Two New Yorkers Charged With Conspiring to Aid Al Qaeda, Taliban
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by Abha Shankar
Taliban members.
Two New York City men were arrested on Friday and charged with conspiring to funnel money and equipment to terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda and the Taliban, fighting American forces in Afghanistan.
Humayoun Ghoulam Nabi, a Pakistani national, and Ismail Alsarabbi, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Kuwait, allegedly conspired to supply Afghan mujahideen with warm winter clothing and other supplies to better equip them to fight U.S. troops in the region. According to the complaint issued by the district attorney in Queens, New York, Nabi admitted “he had engaged in a plan to provide outerwear and boots to fighters in Afghanistan who were fighting American soldiers and that he did so because he hates the United States, Jewish people, and U.S. soldiers specifically and that he wanted to give those fighting the Americans equipment that would level the playing field.”
Nabi told a government informant that “America’s strength is their equipment, specifically good jackets, good goggles, good GPS, and this was how they fight.” He suggested sending jackets and other supplies to the Afghan fighters “so they can get warm … and realize they got something to fight with.” He confided “that the governments in Muslim countries cannot be trusted to stand up for pious Muslims.” He further compared “his efforts to those of Osama bin Laden” and said he wanted to build a “Leshkar,” or small army, to fight the Americans.
In March 2012, on the advice of Alsarabbi, a Palestinian associate and co-defendant in the case, Nabi wired approximately two thousand dollars through the Western Union bank to his father in Lahore, Pakistan. Nabi later confided in the informant that his father had “zillions of trucks” moving in and out of Kabul.
“The arrests of these two New York City residents, Nabi and Alsarabbi, demonstrate the spectrum of terrorism threats that the New York City Police Department must continue to guard against,” New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in a Justice Department press release. “The cold weather gear and electronics the pair sought to provide could have endangered the safety of Americans as much as supplies of guns and ammunition.”
Nabi and Alsarabbi face up to seven years in prison if convicted.
