Boston jihadis plotted to behead a police officer
The police must have provoked them, right? By being police. If the police had just allowed themselves to be stabbed, all would have been well. It is never wise and always uncharitable to provoke Muslims — everyone knows that.
Note the participation of Globe reporter Lisa Wangsness, who has done so much to whitewash the jihad terror ties of the Islamic Society of Boston, in writing this story. No wonder the mosque’s claims that Rahim didn’t worship there are accepted without question.
“Two men plotted to behead a police officer, official says,” by Maria Cramer, Evan Allen, Laura Crimaldi and Lisa Wangsness, Boston Globe, June 3, 2015:
A police officer lifted a knife in front of a CVS store on Washington Street in Roslindale following the shooting of a man there on Tuesday morning.This kind of claim would be more credible if we didn’t hear it about every jihad terrorist in the U.S. Clearly mosques in the U.S. have a line they give to reporters: this jihadi came here once or twice but we never knew him and he disliked us for being moderate. It may or may not be true, but Lisa Wangsness and her equally hopeless Boston Globe colleagues never make the slightest effort to determine whether or not it really is true.
The man fatally shot by antiterrorism officers in Boston on Tuesday and the suspect arrested Tuesday night in Everett had conspired to kill a police officer, according to two law enforcement officials briefed on the case.
“We believe the intent was to behead a police officer,” one official said Wednesday morning. “We knew the plot had to be stopped. They were planning to take action Tuesday.”
The other official said Boston police and the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force were aware of the plot because of intelligence that had been gathered, and the suspects had been under surveillance for several weeks.
More details are expected to be released when the suspect from Everett, David Wright, appears in federal court in Boston Wednesday. His appearance is scheduled for 3:30 p.m., prosecutors said.
The Boston police and the FBI have declined comment on the specifics of the plot.
The man shot when he approached the officer and FBI agent with a machete and refused to back down, officials said.
Usaama Rahim, 26, was shot Tuesday in Boston’s Roslindale section by two Joint Terorism [sic] Task Force members — a Boston police officer and FBI agent —when he lunged at them with a menacing military knife, police said.
The shooting sparked an expanded investigation that quickly led to the arrest of Wright in Everett and a search in Rhode Island.
Christina DiIorio-Sterling, a spokeswoman for the US attorney’s office, said that Wright was expected to appear in court Wednesday. She declined to provide any details of the charges against him, saying they would be filed in court.
Law enforcement officials at a news conference Tuesday said Rahim was under 24-hour surveillance. But they declined to explain what had led to the antiterrorism task force probe or detail its scope, although they said it had been going on for a while.
“We believed [Rahim] was a threat,” Boston Police Commissioner William B. Evans said. “He was someone we were watching for quite a time. The level of alarm brought us to question him today. I don’t think anybody expected the reaction we got out of him.”
Rahim allegedly wielded the knife after being approached on Washington Street in Roslindale by task force members Tuesday morning. Evans said the officers did not have their guns drawn when they approached.
Rahim is the brother of a well-known imam who spoke out against terrorism after the Boston Marathon bombing.
One woman who knew Usaama Rahim described him as a highly observant Muslim who married a young convert a couple of years ago. They attended the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center but stopped going, also about two years ago. They told her they thought the mosque was too liberal, said the woman, who requested anonymity to protect her privacy.
Yusufi Vali, executive director of the Islamic Society of Boston center, said a company that provides security for the mosque hired Rahim for a month in mid-2013. He said Rahim did not pray regularly at the mosque, nor did he volunteer or hold any leadership positions.
The woman said that although she sometimes disagreed with the couple on their religious views, they never said anything suggesting they supported violent extremism. She last spoke with them about two years ago, she said.
Rahim has no criminal record under his name, an official with knowledge of the case said.
The encounter with Rahim, captured on surveillance video, began about 7 a.m. in the parking lot of a shopping center with a CVS and several fast-food restaurants, authorities said. The task force members approached Rahim to speak with him, according to Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley.
They had a brief exchange near a bus stop, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, before Rahim lunged with the knife. The weapon was more than a foot long with a nearly 8-inch blade, according to an evidence picture.
Evans said task force members retreated and repeatedly ordered Rahim to drop his weapon. Officials said there were witnesses to the confrontation. The surveillance video shows task force members backing up before firing, the official with knowledge of the investigation said, and when they fired, Rahim was within 15 or 20 feet. The police officer and the FBI agent fired three shots, according to a police spokesman; two hit Rahim in the front of his torso.
Rahim was pronounced dead at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The officer and agent were taken to hospitals to be examined for stress.
Vincent Lisi, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston office, would not disclose specifics of why Rahim was being investigated….
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