Home Grown (Part Two)

(Part one here)

The story received a bit of notice last September:

The Colorado man who prosecutors say received explosives training in Pakistan last year and drove to New York 12 days ago with bomb-making instructions on his laptop appeared in a Denver federal court on Monday and was ordered held without bail.

The man, Najibullah Zazi, who was born in Afghanistan, raised in Pakistan and New York and moved to Denver early this year, looked wide-eyed and younger than his 24 years when he walked into Federal District Court, his hands cuffed in front of him.

His father was at his side. Mohammed Wali Zazi, 53, had also been arrested and charged.

Meanwhile, in New York, a hearing was underway for a third suspect involved in the case. "Ahmad Wais Afzali had for years been a popular imam in Queens," the New York Times reported.

In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Afzali's wife, Fatimah, said he was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. He left with his parents at age 6 or 7, arriving in Queens, where he went to school.

She described her husband as an accommodating man, a father of two children from a previous marriage and an imam who leads prayers in mosques around the city. A businessman, he also runs an Islamic burial and shipping service, where he brings comfort to the bereaved, Ms. Afzali said.

Mr. Afzali's father was also successful in business, according to Ahmad Weish, the president of Masjid-al-Saaliheen, a mosque in Queens where Mr. Afzali had, in the past, delivered the Friday sermon. Mr. Weish said that Mr. Afzali's father used to own pizzerias in Queens.

In a 2003 interview with The New York Times, Mr. Afzali gave voice to the optimism his fellow Afghans were expressing at the time about the prospects for finding stability and business prospects in their native country after years in New York.

"It's been a great opportunity for us financially," Mr. Afzali said at the time.

Though it was unclear if Mr. Afzali had rediscovered Afghanistan of late, his neighbors described his passion for cars.

"He always had fresh, expensive cars," said Messia Ben Yosef, 23, a pharmacy student who said Mr. Afzali lived on his street for at least 15 years. He said Mr. Afzali drove a white Jaguar XJ8.

Mr. Afzali's wife said her husband was a Muslim "from the inside out."

Authorities who had been tracking Zazi's cross-country excursion had contacted the Queens, New York imam - and he, according to charges based on recorded phone conversations, warned Zazi of the investigation.

But just prior to his arrest, Afzali had contacted an attorney: "Only a few weeks ago, left-leaning criminal defense lawyer Ron Kuby knew little about a popular 37-year-old Queens imam," the story begins.

Afzali called Kuby Sept. 19, claiming the authorities were now giving him grief after he had contacted, at their request, a man who formerly operated a food cart on Stone St. near Ground Zero. The man, an Afghan Muslim named Najibullah Zazi, 24, had moved to the Denver area last year but returned to Queens in a rental car around Sept. 9 or 10.

Zazi, who once attended Afzali's mosque, was now a central figure in an alleged terror plot that stretched from Pakistan to Colorado and reportedly included plans to detonate homemade bombs in New York City on the anniversary of 9/11.
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"They had searched [the imam's] home twice," Kuby said. He noted police first approached Afzali on Sept. 10, showing him photos of suspects -- including Zazi, whom he identified.
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But the more he was cooperating, the more they seemed to be treating him aggressively and disrespectfully. He got tired of being treated like this, and he had no idea why."

Later, "during the early-morning hours of Sept. 20, Kuby got another call from Afzali, saying police were knocking at his door."

I asked him to put one of the officers on the line but they declined to speak to me. They put him in handcuffs and took him away. That was his big arrest on a Sunday morning."

Almost immediately, Kuby launched a campaign detailing his client's history of cooperation with the police. "The police had worked with the imam and had gone to him on a fairly regular basis. And he had done what Americans say they want Islamic religious leaders to do -- just to cooperate with the police when there's an investigation. So the imam did that."

Kuby and his mentor Bill Kunstler, who specialized in pariah cases, briefly represented three accused Muslim terrorists after the first World Trade Center attack in 1993 until a judge told them they could only represent two. That may be why Kuby, an unabashed Marxist who grew up poor in Cleveland and now proudly admits making six figures a year, says he's "happy" not to be defending Najibullah Zazi even though he was asked to.

"I don't know him, but a member of Mr. Zazi's extended family called me after the imam was arrested to see if I could represent him," Kuby said. "I told him I couldn't because that would be a conflict of interest" -- that is, he couldn't represent another terror suspect when he was already getting information on the case from his current client, the imam. With a smile, the radical lawyer explained that based on the aforesaid judge's ruling, he now only represents "one client per plot."

Afzali was released after posting a $1.5 million bail bond. ("The government would not agree to release him on bail if they believed he was involved in a terrorist conspiracy," Kuby said.) Zazi was transferred from Colorado to New York.

Immediately following the arrests the Obama administration launched a media blitz to assure Americans that

• Unlike the Bush administration, they did not believe in panicking the nation over threat levels
• The president was personally involved in this anti-domestic terrorism effort, and
• "Scores of people" could have been killed

...all of which led to another conclusion - key provisions of the Patriot Act can not be allowed to expire at the end of the year:

Speaking Monday in Colorado at a conference of police chiefs, Attorney General Eric Holder said the plot had the potential to kill scores of people...

"As Zazi drove across the country under heavy surveillance, John O. Brennan, Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, briefed the president three to four times a day on Zazi's activities ." However, the White House "avoided trumpeting either the elevated threat level or the averted crisis."

"With the apprehension of Zazi," we are told, "as well as several other covert operations at home and abroad, the Obama administration is increasingly confident that it has struck a balance between protecting civil liberties, honoring international law and safeguarding the country." Additionally, "the Obama administration is pressing Congress to move swiftly to reauthorize three provisions of the USA Patriot Act set to expire in late December. They include the use of "roving wiretaps" to track movement, e-mail and phone communications, a tool that federal officials used in the weeks leading up to Zazi's arrest."

The story received a bit of attention last September, however, that bit of national security news was lost in the attention given to another story that broke at the time - the release of General McChrystal's Afghanistan assessment to the press.

And the AP reported last week that re-authorization has yet to be accomplished. "Three provisions of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act expire at the end of the year. Some Democrats want to make changes to better ensure that government surveillance doesn't violate privacy rights."

Days later: "The looming deadline coincides with a growing concern among law enforcement officials that homegrown terrorism is becoming a more dangerous and immediate threat," Politics Daily reported, adding that neither the House or Senate has scheduled time to debate those provisions now set to expire on Dec. 31.

Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) "blamed House leaders for allowing liberal activists to politicize the issue."

"It's the left leading the left on this one. That's the problem," he said. But opponents of the Patriot Act say it tramples civil liberties and abuses constitutional freedoms.

Lungren said unless Congress acts, law enforcement officials will lose the ability to conduct three types of domestic surveillance: "roving" wiretapping, collecting business documents from third parties, and surveilling "lone wolves" -- suspects who have no demonstrated connections to foreign governments but could still be terrorist threats.

President Obama noted the increase during his speech last week at West Point explaining the Afghanistan surge:

"In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror."

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano echoed that sentiment in a speech last week. "We are seeing young Americans who are inspired by Al Qaeda and radical ideology," she said.

On Monday, federal prosecutors charged a Chicago man with six counts of conspiracy tied to the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India that killed more than 170 people, including six Americans.

That last quote from one of the earliest reports of five missing Americans later arrested in Pakistan, which "may end up being at least the fourth case prosecuted this year in which Muslim Americans traveled to Pakistan" to join extremist groups there."

But the first to "make the papers" in such a big way.