Topic: Edmonton man accused in terror plot

[HavokFour]

Edmonton man accused in terror plot

A Canadian man was arrested in Edmonton on Wednesday for his alleged association with a network of Tunisians believed to be responsible for suicide bombings in Iraq, including one that killed five U.S. soldiers in April 2009.

The U.S. Department of Justice said it is seeking to have Sayfildin Tahir Sharif, 38, also known as Faruq Khalil Muhammad 'Isa or Tahir Sharif Sayfildin, extradited to the United States to face charges in New York state.

U.S. authorities allege the accused is charged "in connection with his support for a multinational terrorist network that conducted multiple suicide bombings in Iraq and that is responsible for the deaths of five American soldiers."

They also allege Sharif had aspirations to carry out a bombing himself, as well as travel to Iraq and "obtain weapons and facilities from terrorist networks in Iraq to use in attacks in North America."
Document

Read the complaint issued against Sharif by the U.S. courts.

RCMP spokesman Sgt. Patrick Webb confirmed officers arrested Sharif at 9 a.m. in downtown Edmonton on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

"The FBI gave us quite a lot of information to identify the suspect and we used that information to identify the suspect, and finally made the arrest when we were sure he was the right guy," Webb said.

Sharif is in custody in Edmonton pending the outcome of the extradition request.

The soldiers were killed on April 10, 2009, when a Tunisian man drove a truck filled with explosives to the gate of Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, Iraq.

The man exchanged gunfire with Iraqi police officers and a convoy of American soldiers that was leaving the base. The man's truck blew up about 50 metres from the gate, right next to the last vehicle in the convoy.

Read more...

[milnews.ca]

U.S. DOJ news release:

Faruq Khalil Muhammad ‘Isa, 38, also known as “Faruk Khalil Muhammad ‘Isa,” “Sayfildin Tahir Sharif,” and “Tahir Sharif Sayfildin,” was arrested in Canada today pursuant to a U.S. provisional arrest warrant, based on a complaint in the United States charging him with conspiring to kill Americans abroad and with providing material support to that terrorist conspiracy to kill Americans abroad.   The U.S. government will seek the defendant’s extradition to face the charges.

The charges were announced by David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Loretta E. Lynch, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; and Janice K. Fedarcyk, Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the FBI.   The government’s investigation is being conducted by the FBI New York Joint Terrorism Task Force, with assistance provided by the Department of Defense, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the government of Tunisia.

The defendant is charged in connection with his support for a multinational terrorist network that conducted multiple suicide bombings in Iraq and that is responsible for the deaths of five American soldiers.   According to the complaint, filed on Jan. 14, 2011, in the Eastern District of New York, the five American soldiers were killed on April 10, 2009, when a Tunisian jihadist, whose travel to and activities in Iraq were facilitated by the terrorist network, drove a truck laden with explosives to the gate of the U.S. Military’s Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, Iraq.   The jihadist exchanged fire with Iraqi police officers and then the American convoy that was exiting the base.   The truck detonated approximately 50 yards from the gate, alongside the last vehicle in the U.S. convoy, leaving a 60-foot crater in the ground. 

Five American soldiers were killed in the blast.   They are Staff Sergeant Gary L. Woods, 24, of Lebanon Junction, Kentucky; Sergeant First Class Bryan E. Hall, 32, of Elk Grove, California; Sergeant Edward W. Forrest Jr., 25, of St. Louis; Corporal Jason G. Pautsch, 20, of Davenport, Iowa; and Army Private First Class Bryce E. Gaultier, 22, from Cyprus, California ....

Original U.S. DoD release on deaths here.

Complaint attached.

[old medic]

Arrest of Canadian 'cuts the wound open'
Stewart Bell, National Post
31 January 2011
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/Arrest+Canadian+cuts+wound+open/4194866/story.html

The death of Staff Sgt. Gary Lee Woods was a big deal in Lebanon Junction, Kentucky. On the day of his funeral, a giant American flag was suspended over the town between the raised ladders of two fire trucks.

Uniformed soldiers carried his flag-draped coffin into the packed gym at Bullitt Central High School, and after the service, the Patriot Guard Riders escorted his hearse through rainy spring streets to Cedar Grove Cemetery.

The family accepted Sgt. Woods' death as his sacrifice for America. "You did everything you could possibly do to protect our country," his grandmother Nancy Ratliff wrote on a Facebook tribute page.

"God decided you had done enough."

But unbeknownst to the family, while they were grieving, U.S., Canadian and Tunisian officials were on the trail of an international network linked to the April 10, 2009 suicide bombing that had killed Sgt. Woods in northern Iraq.

Christie Woods said she knew nothing about the police investigation until two weeks ago, when she got a text message telling her that a man had been arrested in connection with her husband's death, and that he was a Canadian.

Faruq Khalil Muhammad Isa, 38, an alleged member of the group responsible for the bombing, is to appear in an Edmonton courtroom on Wednesday for a bail hearing. He has been charged with conspiracy to kill Americans abroad and providing material support to a terrorist conspiracy.

In an exclusive interview, Mrs. Woods told the National Post that news of the arrest was "hard to hear" and had made her relive the day she found out her 24-year-old husband had been killed in the line of duty.

"I'm not angry at all. With my faith and everything I don't believe in holding on to grudges. But it does hurt. It cuts the wound open more to realize that there's somebody that close that would do that to somebody," she said.

Mrs. Woods met her future husband at Bullitt Central high, where he was a funnyman and musician. He played piano, guitar, trombone and drums. "Anything he could pick up he could play," she said.

Troubled by the 9/11 attacks, he joined the army right out of high school. He did his basic training at Fort Knox, and on July 26, 2003, the weekend before he shipped out to Iraq, he and Christie were married.

"He was a great guy. He would do anything for anybody, give the shirt off his back for anyone," she said. "My mom and dad loved him like their own son and I'd like to say his parents love me like I was theirs."

He completed two tours of Iraq and returned for a third in September 2008. After that he and Christie were scheduled to move to Fort Knox. "He was looking forward to that, being closer to family," reads his obituary.

The same month that Sgt. Woods arrived in Iraq for his final tour, Mr. Muhammad Isa, also known as Sayfildin Tahir Sharif, allegedly began working with what the FBI calls a "foreign-fighter facilitation network" that was sending Tunisians to Iraq via Libya to carry out suicide attacks.

The first group of four would-be martyrs arrived in Ras el-Jadir, Libya on Oct. 17, 2008. Mr. Muhammad Isa was allegedly coaching a fifth Tunisian who also wanted to conduct a suicide mission.

"Do not forget to keep reading Koran and repeat the famous prayers on the way until you meet with God.... what I know is that the things we are about to do are duty on us," Mr. Muhammad Isa told him, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court.

The Tunisian never made it to Iraq. He was arrested while trying to cross the border to Libya. But others made it and on March 31, 2009, two of them carried out a suicide bombing at a police complex in Mosul. Seven Iraqis were killed and 17 injured.

Ten days later, the Tunisians struck again. A U.S. Army convoy was leaving Forward Operating Base Marez when Iraqi guards began exchanging gunfire with a man in a dump truck. The truck made a rush for the American base and exploded 45 metres from the entrance.

The bomb went off next to Sgt. Woods' MRAP, or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle. Four other American soldiers were also killed. Sgt. Woods' mother caught the first flight out so she would be there when his body returned home to U.S. soil. "I was devastated, and so was the family," Mrs. Woods said.

Eight days after the bombing, a member of the group behind the blast was arrested in Al Basrah. FBI agents debriefed him and two more arrests were soon made near Mosul. What the suspects told the FBI has not been revealed in the court documents.

But shortly after the arrests, the FBI contacted the RCMP, which launched Project Semolina. The target of the investigation was Mr. Muhammad Isa, an Iraqi-Canadian who lived in Edmonton with a Canadian named Cara Rain and her four children.

A convert to Islam, Ms. Rain told the Edmonton Journal she met Mr. Muhammad Isa in August 2008. She insisted he was innocent and said he phoned Iraq almost daily and spoke in Arabic.

The RCMP was listening. According to the FBI, which

released excerpts of his conversations, Mr. Muhammad Isa was in contact with members of the group in Iraq. In the exchanges, he appeared to know details about the bombing that killed Sgt. Woods.

In other conversations, he talked about buying a telescopic rifle with a silencer, the FBI alleged, and said he supported the group "one million per cent" and that "even if I can't work over there, I can get some business going here to benefit us...."

He volunteered to travel to Iraq to fight Americans and conduct a suicide mission, and told his mother his greatest wish was to die a martyr and be greeted in paradise by 70 virgins, the FBI alleged. Last May, he allegedly told his sister in Iraq, "Go learn about weapons and go attack the police and Americans. Let it be that you die."

The U.S. Department of Justice wants Canada to extradite Mr. Muhammad Isa to New York to stand trial. Mrs. Woods said she wants justice to be done and would try to attend the proceedings. She also knows what she would tell the suspect if she got the chance.

"Honestly, I would say 'I pray for your soul,'" she said. "I mean that I would pray that God would give him mercy. I would ask him questions, I would want to know what his reasoning was."

She said she is coping "day to day" with the loss. "He was my best friend, we were together off and on since my freshman year of high school. He was my best friend, fully, even when we weren't together," she said.

"Everything I am today is because of Lee. He made me a stronger person than I could ever imagine. He was the light in the room, the smile on my face, my everything. We all feel his loss every day of our lives.

"The pain never goes away."

[milnews.ca]

Bumped with the latest....

An Edmonton man accused of international terrorism has been charged with the murders of five American soldiers killed in a 2009 suicide-bomb attack in Iraq.

Faruq Khalil Muhammad 'Isa, an Iraqi-Canadian, faces five murder charges and is charged also with conspiring to kill Americans abroad and providing material support to a terrorist conspiracy to kill Americans abroad.

The 38-year-old was indicted Friday by a federal grand jury in Brooklyn, New York.

He was arrested at his Edmonton apartment by RCMP on Jan. 19, 2011, and has been in custody since then. He has been held in segregation for months at the Edmonton Remand Centre while awaiting extradition to the United States. An extradition hearing is scheduled to begin on Jan. 30, 2012.

If convicted in the U.S., 'Isa could face a maximum of life in prison ....

Postmedia News, 9 Dec 11