Breaking
News: Nazi/Islamist Guilty in ISIS Material Support Case
by Abha Shankar • Dec 18, 2017 at
1:30 pm
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ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A former D.C. Metro Police officer who embraced both
neo-Nazi and radical Islamist ideology was found guilty Monday of
attempting to provide material support to ISIS and two counts of
obstruction of justice.
Nicholas Young, 36, is scheduled to be sentenced in March. He could face
up to 60 years in prison.
Evidence and testimony presented
during last week's five-day trial showed Young supported both Nazism and
Islamist terrorism – ideologies which share hatred for Jews.
The alliance between Nazism and Islamist terrorism against Jews is
"based on the idea that the enemy of my enemy is my friend," testified expert witness Daveed Gartenstein-Ross.
People are drawn to neo-Nazism and militant Islam for similar reasons, and
"once you succumb to one of those ideologies, you become more prone to
succumbing to the other ideology."
The verdict marks another failed attempt to blame federal law
enforcement officials for entrapping
an otherwise innocent man. To convict Young, jurors had to be convinced
that he was predisposed to support ISIS before encountering any FBI
informants, including those who served as prosecution witnesses.
 Young's home and
computer were littered with Nazi paraphernalia and radical Islamist
material, some of it more than a decade old. That includes several pictures of Young and his associates in SS uniforms in
front of a Nazi flag, a framed photo of Adolf Hitler, electronic copies of The Book of Jihad and issues of al-Qaida's Inspire
Magazine. A 2006
photo showed Young seated in traditional Islamic garb holding a gun
across his lap.
The obstruction counts stem from lies he told federal agents about a
close associate who he believed had traveled to Syria to join ISIS. He also
sent a text message meant to mislead investigators into
thinking the friend went to Turkey instead of Syria. The associate was a
government informant, and Young tried to give him gift card codes to help
ISIS recruit new members from the West.
Young's friends included radical Islamists – some of whom were later
sentenced to long prison terms for plotting terror attacks and providing
support to al-Qaida and Somalia's al Shabaab.
Young's co-worker, former Metro Transit Police Officer Joanne Dill,
testified, "[h]e believed in the caliphate and thought it was a good
thing for that part of the world."
He told an informant about his desire to obtain a slave. "You can measure
someone's predisposition even from the way they act now. A police officer
in Washington, D.C., says I want a slave," Assistant U.S. Attorney
Gordon Kromberg told jurors Friday.
Related Topics: Homegrown
Terror, Prosecutions
| Abha
Shankar, Nicholas
Young, neo-Nazis,
ISIS,
Gordon
Kromberg, entrapment,
D.C.
Metro Transit police, Daveed
Gartenstein-Ross, Inspire
magazine, Homegrown
Terror, Prosecutions
CAIR's
Hamas Connections Irrelevant, San Diego Schools Claim
by John
Rossomando • Dec 18, 2017 at 10:31 am
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Connections between the Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Hamas, or CAIR's anti-Israel stance,
are not relevant to a lawsuit seeking to block San Diego's Unified School
District (SDUSD) from working with CAIR, the school district argues in court papers.
In its lawsuit, the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund
(FCDF) cites "CAIR's longstanding ties to Islamic extremist groups
such as Hamas, which is opposed to Jewish statehood and which calls for the
elimination of all Jews."
"These allegations have no bearing
on Plaintiffs' claims against Defendants, and are only included to inflame
the public against SDUSD by its association with CAIR," the school
district's lawyers wrote last week.
They also claim that mentioning of CAIR's
Hamas ties, which the FBI has acknowledged in writing, is "scandalous" and
gives a "nefarious" character to the school district's
relationship with CAIR, which involved an anti-bullying campaign.
Internal records seized by the FBI from
members of a Hamas-support network to support Hamas in the United States
show CAIR was under the network's umbrella. CAIR's co-founders also
were included on a telephone
list of "Palestine Committee" members. In addition,
witnesses told the FBI that CAIR was founded to aid Hamas.
The school district agreed to stop working with CAIR last July because
CAIR's executive director acknowledged it is a primarily a religious
organization, creating constitutional challenges for a governmental body..
The school district's motion also
complains that the FCDF failed to explain how CAIR's Hamas ties affected
the instructional materials used by the school district.
"By incorporating these politically
charged claims – Plaintiffs' clear intent is to attack CAIR on impertinent
matters and hope that the scandalous nature of these allegations will
confuse the relevant issues and reflect poorly on SDUSD. This is not
allowed," the district's motion said.
FCDF Executive Director Dan Piedra
dismissed the district's claim as a "delaying tactic." "To
say that our claims lack factual support at this stage of the litigation is
inappropriate," Piedra said. At this point in the litigation courts
assume that what the plaintiffs say is true.
FCDF's claims about CAIR's Hamas ties and
anti-Israel stance is relevant, Piedra said, because the group already
helped shaped the curriculum and replace textbooks it didn't like. This
could lead to CAIR censoring textbooks that run contrary to its narrative
about the Palestinians.
He dismissed the school district's
assertion that including reference to CAIR's Hamas ties in his suit
prejudiced the school district, saying the district already has
accomplished this by working with CAIR. The jury will never see any of
FCDF's claims in its lawsuit; consequently, Piedra sees no chance the
paragraphs about CAIR's Hamas ties would prejudice the case's outcome.
"Their arguments are scattershot and
doggedly resistant to seeing why parents are aghast that they are defending
CAIR because this organization that has indisputable ties to terrorism and
a history of anti-Semitic statements," Piedra said.
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