angeles Times, September 3, 2006.
[17] Ibid.
[18] “Transcript of News Conference with Deputy Attorney General James Comey on Jose Padilla,” CNN, June 1, 2004.
[19] James Gordon Meek, “Officials Fear Al-Qaeda Nuclear Attack,” New York Daily News, March 14, 2003.
[20] “One-Man ‘Dirty Bomb’ Cell Sought in US and Canada,” Debka file, Issue 132, November 7, 2003, http://www.debka-net-weekly.com/issue.pl? username=iunmber-132
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ibid. See also Bill Gertz, “Al Qaeda Pursued A Dirty Nuke,” Washington Times, October 16, 2003, http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031016-110337-4698r.htm
[24] Christine Cox, “Terror Fears Suspend Tours of Mac Reactor,” Hamilton Spectator, October 15, 2001. See also “Board Suspends Hospital License,” Mc Master News (the news outline for Mc Master University), March 1998, http://www.mcmaster.ca/us/opr/courier/mar998/news.html
[25] Mir’s interview with Williams at the November 2006 America’s Truth Forum symposium was taped by Private Investigator Laurice Tatum and Israeli journalist Michael Rash.
[26] “One-Man ‘Dirty Bomb’ Cell Sought in US and Canada,” Debka file.
[27] “Most Wanted: The Next Atta,” 60 Minutes, CBS News, March 26, 2004.
[28] Chitra Ragavan, “A Hunt for ‘The Pilot.”
[29] Ibid.
[30] James Gordon Meek, “Officials Fear Al Qaeda Nuclear Attack.”
[31] Ibid
[32] “One Man ‘Dirty Bomb’ Cell Sought in US and Canada.”
[33] “FBI Seeking Public Assistance in Locating Individuals Suspected of Terrorist Activities,” FBI National Press Office, March 20, 2004. Also see Evan Thomas, David Klaidman, and Michael Isikoff, “Enemies among Us,” Newsweek, June 7, 2004.
[34] “Neurologist Questioned by FBI for Alleged al-Qaeda Links,” NBC News, April 3, 2003.
[35] Jim Kirksey, “Two Suspected Al Qaeda Agents Dropped In for Meal, Says Denny’s Manager,” Denver Post, May 28, 2004.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Monique Kelso, quoted in Ibid.
[39] Nigel Williams and Zoisa Fraser, “Farouk Razac Found Dead at Home,” Stabroek News, May 8, 2007
[40] Mark Carltan, “JFK Airport Plot Failed and Flawed,” The Age(Australia), June 4, 2007.
[41] Adam Goldman, “Feds Foil JFK Plot; 4th Suspect Sought,” ABC News, June 2, 2007.
[42] “Beauty Queen Charged with Husband’s Murder,” Stabroek News, May 11, 2007.
[43] Elaine Shannon and Tim McGirk, “What Is This Man Planning?” Time, August 23, 2004.
[44] Interview with Steve Emerson, Hannity and Colmes, Fox News, April 24, 2006.
[45] “Al Qaeda Said to Recruit in South America,” Associated Press, August 22, 2004.
[46] Sherrie Gossett, “Police Searching for Next Muhammad Atta,” World Net Daily May 27, 2004, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE=39237
[47] Ibid.
[48] Texas and Arizona on Alert for Dirty Bomber Wannabe Shukrijumah, Officials Warn of Border Crossing.”
[49] “Border Breach Stirs Fears,” Dallas Morning News, August 14, 2004.
[50] Michael Marizco, “Sonora on Alert for #1 Al Qaeda Suspect,” Arizona Daily Star, August 18, 2004.
Art Werge in Ibid.
[51] “Al-Qaeda Wants to Smuggle N-Materials to US,” Nation, November 17, 2004.
[52] Anna Clearley and Ornell R. Soto, “Reason for Plane Theft Worrisome,” San Diego Union Tribune, November 7, 2004.
[53] Joe Kaufman, “Brother of Terror,” Front Page Magazine, March 22, 2007.

Paul Williams is the author of "The Al Qaeda Connection" and forthcoming "The Day of Islam".

http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/p_williams/2008/02062008.htm

[Petronas]

Dr. Williams's theory about the Al Qaeda nukes is certainly not without controversy, but there also is a lot of other interesting information in this article. I just met Dr. Williams last week at a conference in Dallas - he is currently being pursued by a Canadian Muslim organization with a multi-million dollar lawsuit.

The Search for Adnan El Shukrijumah
Dr. Paul Williams, PhD
February 6, 2008

FBI Director Robert Mueller and former Attorney General John Ashcroft have called Adnan el-Shukrijumah “the next Mohammed Atta,” who represents “a clear and imminent danger to all Americans.” Shukrijumah’s face has appeared on the front pages of newspapers and every televised news outlet throughout the United States and Canada.

A special office for information that might lead to his arrest -- replete with a 24 hour hotline -- has been set up in Miami, Florida.

Federal investigators have combed South and Central America with the hope of gleaning a scintilla of evidence that might shed light on his whereabouts. They even established an elaborate sting operation in Guyana, Trinidad, and New York (the JFK plot) to snag the elusive fugitive -- but the operation only resulted in the creation of a virulent terrorist organization south of the border.

The Justice Department has placed a $5 million reward for any information leading to Adnan’s apprehension, and the same bounty for each of his alleged accomplices: Amer el-Maati, Jaber A. Elbaneh, Anas al-Liby, and Abderraouf Jdey.

But if you assemble a team of bounty hunters and manage to collar Adnan el-Shukrijumah and his terrorist cronies, you will be hard-pressed to turn them over to law enforcement officials, let alone to collect the aggregate $25 million. The U.S. Department of Justice, even after posting rewards, setting up hotlines, and issuing BOLOs (“Be-on-the-Lookout” alerts) has failed to issue criminal warrants for their arrest. This means that the bounty hunters would have to leave Adnan and his friends strapped to lawn chairs, since members of state and local police departments remain without authorization to detain or question them, let alone take them into custody.

This oversight is mind-boggling. Adnan el-Shukrijumah has worked with Mohammad Atta and the other 9/11 operatives; he has masterminded a plan to launch a nuclear attack on American soil; he has attended leading al Qaeda gatherings, including the Waziristan Summit of 2004; he has conspired with Jose Padilla and others to blow up bridges and infrastructures in New York City; and the search for his present whereabouts is littered with corpses, including that of prominent Guyanese businessman Farouk Razac. Obtaining the necessary warrants would constitute the perfunctory matter of submitting a request to a federal judiciary. But this basic procedural step was not undertaken by the U.S. Attorney General, the FBI Director, or any other official within the Justice Department.

Federal law enforcement officials explain this oversight by insisting that the issuance of a BOLO (Be-on-the-Lookout) and a warrant for Adnan as a material witness is all that is required to collar Adnan. They point out that suspected terrorists, under the guidelines of the Patriot Act, need not be fugitives who have been indicted by grand juries in U.S. District Courts. This is all well and good if Adnan if cornered within the

U.S. But, if he is sitting in a café in Canada or Mexico, neither the BOLO nor the warrant as a material witness will be sufficient to take him into custody and to extradite him for questioning by the FBI or Homeland Security.

“A material witness warrant has no weight at all in Canada,” explains a retired RCMP official who opts to remain anonymous “Our law enforcement officials cannot do anything unless there is a criminal offense that is extraditable.”

The failure to obtain arrest warrants remains coupled with other oversights of equally staggering proportions. On October 31, 2006, members of a counter-terrorist research unit spotted Adnan el-Shukrijumah on the campus of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. They dutifully reported the sighting to the FBI and CSIS. At this writing, over one year later, they remain waiting for a response.

Similarly, a former Israeli intelligence official claims to have seen Shukrijumah on several occasions at a gas station in Toronto -- less than an hour’s drive from Hamilton. The Israeli says that he contacted FBI officials at four different locations only to be encountered by bureaucratic indifference. The sighting remains to be investigated.

On January 25, 2007, a witness reported to Canadian and US officials that Adnan was living in an apartment complex in southern Ontario and that he made daily visits to the regional airport. This tip also went unheeded despite concerns the witnesses (some of whom resided in the complex) expressed about their safety.

In October 2007, a former member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a Canadian police official, a computer tracker who served with Canada’s Internal Revenue Service, a licensed private investigator, and a team of journalist managed after months of intense effort to pinpoint Adnan’s present whereabouts. The task was accomplished by tracing e-mails from friends and family members, internet postings from Adnan that were made from various locations in the vicinity of his present address, newly acquired family photos and communiqués, and, of course, actual sightings.

The information was conveyed to high-ranking political figures, military officials, and federal investigators -- all of which expressed scant interest in the findings, and none of whom sought to validate the data. In short, it was cast into the proverbial black-hole that represents the core of U.S. intelligence.

And yet, the threat posed by Adnan el-Shukrijumah remains unaltered. He remains, according to British, Saudi, Pakistani, and Israeli intelligence sources (and even FBI bureaucrats), a “one-man terror cell” -- an al Qaeda operative, trained not only to build radiological weapons and to maintain tactical nukes but also to detonate such devices within major American cities without a logistical backup crew. This same claim has been verified by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the highest ranking al-Qaeda official to be taken into custody, Abu Zubaydah, another leading al-Qaeda op in federal custody, and dozens of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Introducing Adnan

For starters, he is a chameleon. Adnan possesses an uncanny ability to blend into a crowd, to alter his looks, and to assume a multitude of identities. He is the proverbial Mr. Cellophane. Few things about him indicate his Islamic orientation. He is often clean-shaven and never wears a long shirt or chews a toothpick. He has been known to have a beer (like an average American Joe), to smoke a Marlboro, and to carry rosary beads in his pocket. He has posed as an Italian-American, a Mexican-American, a Canadian, a Saudi, a Jamaican, an Arab, and a Latino from Trinidad. He stands somewhere between 5’4” and 5’6”; weighs 140 pounds; and suffers from severe asthma. He has black hair, dark brown eyes, an olive complexion, a mole on one cheek and a very prominent Mediterranean proboscis. A key distinguishing feature is a scar on the left side of his face below and forward of his earlobe.

Adnan is fluent in English, Spanish, Urdu, and Arabic. He is a trained pilot and a computer whiz. But, his central area of interest, training and expertise is nuclear engineering.

The Family Tree

Adnan gives proof to the adage that a rotten apple never falls far from a diseased tree. His father Gulshair was born in Guyana, where his grandfather Mohammad Jumah ran a general store. One of eleven children, Gulshair developed an interest in Arabic and began working as a tailor. At the age of 32, he moved to Cairo, where he studied at the radical al-Azbar University, and then Medina, where he enrolled at al-Madina al Manawarah (The Islamic University of Medina) and became stepped in the fanatical writings of Ibn Taymiyah and Sayyid Qutb.

In Saudi Arabia, Gulshair taught at several madrassahs, and, at the age of 42, met and married Mareed Zubrah Abu Akmed. Mareed, having just celebrated her 14th birthday was barely pubescent. Two years later, on August 4, 1975, Mareed gave birth to their first child Adnan. Three more children would be born to the couple before the family moved to Trinidad, where Gulshair received a monthly stipend of $1,500 from the Saudi government to spread the radical doctrine of Wahhabism. [1]

Bugaboo In Brooklyn

In 1986, Gulshair moved to Brooklyn where he became the imam of the newly created Majid Nur a-Islam mosque on 21 Church Street. Here he preached death to the West and recruited young blacks from New York’s mean streets. Members of his congregation came to include Abdul Rasheed and Clement Rodney Hampton-El, who were convicted in 1996 of plotting to blow up the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, the George Washington Bridge, and the United Nations building.

In 1990, Gulshair established close ties with blind sheikh Omar Abel Rahman, who was serving as imam of the Farouq Mosque at 554 Atlantic Avenue, several blocks from Majid Nur a-Islam. On the second floor of the Farouq Mosque, al Qaeda had opened an office under the name of the al-Kifah Refugee Center. It became one of Gulshair’s favorite haunts. When Rahman was taken into custody as the alleged architect of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Gulshair served as the blind sheikh’s translator and chief character witness. He also served as a character witness for Clement Rodney Hampton-El, whom he defended by stating that the defendant had fought in Afghanistan to “help his brothers, the Muslims” and that Hampton-El “was prepared to give his life for that, and that does not mean he was involved in any acts of terror…” [2]

In Brooklyn, Gulshair re-established ties with Bilal Philips, a Canadian convert to Islam, whom he had tutored in Saudi Arabia. Philips, an un-indicted c-conspirator in the WTC bombing, was credited with converting more than 3,000 US soldiers to Islam by setting up “tent revivals” in Riyadh during the Persian Gulf War. Returning to his home in Toronto, he became a favorite speaker on the Islam circuit by advancing the argument that Friday was the best day to conduct a beheading. [3]

Under The Saudi Sun

While Gulshair was developing ties with radical black Muslims in Brooklyn, Adnan was living with his maternal grandparents in Saudi Arabia. He completed his elementary and secondary school training in Medina and, like his father, taught at local madrassahs. By 1991, he had attracted the attention of the mujahadeen, newly returned to Saudi Arabia from Afghanistan, received training in guerilla warfare at an al-Qaeda camp in Khost, and assumed the bayat -- the oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden.

Adnan was sent to Yemen where his paternal grandfather had been born. He was given a code-name (Mohammed Sher Khan) and received training in special operations, including flight lessons. Eventually, Adnan became so adept at aviation that he earned the nickname “Jafar al-Tayar” (“Jafar the Pilot”).

The Family In Florida

In 1995, Adnan, now a full-fledged jihadi, rejoined his family in Brooklyn as a new missionary to the land of the free and the home of the brave, with a monthly stipend -- similar to that received by his father -- from the Saudi government. The reunited Shukrijumah clan now set out for sunny Florida, where Gulshair became the imam of the Masjid al-Hyrah Mosque in Miramar. Gulshair also came to serve as the spiritual leader of the Boca Raton Islamic Center (BRIC), where he established a close friendship with BRIC imam Dr. Ibrahim Dremali. [4]

Dremali, a professor of geology at Broward Community College, shared Gulshair’s militant fundamentalism. The two attended a rally where Israeli flags were burned and slogans, such as “With jihad we’ll claim our land, Zionist blood will wet the sand,” were shouted. On this occasion, Dremali advised the crowd “not to be sad for those who were martyred and to not be afraid to die for what they believe in” -- a clear reference to suicide bombers. [5]

In Florida, Adnan received legal permanent residency status -- a “green card,” which permitted him to acquire a federal passport. He never became a naturalized American citizen. In the course of the next five years, Adnan would obtain additional passports from Canada, Trinidad, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia.

Early Warning Signs

On October 12, 1997, Adnan became a blip on the radar screen when screams came from the Shukrijumah squat stucco house at SW 27th Street and the neighbors summoned the Miramar police. The younger siblings, Officer David Goetz wrote in the police report, had ‘’locked themselves in the bedrooms to protect themselves from their brother, Adnan, who had come home and found clothes laying all over the place, so he hit them.’’ Adnan’s 13-year-old sister Aida had a bite wound on her arm, according to the report, and Areeza, his youngest sister, had been struck in the face. Zubrah, the mother, Goetz added, ‘’conveyed to me that her son being male, he was expected to carry the role of disciplinarian.”[6]

During this time, Adnan taught Arabic at his father’s mosque and became engaged in raising funds the Global Relief Fund (GRF), a front for terrorist organizations. GRF, according to the Treasury Department, was responsible for funding the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He enrolled as an engineering/computer science major at Broward Community College, where Ibrahim Dremali served as his academic advisor. Adnan also made several trips to Saudi Arabia where he met with his al Qaeda mentors Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and terror financier Ramzi Binalshibh. [7]

The Jihad Club

Spreading the fire of jihad, Adnan attended services at the Masjid al-Iman mosque in Fort Lauderdale, where he became acquainted with a host of wannabe terrorists, including Jose Padilla, who planned to detonate a radiological bomb in midtown Manhattan; Imran Mandhai, who was convicted of attempting to blow up nuclear power plants in southern Florida; Moessa Shuyeb Jokham, who was arrested for plotting terrorist attacks against Jewish community centers and businesses; and Hakki Akksoy, who was jailed for ten years when a cache of deadly explosives was found in his home. [8]

Questioned about the aspiring terrorists, Sofian Abdelaziz Zakout, director of the American Muslim Association and a friend of the Shukrijumah family, said: “I saw [Adnan el Shukrijumah, Padilla and Mandhai] at different times in different mosques, and I always said hello. Does that make me a terrorist?” [9]

Zakout’s statement contains more than a hint of irony. He had served as the Vice President of a now defunct “charity” called Health Resource Center Palestine which served to solicit funding for the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP), a virulently anti-Semitic group that serves terrorist groups. “I am in support of the Ha