Robed men with long beards and women in burqas have often prompted thoughts of jihad, leading to the police being alerted and the suspects turn out to be perfectly clean. Indeed, just such a recent case took place at a New York Giants football game. Islamist organizations lose no time to jump on these cases as signs of prejudice, happily exploiting them for their own gain.
But suspicions of neighbors do turn out on many occasions to be warranted and are an extremely valuable tool of counterterrorism, as I shall note here on an occasional basis and in reverse chronological order.
Honor killer caught: Texas-based Yaser Said had been a fugitive since 2008 on suspicion of having honor-killed daughters, Amina and Sarah, 18 and 17. NBC News explains how he was caught:
Said's son and brother, Islam and Yassein, respectively, were complicit in keeping him hidden and that federal agents nearly caught up with him on Aug. 14, 2017 when an alert maintenance man spotted him inside his son Islam's Bedford residence at the Copper Canyon apartment complex.
The worker had been sent to the residence to repair a water leak and noticed the deadbolt was locked when he tried to enter. He knocked, announced himself, and said a middle-aged Middle Eastern man opened the door and allowed him inside to make the repair.
The maintenance worker reported what took place to the apartment manager. The manager was aware Islam was related to a fugitive and showed his employee Yaser Said's wanted poster. When the worker confirmed it was the same man they immediately notified the FBI.
(August 28, 2020)
The president of France concurs: Emmanuel Macron says people should be "on the lookout at school, at work, in places of worship, close to home" for "little gestures" and signs of radicalization. (October 31, 2019)
Huntsville, Alabama: WHNT reports that
The Huntsville Police Department has charged a man with Soliciting or Providing Support for an Act of Terrorism. 22-year-old Aziz Sayyed, of Huntsville, was taken into custody Thursday afternoon. The arrest is the result of a tip from a citizen.
(June 15, 2017)
Family's report thwarts pressure-cooker bomb plot: A well-written analysis from the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness tells the story of Gregory Lepsky:
A Point Pleasant (Ocean County) man faces federal terrorism charges after a family member notified law enforcement of his erratic behavior—underscoring the role friends, relatives, and close associates play in countering violence. According to authorities, Gregory Lepsky plotted to build a pressure-cooker bomb and detonate it in New York City to "kill as many people as possible" in support of ISIS.
On February 21, a relative notified local law enforcement that Lepsky had a weapon and was going to kill the family dog. Officers discovered the dog alive, but with a large wound, and subsequently arrested Lepsky. According to the criminal complaint, Lepsky stated that he had stabbed the dog because, in his view of Islam, dogs are "dirty." He also said he planned to kill his mother and praised ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
During the investigation, officers found a pressure cooker in Lepsky's closet, as well as several books on jihad and suicide bombing. On May 5, federal prosecutors charged Lepsky with attempting to provide material support to ISIS, which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison.
Family members, peers, and close contacts may be the first to notice radical shifts in behavior and attitude, as well as unusual Internet activity. According to Western media reports, Islamic extremists are 71 percent more likely to "leak" their violent intentions to friends, relatives, or other associates, compared to 53 percent of right-wing extremists, such as neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
The family member who contacted Point Pleasant police first noticed a change in Lepsky's behavior in December, stating he began expressing radical Islamic rhetoric in his text messages and social media posts. In one message, Lepsky stated, "Allah (the most exalted) commands us Muslims to fight against the desbelivers [sic] until there is none left!"
We encourage all partners to report suspicious activity to local law enforcement and to NJOHSP's Counterterrorism Watch by calling 866-4-SAFE-NJ (866-472-3365) or e-mailing tips@njohsp.gov.
(June 12, 2017)
Suspicious at a gun range: Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud, 23 and of Somali origins, having returned to Ohio from training with ISIS in Syria, aroused suspicion at a gun range. Now he stands accused of planning an attack against the U.S. government, providing material support to Nusra Front, and lying to federal agents. The Wall Street Journal explains:
The owner of a local gun range called authorities last September, suspicious about an inexperienced group that had come to learn how to shoot a pistol. ... [Mohamud] wanted to train the others, and that's pretty unusual," said Eric Delbert, an owner of L.E.P.D. Firearms & Range in north Columbus.
Mr. Delbert, a part-time sergeant with a local law-enforcement agency, said he called the city's joint terrorism task force after the visit in September and showed authorities videotape taken of the man and three others as they spent an hour on the 75-foot range shooting a pistol at a black silhouette of a person overlaid with red rings. "Horrible shots," Mr. Delbert said of the men's abilities inside the range.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has written in court papers that the visit to the range appeared to be legal but that it could demonstrate a more sinister intent. ...
At the Columbus firing range, Mr. Mohamud rented a shooting lane for $20 an hour and a 9mm pistol for $15, according to accounts from law enforcement in court papers and interviews with range officials. He didn't purchase any firearms or ammunition to take with him, said Mr. Delbert, the range owner.
When a range official offered to instruct him and his associates how to use their borrowed pistol, Mr. Mohamud declined, implying he could teach the others, court papers say. That set off alarm bells for Mr. Delbert, who backed up that account in court papers. He said range officials placed the group in lane No. 12, nearest to the glass window by the store counter, so they could be observed.
(April 21, 2015)
Worried but said nothing: Graeme Hamilton of Canada's National Post reports how the neighbors of Islamist killer Martin "Ahmad" Rouleau (his victim: Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent) had bad feelings about him but sat on their suspicions, figuring law enforcement already was on his case (which it was).
One neighbor: "It's a shock in the sense that it was someone across the street, but on the other hand, we thought that one day there could be a dramatic incident, considering his activities." Another neighbour, Lyse Laroche: "We knew right away it was him. There was no doubt." A next-door neighbor: About a year and a half ago, "we saw a big change." He "entered a bubble": He stopped talking to neighbors and changed his name. (October 22, 2014)
"Apprentice jihadis" train in a French city park: Residents in the French city of Strasbourg noted at least six "bearded men dressed in djellabas" engaged in combat training in a park, using fake weapons, and called the police this week to watch what they called "apprentice jihadists." On arrival, the police were called "infidels." The group's leader told police they were in training to "avenge the deaths of their Muslim brothers" and threatening that the police "would burn in hell." Subsequently, the men insisted they were taking part in a self-defence class. The DGSI, the anti-terrorist police, has taken over the investigation. While it's not clear what this group is, neighborly vigilance can only have helped. (October 15, 2014)
Times Square bomber: A counter-positive example, where neighbors were suspicious but did nothing and the suspect went on to try to commit an act of terrorism.
For most of his dozen or so years living in the United States, Faisal Shahzad, 30, appeared to be, as one acquaintance put it, "just a normal dude." But then, the New York Daily News reports,
some of Shahzad's neighbors in Bridgeport started growing suspicious. He kept odd hours and seemed nervous, they said. By that time, he had run into financial woes: banks were foreclosing on his house and he was being sued by an energy company. "He would be carrying in boxes in the middle of the night," said Dashawn Labelle, who added that he sometimes wore traditional Islamic robes. "He always looked on edge. We knew something weird was going on. I thought he might be connected to terrorism - a lot of us did, because he acted strangely. But we didn't call police. We should have called," Labelle said. ... "You could sort of tell he was hiding something," said Lorenzo Patel, 32. "He had family, but it's like he was going places alone and keeping odd hours, not like a father should. That house gave me a bad feeling."
(May 4, 2010)
Orange County, California: Pat Rose, head of the FBI's Al-Qaeda squad in Orange County, approves of nosey neighbors: "I think we need to be concerned with everybody, including our next-door neighbor," adding that the FBI gets frequent calls from people who want to tell them about situations like a Muslim neighbor who is changing his license plates or the guy who has nothing in his apartment but a mattress and five computers. "I can't tell you how many" tips like that paid off, she said. (May 25, 2006)
Maaseik, Belgium: "Maaseik is located in the Belgian province of Limburg, a few miles from the Dutch and German borders. Until recently, its chief claim to fame was as the home town of Hubert and Jan van Eyck, the 15th-century Flemish painters." More recently, its claim to fame concerns this town of 24,000 serving (in the words of the Washington Post) as the "center of a terrorist network stretching across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa." And how did the authorities figure this out? Again, the Post: "Rumors that radicals were living in Maaseik spread to the offices of the Belgian State Security agency in Brussels, which opened a surveillance operation in the summer of 2002."
Zeeshan Siddique: A young man from Hounslow, west London, was arrested in May 2005 in a house outside Peshawar, Pakistan because (as the New York Times puts it) of "reports that he was acting suspiciously." He has been held on suspicion of links to both Al-Qaeda and later the July 7 suicide bombers.
Maher Hawash: The one time high-flying Intel engineer with a circle of friends and volunteer activities changed; his neighbors in Oregon reported to the FBI that (as I put it in a 2003 article) "he became noticeably more devout. He grew a beard, wore Arab clothing, prayed five times a day and regularly attended mosque. He also became noticeably less friendly." An inquiry followed that ended up with Hawash arrested in March 2003, pleading guilty in August, and sentenced to a seven-year jail term in February 2004.
Waleed M. Alshehri: One of the 9/11 suicide hijackers, Waleed M. Alshehri, had lived in a large rental house in Vienna, Virginia. His and his friends' comings and goings (loud parties, pistol shooting, fancy cars with out-of-state license plates, people "always walking around out front with cellphones," a van permanently parked outside the home with a Middle-Eastern man in it monitoring a scanner or radio) aroused suspicions. The neighbor across the street, John E. Albritton, called federal authorities and another neighbor says residents complained to the FBI.
Wolverhampton, England: A report on the arrest of ten Al-Qaeda-related terrorist suspects in October 2005: "Neighbours in the Moseley Village area of Wolverhampton described how up to 20 young men at a time would stay in the two-bedroom, semi-detached house in Lewis Avenue that was raided by armed police and MI5 officers."
The Portland Seven: A ranch in Bly, Oregon, that was intended to serve as a jihad-training camp for Abu Hamza al-Masri and others, drew scrutiny in 1999 from law-enforcement officials because, as the Klamath County sheriff, Tim Evinger, later explained, "There were reports of gunfire and of a large group of suspicious, or unusual, people there." (November 24, 2005)
