This report should be troubling news to all Americans:
One of the bombers in last week’s attacks made a direct phone call to a suspected recruiter for an extremist group in New York.
Authorities told ABC News that records show Mohammed Sidique Khan, the eldest of the bombers now believed to be the field commander of the attacks, had called a person who is associated with the Islamic Center, a mosque in Queens, N.Y. Yet, a member of that mosque claimed they had no knowledge of the phone call.
In addition to Khan, two other men linked to the London bombings also had direct ties with the United States.
“Whilst we are watching the ports and the airports trying to prevent people from coming in,” said M.J. Gohel, a terrorism analyst at the Asia-Pacific Foundation, “al Qaeda and its global jihadi friends are a step ahead. They have already penetrated into the West and are recruiting Western born Muslims to join terrorism.”
Lindsay Germaine, one of the four dead bombers and a Jamaican who left behind a pregnant wife, had recently traveled to see relatives in Ohio.
Furthermore, Magdy El Nashar, 33, who was captured last night at his family’s home outside of Cairo and then questioned by British agents, studied at North Carolina State University. Police believe he helped the bombers build their explosive devices. Now they want to know if there are more bombs and would-be bombers.
“It is possible there will be more attempts,” admitted Sir Ian Blair, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. “It is our job to stop them in every way we possibly can. It is more likely now than it was before.”
Police said El Nashar, who denied any involvement in the bombings, left England shortly after he rented the house in Leeds, where they discovered a so-called bomb factory. Neighbors in the Cairo suburb told ABC News he arrived there about 10 days before the bombings. They also said they had trouble believing El Nashar could have participated in the attacks.
There are several troubling things in this news story:
- Possible links to the United States. Were these phone calls just a coincidence? Social calls? Or does this underscore more than ever the likely presence of sleeper cells in the United States?
- Note that some of these accused terrorists and/or accused accomplices don’t quite fit the usual racial profile of the terrorist. And it seems using native-born Muslims in given countries is the new Al Qaeda rage…
- The role of recruiters, who provide a useful supplies of usually young bodies willing to blow up innocent men, women and children in the name of their merciless body-count-seeking cause. Recruiters who sound like they may be having better luck that U.S. military recruiters these days…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.