Jeh Johnson to hold brief with imam tied to organizations with links to Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
The Department of Homeland Security’s top official is slated to hold a press conference Monday at a controversial Muslim center that was reportedly raided by federal agents as part of an investigation into a terror organization.
Jeh Johnson, DHS secretary, will speak Monday afternoon at the Virginia-based All Dulles Area Muslim Society, also known as the ADAMS Center. The secretary will be joined by the center’s religious director, Imam Mohamed Magid, who serves as a leading member of an Islamic organization long suspected of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
Johnson will speak at the ADAMS Center along with Magid about efforts to protect the Muslim community from hate speech in the wake of a deadly mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, that was allegedly carried out by devotees of the Islamic State terror group, according to an online invitation for the event and information from DHS.
“These horrific acts [in California] moreover should NOT be permitted to vilify and stereotype the peaceful and law-abiding Muslim, Sikh and other minority communities in America,” reads an invite for the event issued by the ADAMS Center. “We must all work together to prevent hate crimes and intimidation.”
The invitation goes on to reference a fatwa, or religious edict, issued by the ADAMS Center condemning terrorism.
The event comes just days after several Democratic lawmakers attended a prayer service at another Virginia-area mosque that has been accused of acting as a front for Hamas and that served as the home of an al Qaeda terror leader.
Federal agents raided the ADAMS Center during a 2002 terrorism investigation into organizations tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, according to court documents published by the Clarion Project.
“A government affidavit said the group is ‘suspected of providing support to terrorists, money laundering, and tax evasion through the use of a variety of for-profit companies and ostensible charitable entities under their control, most of which are located at [the ADAM Center’s offices at] 555 Grove Street, Herndon, V.A.,” according to the report.
Additionally, several accused terrorists have allegedly spent time at the ADAMS Center, including Farooque Ahmed, who was arrested for planning to bomb the Washington-area subway.
Magid serves as the president of the Islamic Society of North America, which has been accused of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, according to federal court filings published by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, a research and news organization.
The Islamic society also was listed as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a federal terrorism case investigating U.S. Muslim organizations attempting to finance Hamas.
Muslim Brotherhood members reportedly founded the Islamic society, which has further been accused of hosting radical preachers at its events, according to research performed by the Investigative Project.
Magid met with President Barack Obama at the White House in 2015, along with several of Muslim leaders accused of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama, has also praised the Islamic society.
Patrick Poole, a terrorism analyst and national security reporter who has written about the ADAMS Center, called the DHS secretary’s scheduled appearance concerning.
“The ADAMS Center has been a documented hub of extremism that even in the most generous interpretation has a poor record of dealing with terrorists in their midst,” Poole said. “It was no coincidence that the Attorney General of the United States was canceling outreach meetings due solely to the presence of Mohamed Magid.”
The fatwa mentioned in the invitation to the event was signed by at least one individual “who is currently in prison in Egypt convicted of terrorism charges,” Poole noted.
Meanwhile, Congress is set to approve this week a massive yearly spending bill that will fund the Obama administration’s immigration priorities.
Lawmakers critical of the spending bill say that it amounts to a “blank check” for the administration to permit some 10,000 Syrian refugees into America and boost immigration priorities in general.
“As currently written, this year’s appropriations bills—which will be combined into a catch-all ‘omnibus’ by December 11th—amount to a blank check for the President to carry out his refugee resettlement plans,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, said in a statement.
“Not only will the president be allowed to bring in the 85,000 refugees he has announced on top of current record immigration levels, but this will include at least 10,000 refugees from Syria who will subsequently be able to bring in their foreign relatives,” Sessions said. “All refugees are eligible for lifetime government assistance and can draw funds from Social Security and Medicare at Americans’ expense.”
Somewhere near 700,000 lifetime residency cards will be granted to migrants from Muslim-majority nations during the next five years, according to Sessions, who warned that this could pose a terrorism risk.
“Terror groups have demonstrated that they will recruit from among this inflow,” he said. “We have already identified nearly 30 foreign-born individuals charged or convicted of terrorism offenses in the last year—investigations which required the deployment of vast manpower, financial and legal resources.”
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2015 San Bernardino Shooting
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes;
notes and references omitted, but are on original article. Accuracy of data and content
not guaranteed and may be subject to change, removal, and/or correction.
Attack
A – Site of shooting
B – Injured people treated
C – School for the blind where some took shelter
Perpetrators
Syed Rizwan Farook and
Tashfeen Malik left their six-month-old daughter with Farook's mother the morning of the attack, saying they were going to a doctor's appointment. Farook, a
health inspector for the
San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, attended a departmental event at the banquet room of the
Inland Regional Center. The event began as a semi-annual all-staff meeting and training event, and was in the process of transitioning into a department
holiday party/luncheon when the shooting began. There were 91 invited guests, and "about 75 to 80 people were believed to have come to the party."
Coworkers reported that Farook had been quiet early on in the event and noticed he had left the party abruptly, leaving his coat and some papers before a group photo was taken. There were some reports that an argument occurred before his departure. In later police briefings, it was said he left "under circumstances that were described as angry".
At 10:59
am
PST, Farook and Malik, wearing non-armored black tactical outfits and ski masks, armed with
semi-automatic pistols and
semi-automatic rifles, opened fire on those in attendance. The entire shooting took less than four minutes. They fired between 65 and 75 bullets and left behind an explosive device that failed to detonate. The perpetrators departed the scene before police arrived. Witnesses said they recognized Farook as one of the shooters by his voice and build. Sources reported that Malik pledged
bay'ah (allegiance) to the leader of ISIL on a Facebook account associated with her as the attack was underway.
The perpetrators left three explosive devices connected to one another at the Inland Regional Center. The devices—described as "three
pipe bombs tied together to make one device"—were "stitched together on a remote-controlled car" and failed to explode. Authorities believe that the pipe bombs were meant to target the first emergency personnel responding to the scene.
Police response
It took four minutes for the first police unit to respond to the shooting following the initial
911 emergency call. At 11:14
am, the San Bernardino Fire Department made a
Twitter post about an emergency on the 1300 block of
Waterman Avenue, with the police working to clear the scene. Roads in the area were closed to traffic.
Two police officers arrived almost simultaneously; when another officer arrived two minutes later, the three officers entered the building and began to evacuate the survivors. The San Bernardino
SWAT team happened to be conducting its monthly training exercise a few miles away from the scene at the time of the attack "and was able to arrive quickly, already wearing protective gear." Ultimately, about 300 officers and agents from city, county, state and federal agencies responded to the
active-shooter event, converging on the scene as people were being evacuated.
The explosive devices placed by the perpetrators were later detonated by a
bomb squad.
Shootout
The shootout occurred on the south side of San Bernardino Avenue just east of Sheldon Drive; the red "A" marks the location of the Inland Regional Center.
Law enforcement began the search for the suspects. A witness gave Farook's name to police, who quickly learned that he had rented a black
Ford Expedition SUV with
Utah license plates four days before the attack. Officers went to the address on North Center Street given by a neighbor that knew Farook for surveillance, but had to give chase when the perpetrators fled the house. At least one fake explosive—a metal pipe stuffed with cloth made to resemble a
pipe bomb—was thrown at the police during the pursuit. After the SUV was stopped, the couple exchanged fire with police from inside their vehicle on East San Bernardino Avenue, about 1.7 miles (2.7 km) away from the scene of the mass shooting. It began around 3:00 pm, about four hours after the initial attack at the Inland Regional Center had begun. Police used multiple
Bear Cat armored personnel carriers in confronting the shooters.
The gunfire lasted under a minute before both perpetrators were killed. The sheriff's department confirmed that a man and a woman were killed.
Seven police agencies were involved in the final shootout, with 23 officers firing a combined total of approximately 380 rounds. The perpetrators fired 76 rifle rounds. During the shootout, police asked residents to stay indoors.
Initial news reports and witness accounts led to a search for up to three shooters, but police eventually determined that there were only two. Investigators in armored vehicles at the townhouse of the perpetrators considered ordering an evacuation, but instead ordered the neighborhood to
shelter in place and cordoned off the area. From 4:00
pm – 5:30
pm, police asked residents of the area to stay in their homes with doors locked and secure after residents reported a person jumping fences. No one was found; the reports may have been from officers at the scene. A person detained after running away from the scene of the shootout was thought to be a possible third suspect, but police determined that he was not connected to the shooting; the person was booked on an unrelated outstanding
misdemeanor warrant.
Victims
Fourteen civilians were killed and 21 others injured in the attack at the Inland Regional Center. Once the injured were extracted from the building, it took about 15 minutes for them to get to the hospital. Five patients were transported to the nearby
Loma Linda University Medical Center (the only
Level I trauma center in the region) and six were transported to the Arrowhead Regional Medical Center. One police officer was hospitalized with a bullet wound suffered during the gunfight; another officer was injured by flying glass or shrapnel.
Three of the deceased victims—Isaac Amanios, Bennetta Betbadal and Tin Nguyen—had come to the United States to escape violence or persecution in their home countries. Twelve of the dead were county employees; ten were environmental health specialists.
The 14 deceased ranged in age from 26 to 60 years old. Nine were residents of San Bernardino County; the others were from nearby
Riverside,
Los Angeles, and
Orange counties.
Perpetrators
Syed Rizwan Farook
Syed Rizwan Farook (June 14, 1987 – December 2, 2015) was born in
Chicago,
Illinois, and was a U.S. citizen. His parents had
immigrated from Pakistan. According to sources, he had a "troubled childhood" and grew up in an "abusive" home. Farook grew up in
Riverside, California, and attended
La Sierra High School, graduating in 2004, one year early. He attended
California State University, San Bernardino, and received a
bachelor's degree in
environmental health in either 2009 or 2010. He was a student for one semester in 2014 at
California State University, Fullerton in their graduate program for
environmental engineering, but never completed the program.
Farook worked as a
food inspector for the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health for five years before the shooting. From July to December 2010, he was a seasonal employee for the county. He was hired as an
environmental health specialist trainee on January 28, 2012, and became a permanent employee on February 8, 2014. Coworkers described Farook as quiet and polite and said that he held no obvious grudges.
According to family members and coworkers, Farook was a devout
Sunni Muslim, and traveled to Saudi Arabia several times, including to complete the
Hajj in 2013. Farook attended prayers at the
Islamic Center of Riverside twice a day, in the mornings and the evenings, according to an interview in
The New York Times with Mustafa H. Kuko, the Center's director. According to the
Times, Farook stood out as especially devout and "kept a bit of a distance" from other congregants. During that time, according to friends, he never discussed politics. About three weeks before the shooting, Farook abruptly stopped going to the mosque.
In an interview with the Italian newspaper
La Stampa following the attack, Farook's father was reported as having said that his son shared the ideology of al-Baghdadi and ISIL, and had a fixation on
Israel. He also recounted a time when he first saw Farook with a firearm: "I became angry. In 45 years in the United States, I yelled: 'I have never had a weapon.' Farook responded by shrugging and saying 'Your loss.'" A spokesperson for the
Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the father did not recall talking to
La Stampa nor making those statements.
Tashfeen Malik
Tashfeen Malik
[a] (July 13, 1988 – December 2, 2015) was born in
Pakistan but had lived for most of her life in Saudi Arabia. Her hometown was
Karor Lal Esan, 280 miles (450 km) southwest of
Islamabad.
Studies in Multan
While in Multan, Malik attended the local center of the Al-Huda International Seminary, a conservative women-only
religious academy network with seminaries across Pakistan and branches in the U.S. and Canada. According to school records, Malik enrolled in an eighteen-month
Quranic studies course with Al-Huda on April 17, 2013, and left on May 3, 2014, telling administrators that she was leaving to get married. Malik expressed an interest in completing the
course by correspondence, but never did so.
According to experts, Al-Huda, which was founded in 1994, "draws much of its support from women from educated, relatively affluent backgrounds." Faiza Mushtaq, a Pakistani scholar that studied the organization, said that "these Al-Huda classes is teaching these urban, educated, upper-middle-class women a very conservative interpretation of Islam that makes them very judgmental about others around them." According to the
Los Angeles Times, Al-Huda seminaries promote anti-Western views and hard-line practices in a fashion that "could encourage some adherents to lash out against
non-believers." An Al-Huda administrator from the head office in Islamabad, said that terrorism "is against the teachings of Islam" and that the school's curriculum did not endorse violence. Rubina Saigol, a Lahore-based researcher who studied women's seminaries in Pakistan, said that Al-Huda schools do not directly teach violence, but do promote the notion "that Muslims are under siege globally, with the attack on Iraq, the attack on Afghanistan, growing Islamophobia" and that the U.S. is the source of these problems.
Marriage and entry into United States
According to one of Farook's coworkers, Malik and her husband married about a month after he traveled to Saudi Arabia in early 2014; the two had met over the internet. Malik joined Farook in California shortly after their wedding. At the time of her death, Malik and Farook had a six-month-old daughter.
Malik entered the United States on a
K-1 (fiancée) visa with a
Pakistani passport. According to a State Department spokesman, all applicants for such visas are fully screened. Malik's application for
permanent residency (a "green card") was completed by Farook on her behalf in September 2014, and she was granted a conditional green card in July 2015. Obtaining such a green card would have required the couple to prove that the marriage was legitimate, as well as requiring Malik to provide her fingerprints and pass criminal and national security background checks using government databases.
Investigators think that Malik, as opposed to her husband, may have been the primary planner behind the attack. Malik reportedly had become very religious in the years before the attack and wearing both the
niqab and
burqa while urging others to do so as well. Pakistani media reported that Malik had ties to the radical
Red Mosque in
Islamabad, but a cleric and a spokesman from the mosque vehemently denied these claims, saying that they had never heard of Malik before the shooting. Malik's estranged relatives say that she had left the
moderate Islam of her family and had become
radicalized while living in Saudi Arabia.
Malik was one of a small number of female mass shooters in the U.S.; women constituted only 3.75 percent of active shooters in the U.S. from 2000 to 2013.
Investigation
Neither shooter had a criminal record, and neither was on a terrorist watch list.
The New York Times reported that "by all accounts so far, the government had no concrete intelligence warning of the assault," although the federal government has long feared "homegrown, self-radicalized individuals operating undetected before striking one of many
soft targets" in the United States.
The FBI said that it was conducting a "massive" investigation, and by December 7 had already conducted about 400 interviews and collected about 320 pieces of evidence.
Weapons
All four of the guns were initially purchased legally from
federally licensed firearms dealers in California in 2011 and 2012. The two handguns were purchased by Farook from Annie's Get Your Gun, a federally licensed dealer in
Corona. One of the handguns was manufactured by
Llama and the other is a
Springfield XD.
Tactical belt used by one of the shooters.
The two rifles were purchased by Enrique Marquez, a childhood friend of Farook's whose home was searched by federal authorities following the attack. Under California law, all firearms must be transferred through a California licensed firearms dealer; Marquez's role in the transfer of the guns to Farook and Malik is being looked into by investigators.
The rifles in question were originally legal under
California's state ban on assault weapons because of an exception in the law for rifles incorporating a so-called "
bullet button," which modifies a rifle so that the magazine is not removable without the use of a tool, thereby creating a delay in the rate at which spent magazines can be replaced; a magnetic quick release tool to make it easy to reload is available on the Internet, which if used, it will make the gun illegal. After the couple acquired the rifles, they subsequently and illegally altered them: there was an attempted modification to enable the Smith & Wesson rifle to fire in
fully automatic mode, they had a modification to bypass the bullet button, and the DPMS weapon used a
high-capacity magazine. The couple had 1,400 rounds for the rifles and 200 for the handguns with them at the time of the shootout.
Searches
After the deaths of the perpetrators, the focus shifted to a small townhouse in
Redlands, a few miles away from San Bernardino; the place where Farook and Malik met after the shooting and where they lived. By 6:00 pm PST on December 2, police were executing a
search warrant on the house. According to the San Bernardino police chief, Farook and Malik were listed in the rental agreement. Police used robots to search the house. Investigators found 2,000 9-mm handgun rounds, 2,500 .223-caliber rounds, and the tools that could be used to make
improvised explosive devices. The FBI also initially reported that it had removed twelve pipe bombs from the perpetrators' home; the FBI clarified several days later that it had recovered 19 types of pipes that could be converted into bombs were removed from the home.
Pursuant to a federal search warrant, the authorities also searched a townhouse in
Corona twice, where Farook's brother and father lived. The FBI said that the family was cooperating and authorities did not arrest anyone.
Early in the morning of December 5, federal authorities, under a federal search warrant, searched the
Riverside home of Enrique Marquez, the man who allegedly purchased the two rifles used by the shooters in the attack. Marquez's home is next door to the house where Farook grew up. Marquez has not been charged with a crime and, according to the FBI, he is not considered a suspect in the shooting. California requires that private sales and transfers of firearms go through a California licensed dealer. A neighbor who witnessed the search said that Marquez and Farook "had been close friends since childhood but appeared to have grown more distant in recent months." After the attack, Marquez checked in at a mental hospital.
Shooting range video
After law enforcement sources confirmed that Farook spent time on November 29–30 at the
Riverside Magnum Shooting Range, about 25 miles (40 km) away from the couple's Redlands home, the FBI obtained surveillance video from the range. During these visits, one lasting several hours, Farook shot an
AR-15 and a handgun, which he had brought to the range.
Media reporters enter suspects' home
After the FBI completed a search of the perpetrators' townhouse, it was turned over to its
landlord. On December 4, the landlord used a crowbar to open the door to the home and allowed reporters and photographers to "swarm" the home. NBC News correspondent
Kerry Sanders said that
Inside Edition has paid the building's landlord $1,000 to access the home.
MSNBC,
CNN, and
Fox News all broadcast live video from the home, showing images of personal photographs, documents, identification cards, and baby items.
The scene was described as having a "
media circus" atmosphere. Sanders, in particular, was criticized for showing close-up images of children's photographs and Farook's mother's identification card; the network later said it regretted doing so. According to legal experts, the incident was not illegal, but it raised concerns about
journalistic ethics.
The Washington Post media critic
Erik Wemple wrote that the media's behavior was "terrible" and opined that "this was a story poorly suited to live coverage, without the time and ability to document a scene, determine what's relevant and provide the filtered product to readers." Al Tompkins of
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies said that the decision to enter the apartment was "ludicrous" and critiqued the "callous and competitive behavior" of the media on a grave story.
Motive
In one Arabic-language online radio broadcast, ISIL described the couple as "supporters," which indicates "a less direct connection to the terrorist group." In a December 5 English-language broadcast on its
Bayan radio station, ISIL referred to the two shooters as "soldiers of the caliphate," which is a phrase ISIL uses to denote members of the terrorist organization.
The New York Times reported that it was unclear why the two versions differed.
The large stockpile of weapons found in the couple's apartment has led investigators to believe that the shooters intended to carry out further attacks. Investigators are also looking into the
terrorist financing element of the case, such as whether Farook and Malik were
given money by someone to purchase the weapons.
On December 3, the FBI took over as the leading federal law enforcement division, treating the probe as a
counter terrorism investigation. Farook contacted "persons of interest" that were possibly tied to terrorism, but these contacts were not "substantial", according to a senior U.S. law enforcement official. A senior federal official said that Farook had some contact with people from the
Nusra Front, the official
al-Qaeda affiliate in
Syria, and
Shabaab of Somalia, but specifics were unclear. FBI Director
James Comey said that there were indications from the investigation that the killers had become radicalized and possibly inspired by
foreign terrorist organizations, but no indication that the couple were part of a
cell or network, or directed by any group. The FBI also said that there was "telephonic connections" between the couple and other people of interest in FBI probes. Comey said that the case did not follow the typical pattern for mass shootings or terrorist attacks. This was the deadliest ISIL-inspired attack in the United States.
Aftermath
After the shooting, classes were canceled at
California State University, San Bernardino, and at
Loma Linda University following a bomb threat that was called in to the university's medical center, where many injured victims were being treated. James Ramos, chairman of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, said that most county offices would be closed the remainder of the week, with only the most essential services remaining open. The San Bernardino Department of Public Health announced that all county offices would be closed through December 7.
President Obama ordered U.S. flags to be flown at
half-staff at the White House, public buildings, military installations, Navy ships, embassies and diplomatic missions. The governors of several states also ordered flags to be lowered to half-staff in their states as well. In California, the annual
Christmas tree lighting ceremony at the
State Capitol was canceled and all flags were lowered to half-staff.
American Muslim organizations, including
CAIR and Islamic Society of Orange County, condemned the attacks. A night vigil was held the day after the attacks at the largest mosque in the San Bernardino County, the
AhmadiyyaBaitul Hameed Mosque.
About 2,000 local residents gathered at a
candlelight vigil at
San Manuel Stadium in downtown San Bernardino the day after the attack. At the vigil, Mayor
R. Carey Davis praised the first responders, said that the tragedy "has forever impacted our community," and talked about how the community had come together following the attack.
Twelve of the dead were members of the
Service Employees International Union, so SEIU president
Mary Kay Henry said, "Our hearts are broken from this tragedy. ... We will unite to demand that our nation does everything possible to ensure that no more families have to feel this pain, sadness and loss ever again."
Political reactions
California Governor
Jerry Brown said, "Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims' families and everyone affected by the brutal attack."
President
Barack Obama called for "common-sense" gun safety laws and stronger background checks as part of a bipartisan effort to reduce the frequency of such shootings. In an interview with
CBS News'
Norah O'Donnell, Obama said: "We have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world." Obama called for legislation to block people on the anti-terrorism
No Fly List from purchasing weapons.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan opposed this proposal, saying that denying persons on the list the right to bear arms would violate their
due process rights.
After the shooting, some Democrats sought to tighten federal
gun control regulations, "laying blame on a culture that allows even people who are not permitted to board airplanes to buy guns with ease," while some Republicans criticized what they believe to be "the Obama administration's unwillingness to come to terms with the true threat posed by Muslim extremists." Members of the
California State Legislature also proposed to revisit some gun-control proposals that had previously stalled, with one
assemblyman proposing a prohibition of the sale of guns to those on the federal No Fly List.
Pakistani Interior Minister
Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said the Pakistani government will continue to offer "all possible legal assistance" to the U.S. in the investigation, and that "[no] sane Pakistani or Muslim could even think about doing such acts, and only few people are using the name of Islam for their wrongdoings, which is defaming our religion. Such heinous acts also lead to serious difficulties for millions of Muslims who live in Western and other countries, and the extremists and nationalist elements in those societies look at Muslims with suspicions.
Islamophobia is being spread around the world. What the terrorists are doing has nothing to do with Islam."
In an address to the nation delivered from the
Oval Office on December 6, President Obama declared the shooting an act of terrorism, referring to the shooters as having "gone down the dark path of radicalization" and embracing a "perverted version of Islam", and said "the threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it." He promised that the United States will "destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us." Obama also outlined the
ongoing fight against ISIL and urged Americans to not give in to fear. It was just the third
speech from the Oval Office in the seven years of
Obama's presidency.
In the first front-page editorial it had published in 95 years, The New York Times editorial board wrote that "it is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency," calling for gun control measures.
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