2 arrested in alleged mass murder plot over cartoons

Fox News:

Federal prosecutors charged two Chicago men Tuesday in connection with the planning of terrorist acts against overseas targets, including a Danish newspaper that sparked riots in the Muslim world when it published cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

The charges were unsealed nine days after the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force conducted a massive raid on an Islamic butcher shop in the tiny rural town of Kinsman, Ill., a business owned by one of the suspects, 48-year-old Tahawwur Hussain Rana.

Rana and a second man, David Coleman Headley, 49, were charged in separate complaints filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Chicago. Headley is a U.S. citizen; Rana is a native of Pakistan and a citizen of Canada, though he resides primarily in Chicago.

Headley, who changed his name from Daood Gilani in 2006, is charged with conspiracy to commit terrorist acts involving murder and maiming outside the United States.

He and Rana are both charged with plotting to provide material support to a foreign terrorism conspiracy.

Prosecutors say Headley traveled to Denmark twice this year to identify potential targets for a terrorist attack, and that Rana helped arrange Headley's travel, concealing the true nature of his journeys.

Headley was arrested Oct. 3 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on his way to Pakistan — where federal officials charge he was planning to meet with representatives of the Pakistan-based terrorist groups Harakat ul-Jihad Islami and Lakshar-e-Taiba.

Two weeks later, on Oct. 18, the Joint Terrorism Task Force searched four locations in Illinois, arresting Rana at his home in Chicago. The JTTF also searched Headley's home and Rana's immigration business in Chicago, as well as the halal butcher operation Rana owns in Kinsman.

Prosecutors charge that Headley has "corresponded extensively" in coded communications with Pakistani terrorists regarding what he called the "Mickey Mouse Project" — planned attacks on the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, and its employees.

When federal agents arrested Headley on Oct. 3, they found a memory stick with 10 short videos of sites in Copenhagen, including the two offices of Jyllands-Posten, the inside and outside of the city's central train station and a nearby military barracks, according to the complaint.

...

It appears that again intercepts of communications may have foiled a terrorist plot. What kind of people go homicidal over cartoons? I think the answer are intolerant religious bigots. These kind of people further lower respect for Islam. If they think cartoons create disrespect for Islam, they should also consider how mass murder in the name of Islam is even more devastating to respect for that religion.

Jawa Report has more on the case.

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