Posts
 |
| Photo allegedly sent by Milo Sedarat online |
In the grim annals of our age, where the West's complacency towards its own undoing has become a kind of collective delusion, comes yet another tale of thwarted barbarism, foiled, mercifully, not by some grand awakening of societal resolve, but by the quiet vigilance of those still willing to do the unglamorous work of keeping the wolves from the door.
The Department of Justice, in a rare display of what might once have been called competence, has dismantled an ISIS-inspired network that stretched like a malignant tumor from the rust-belt suburbs of Detroit to the smug shores of New Jersey. And the target was not some abstract symbol of imperial hubris, but the everyday Jews of a quiet American neighborhood, alongside the usual litany of "infidel" outposts: LGBTQ bars and the like.
Halloween, that peculiar pagan romp turned corporate confection, was to have been their stage for slaughter.
The plot, as federal prosecutors lay it bare, was a squalid affair of encrypted whispers and adolescent zealotry. It was a "sprawling federal investigation," as the Justice Department termed it, and turned into a cabal of young men who mistook jihad for a video game. At its heart lay the "pumpkin" scheme: a mass shooting scripted for October 31st, code-named with the banality of a child's prank but armed with the lethality of AR-15s, shotguns, handguns, and a stockpile of 1,680 rounds.
The plot, as federal prosecutors lay it bare, was a squalid affair of encrypted whispers and adolescent zealotry. It was a "sprawling federal investigation," as the Justice Department termed it, and turned into a cabal of young men who mistook jihad for a video game. At its heart lay the "pumpkin" scheme: a mass shooting scripted for October 31st, code-named with the banality of a child's prank but armed with the lethality of AR-15s, shotguns, handguns, and a stockpile of 1,680 rounds.
Ayob Asamil Nasser, alongside brothers Mohmed Ali and Majed Mahmoud, stand accused in a 93-page indictment from Michigan's Eastern District of conspiring to funnel material support to the Islamic State. They trained at local ranges, swapped ISIS propaganda like contraband trading cards, and eyed Ferndale's gay haunts and a Jewish community center with the cold calculus of butchers. Raids on that fateful All Hallows' Eve yielded tactical vests, GoPro cameras for their snuff-film fantasies, and magazines from a U-Haul unit that might otherwise have hauled pumpkins.
Across state lines, the tendrils extended to Tomas Jimenez-Guzel, 19, of Montclair, New Jersey, and Saed Mirreh, 19, of Kent, Washington, nabbed this week in a New Jersey indictment that knits their fates to the Michigan cell. Selfies exchanged in their fevered group chats, faces blurred in a nod to operational hygiene, show Jimenez-Guzel beneath an ISIS flag and Mirreh in jihadi drag, as if auditioning for a caliphate cosplay.
Across state lines, the tendrils extended to Tomas Jimenez-Guzel, 19, of Montclair, New Jersey, and Saed Mirreh, 19, of Kent, Washington, nabbed this week in a New Jersey indictment that knits their fates to the Michigan cell. Selfies exchanged in their fevered group chats, faces blurred in a nod to operational hygiene, show Jimenez-Guzel beneath an ISIS flag and Mirreh in jihadi drag, as if auditioning for a caliphate cosplay.
They face charges of conspiring to aid a foreign terrorist outfit, with Jimenez-Guzel additionally tagged for attempting flight: arrested at Newark Liberty International as he angled for Turkey en route to Syria's meat grinder. Court papers, cited by the Associated Press, note how their travel frenzy accelerated post the Michigan busts, "picked up speed," as if this were a mere change in itinerary rather than a sprint from the law.
U.S. Attorney Alina Habba, presiding over the New Jersey front, cut through the fog with a statement that, in saner times, would scarcely merit remark. The defendants, she said, "had pledged themselves to ISIS" and were in "frequent communication with the Michigan cell." On Friday, she added: "We will continue to move swiftly and decisively whenever terrorism or hate threatens our communities. The threat of terrorism is real when Americans are threatened. We respond fast, focused and together."
U.S. Attorney Alina Habba, presiding over the New Jersey front, cut through the fog with a statement that, in saner times, would scarcely merit remark. The defendants, she said, "had pledged themselves to ISIS" and were in "frequent communication with the Michigan cell." On Friday, she added: "We will continue to move swiftly and decisively whenever terrorism or hate threatens our communities. The threat of terrorism is real when Americans are threatened. We respond fast, focused and together."
Words that land like a slap to the multicultural pieties that have long insisted such threats are but phantasms of Islamophobia. In Detroit, her counterpart Jerome F. Gorgon Jr. vowed persistence: "We will not stop. We will follow the tentacles where they lead." And FBI Special Agent Jennifer Runyan echoed the resolve: her team will "continue to investigate, arrest and disrupt all attempts or plots to do harm … to defend the homeland." Habba hailed the cross-jurisdictional tango as "a model of coordination against extremist threats."
The digital spoor of their conspiracy unfurls in the annals of a WhatsApp group dubbed "Muslimeen"—a forum for sharing beheading clips, plotting firearms drills, and syncing the "pumpkin" countdown. Prosecutors see it as one hydra-headed organism: some cells primed for homegrown carnage, others for the foreign lure of the caliphate's corpse. The Michigan trio cools its heels in Detroit custody; Jimenez-Guzel and Mirreh have shuffled through Newark and Seattle courtrooms. Juveniles may lurk under sealed dockets, their youth no shield against the presumptive innocence that cloaks them all—for now. A criminal complaint, after all, is but an allegation; guilt awaits the gavel's fall.
One pauses, amid this inventory of intercepted malice, to ponder the fragility of the veil we have drawn over such realities. These were not grizzled operatives smuggled across porous frontiers, but homegrown recruits, radicalized in the cradle of American liberty, their grievances nursed on the same screens that peddle TikTok dances and flat-earth follies. The Jewish center in suburban Detroit was no accident of selection; it was a deliberate echo of ancient hatreds, repackaged for the hashtag era. And yet, how swiftly the story will fade—eclipsed by the next outrage or apology tour, as our elites tut-tut about root causes that dare not speak their name. The threat endures, not in distant deserts, but in the encrypted chats of the disaffected, where the West's own hesitations furnish the accelerant. Until we confront that truth without flinching, the Habba doctrine—swift, decisive, unapologetic—remains our slender bulwark against the gathering storm.
Tweet
The digital spoor of their conspiracy unfurls in the annals of a WhatsApp group dubbed "Muslimeen"—a forum for sharing beheading clips, plotting firearms drills, and syncing the "pumpkin" countdown. Prosecutors see it as one hydra-headed organism: some cells primed for homegrown carnage, others for the foreign lure of the caliphate's corpse. The Michigan trio cools its heels in Detroit custody; Jimenez-Guzel and Mirreh have shuffled through Newark and Seattle courtrooms. Juveniles may lurk under sealed dockets, their youth no shield against the presumptive innocence that cloaks them all—for now. A criminal complaint, after all, is but an allegation; guilt awaits the gavel's fall.
One pauses, amid this inventory of intercepted malice, to ponder the fragility of the veil we have drawn over such realities. These were not grizzled operatives smuggled across porous frontiers, but homegrown recruits, radicalized in the cradle of American liberty, their grievances nursed on the same screens that peddle TikTok dances and flat-earth follies. The Jewish center in suburban Detroit was no accident of selection; it was a deliberate echo of ancient hatreds, repackaged for the hashtag era. And yet, how swiftly the story will fade—eclipsed by the next outrage or apology tour, as our elites tut-tut about root causes that dare not speak their name. The threat endures, not in distant deserts, but in the encrypted chats of the disaffected, where the West's own hesitations furnish the accelerant. Until we confront that truth without flinching, the Habba doctrine—swift, decisive, unapologetic—remains our slender bulwark against the gathering storm.
If you like Brain Flushings and want to Buy Me a Coffee, I would appreciate it, as it supports my work. Obviously, there is no pressure but I certainly wouldn't stop you.
No comments:
Post a Comment