Category: Terror War

Curtis Allen, Patrick Stein and Gavin Wright, who called their little militia group “the Crusaders”, face a jury trial in Wichita, Kansas soon, according to Associated Press, for planning to set off four car bombs in Garden City, a Somali immigrant community that toils at a local Tyson Foods cattle slaughterhouse on Election Day, 2016. Luckily, one of the original four Crusaders was an FBI informant wearing a wire;

According to prosecutors, Stein was recorded discussing the type of fuel-and-fertilizer bomb that Timothy McVeigh used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people. Stein was arrested when he delivered 300 pounds of fertilizer to undercover FBI agents to make explosives.

Prosecutors also allege that Wright and Allen made an explosive in the kitchen of Wright’s business and used it to successfully test a blasting cap, with the goal of using the cap to cause a much larger explosion at the apartment complex.

Agents also found aerial photographs in one vehicle depicting what appear to be apartment complexes marked with large X’s, as well as an aerial photo of a church and a Burmese mosque, authorities say. The group also discussed killing the apartment complex’s white owner to send a message to other landlords about renting to immigrants.

Defense lawyers filed a motion to expand the jury pool to include more Trump voters;

In that motion, they argued the case is “uniquely political” because much of the expected evidence is in reaction to the election. They contended the case will require jurors to weigh evidence regarding whether the suspected conduct amounts to criminal behavior or whether it is constitutionally protected speech.

Yeah, I suppose that Trump voters will disregard the potential for the loss of lives in favor of “constitutionally protected speech”. Somehow, I don’t think that is a winning strategy.

The trio have all pleaded “not guilty” and they face life sentences.

Stars & Stripes reports that the HH-60 Pave Low that crashed yesterday was from the New York Air National Guard’s 106th Rescue Wing, based in Westhampton Beach on Long Island. It went down near the town of Qaim in Anbar province and enemy action is not the cause of the crash, according to the Pentagon.

Four members of the 7-man crew lost in the crash are identified as Chistopher Raguso, a lieutenant with the New York Fire Department’s Company 4, Fire Marshal Christopher “Tripp” Zanetis, a New York City firefighter since 2004, Staff Sergeant Dashan Briggs a husband and father of two children, and Air Force Staff Sergeant Carl Enis, a 31-year-old Pinecrest, Fla. native, a pararescueman and a member of the 308th Rescue Squadron from Patrick Air Force Base.

A second helicopter accompanying it immediately reported the crash and a quick reaction force of Iraqi and coalition forces secured the scene, officials said.

The FBI has arrested four men for the bombing of a Mosque in Minnesota last year as well as a Women’s health center in Illinois. Michael Hari, 47, Michael McWhorter, 29, Joe Morris, 22, and Ellis Mack, 18, all of Clarence, Illinois called themselves the “White Rabbit Three Percent Illinois Patriot Freedom Fighters Militia”. I guess they wanted to include all of the crackpot bullshit in their title that they could.

From WWGP the feds were tipped;

On Feb. 19, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) received an anonymous tip via email that explosive devices may be found in the back of a property in Clarence, Illinois. The tip claimed that the property owner, identified in court documents as “J.O.,” has been “buying a lot of weird chemicals like nail polish remover and battery acide (sic)” and that he is “always talking about getting the n——” and that he is making a “n—– schredder (sic).”

The anonymous tipster also wrote, “i (sic) am afraid someone will get hurt if someone doesn’t do something I also sent something about it to the newspaper so if you just blow it off like you did that school schooter (sic) kid in florida (sic) the press will know you got a tip so you better check it out.”

From the Department of Justice;

MORRIS and HARI made their initial appearance on federal charges related to an attempted bombing in Champaign, Illinois, today at 3:00 p.m. before Magistrate Judge Eric I. Long in U.S. District Court in Urbana, Illinois. MCWHORTER will make his initial appearance in connection with the attempted Illinois bombing at a later date.

The affidavit filed in support of the District of Minnesota criminal complaint alleges that on August 5, 2017, a pipe bomb was thrown through a window of the Dar al-Farooq Islamic Center (“DAF”), located in Bloomington, Minnesota. The pipe bomb, constructed of polyvinyl chloride, known as “PVC,” exploded, causing extensive damage. On January 27, 2018, law enforcement received information from a confidential source indicating that MCWHORTER, MORRIS, and HARI were responsible for the bombing carried out at DAF.

According to the charge document, McWhorter turned in his partners to the Feds earlier this month. He told investigators that they only wanted to send a message to the Islamic Center folks that they should leave the country. I don’t know what message they were trying to send the women’s health center.

For those of you who like to make jokes about Amish terrorists, this is from Heavy;

Hari was a member of the Old German Baptist Brethran, a denomination that wears the plain cloths of the Amish, but allows for more modern amenities, he told the Chicago Tribune. He made national headlines in 2005 and 2006 when he fled to Mennonite communities in Mexico and Belize during a custody dispute with his ex-wife, taking his two young daughters with him. The story was featured on several episodes of the “Dr. Phil Show,” and he eventually returned to the U.S. with his daughters. The reunion and an interview featuring Hari and his ex-wife was recorded by “Dr. Phil.”

A jury found him guilty of child abduction in 2006, according to The News-Gazette. He faced up to 3 years in prison, and prosecutors asked for a sentence of 6 months, but he received only 30 months of probation.

According to the Feds, they tested the weapons that the boys had and the weapons had been illegally converted to full automatic.

Military.com reports that Sergeant Christina Marie Schoenecker, a Reservist from Kansas, died in a non-combat incident while involved in Operation Inherent Resolve.

Schoenecker, 26, of Arlington, Kansas, was assigned to the 89th Sustainment Brigade out of Wichita, Army officials said in a brief release. They did not reveal the circumstances of her death, but said she was in Baghdad at the time.

The 89th Sustainment Brigade falls under the 451st Expeditionary Sustainment Command.

According to the command, Schoenecker was a human resources specialist who joined the Army in 2009. She was promoted to sergeant in January 2015 and was completing her first deployment at the time of her death.

The Washington Post reports that the Iranian drone that Israel shot down this weekend was actually an Iranian copy of a US CIA RQ-170 Sentinel . The Iranians reverse-engineered the copy from a US drone that they recovered from a 2011 crash.

Experts who examined footage of the drone being shot down and images of its wreckage released by the Israeli military agreed that the shape strongly resembled that of Iran’s Saeqeh, or “Thunderbolt,” drone, which was based on a CIA-operated RQ-170 captured by Iran.

[Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a spokesman for Israel’s military] said that he could not specifically confirm that the drone was a Saeqeh and that the debris is still being examined. Iran has developed several other models based on the RQ-170.

“It was an Iranian copy of a U.S. drone that they got hold of a few years ago and they duplicated,” [Yuval Steinitz, a minister in Israel’s security cabinet] told Israeli radio. Israel said the drone, operated by Iran from a base inside Syria, traveled three or four miles into its territory Saturday morning before being shot down.

Iran has described the Israeli claim as “ridiculous.”

Iran claims that their version of the stealth drone is armed with four laser-guided bombs, despite experts’ claims that it won’t remain stealthy with armaments. I guess it wasn’t stealthy enough to evade Israel’s detection.

“It would be a new development if they were flying these around,” Zwijnenburg said. The RQ-170 is designed to evade radar, made of materials that absorb, rather than bounce, the radar signal, but it is possible Iran has not been able to replicate that capability, Zwijnenburg said.

“They could have been testing air defenses or trying it out,” he said. “If it was trying to evade radar it would have to be flying low, and from the video it looks to be flying low.”

Iran is believed to have a dozen of these drones, but that number may be reduced by the Israelis in the coming weeks.

Mick sends us a link to the news that the fellow pictured above, Shivam Patel, tried to enlist in the Air Force and the Army without disclosing his foreign travel to China and Jordan where he was arrested and deported back to the United States.

Apparently, he made a statement to an undercover federal agent that he intended to commit jihad.

When Patel tried to join the U.S. Army and Air Force in December of 2016, prosecutors said he failed to disclose his foreign travel and his arrest.

Patel faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison when he is sentenced on June 4.