Government informant was paid $250,000!
Chicago Tribune: The suspected ringleader, Sohiel Omar Kabir, 34, is accused of recruiting co-defendants Ralph Deleon, 23, and Miguel Alejandro Santana Vidriales, 21, who converted to Islam under his influence. Those two are in turn alleged to have enlisted a third man, Arifeen David Gojali, 21.
In conversations relayed or recorded by an unidentified paid FBI informant, Deleon and Santana spoke about traveling to Afghanistan to join Kabir and engage in “violent jihad,” according to the complaint. It said they described potential targets for attacks including U.S. military bases.
Together with Gojali, they also made visits to a Los Angeles firing range and a paint ball facility for shooting practice “to prepare for terrorist training oversees,” the FBI said.
Kabir, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lived in the Los Angeles suburb of Pomona before going abroad in late 2011, was born in Afghanistan and served in the U.S. Air Force from 2000 to 2001, the FBI said.
He was apprehended in Afghanistan on Saturday and remains in custody there, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller told Reuters.
The three others, all listed as living in Southern California’s Inland Empire, east of Los Angeles, were arrested outside an apartment complex in the town of Chino on Friday, two days before they had planned to fly from Mexico to Turkey, the FBI said.
They made their initial court appearance later that day before a federal judge in Riverside.
“There was no way they were getting on that plane,” David Bowdich, special agent in charge of the FBI’s counterterrorism division in Los Angeles, told reporters at a news conference.
Deleon, a legal permanent U.S. resident, was born in the Philippines. Santana, also a legal permanent U.S. resident, is a Mexican native with a pending U.S. citizenship application, while Gojali is a U.S. citizen of Vietnamese descent, the FBI said.
They each face up to 15 years in prison if convicted of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.
MET IN A HOOKAH LOUNGE
Kabir left the United States for Germany last December and traveled this July to Afghanistan, where he planned to introduce the other men to his al Qaeda and Taliban contacts, according to the FBI complaint.
It said Kabir met Deleon and Santana in a hookah lounge and introduced them in 2010 to radical Islamic teachings, including those of U.S.-born al Qaeda militant Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by a U.S. drone attack last year in Yemen.
Deleon and Santana, who were influenced by Kabir to convert to Islam, went on to recruit Gojali in September 2012, the FBI alleges.