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from stratfor.com
Hamid Hayat, a California man who has been held on charges of lying to federal authorities about attending a terrorist training camp in Pakistan, was accused in federal court in Sacramento on Sept. 22 of providing material support to terrorists. The indictment alleges that Hayat “intended, upon receipt of orders from other individuals, to wage jihad (holy war) in the United States.”
In June, federal authorities arrested Hayat, his father and three others from the same mosque in Lodi, Calif., near Sacramento – later issuing deportation orders for the non-U.S. citizens among them. In announcing the latest Hayat indictment, U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said authorities do not know what kind of plot was being hatched at the mosque, but that it had been stopped.
Scott’s remarks could be premature.
Terrorist networks often are composed of multiple cells, one or more of them capable of operating independently and carrying out attacks after another has been broken up. For security reasons, terrorist cells often have no knowledge of the activities or status of one another. The December 2004 attack against the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is a case in point. Saudi counterterrorism forces exposed one of the two cells the previous month, but the attack proceeded – and five consulate employees died, none of them U.S. nationals. Four members of the Saudi military and three of the five attackers also died in the attack.
Attacks also have occurred after authorities believed they had thwarted the entire plot. In 1997, U.S. counterterrorism authorities suspected that an attack was being planned against the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. The investigation led to Wadih el Hage, who authorities say had been Osama bin Laden’s close confidant and personal secretary. U.S. and Kenyan authorities searched el Hage’s home but the suspect managed to flee Kenya in September 1997, leading U.S. officials to believe they had thwarted the attack. On Aug. 7, 1998, the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, were simultaneously attacked with massive truck bombs, killing more than 220 people.
The exposure of one cell or individual involved in a terrorist plot does not mean that other attacks are not being planned in the same area. In June 1993 – four months after the World Trade Center bombing – U.S. authorities raided a warehouse in Queens, N.Y., based on a tip from informants. The warehouse allegedly was being used by followers of blind Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman to mix explosives to use in attacks against targets in New York, including the FBI building and U.N. headquarters. Abdel-Rahman, who was arrested in 1993 along with nine of his followers, was convicted in October 1995 of “seditious conspiracy.” He is serving a life sentence.
Although the investigation into Hayat’s activities resulted in multiple arrests and deportations, it is possible that only one part of a larger plot has been exposed. It also is possible that some other aspect of human or tactical intelligence has been overlooked, leaving other cells uninvestigated. After the Lodi arrests, any other cell in the area would have gone underground for a time to keep from being exposed. If that is the case, Scott could be overconfident.
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