Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, prepares you for war more than paintball!

I think we should start profiling these guys. Actually we shouldn't have arrested them so quickly we should have followed them into their training area overseas to see their secret spot.

FBI Makes Two More Busts Related to Alleged 'Domestic' Radicalization

In less than a week, federal authorities have announced arrests in two investigations involving American citizens who allegedly sought to involve themselves with violent jihadist groups. One common factor between the otherwise unrelated cases: suspects in both cases allegedly fell under the influence of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical cleric who is believed to be hiding in Yemen and who reportedly has been targeted for death by the Obama administration.

According to official press releases, both of the cases announced by the feds--one became public in Houston last Thursday and the other broke in New Jersey on Sunday--involved close and extended monitoring of the suspects by undercover informants, and in neither case do the feds claim that the suspects were anywhere close to launching real attacks, either inside the U.S. or overseas.

However, the latest cases lend further weight to concerns by many federal officials about a growing and potentially dangerous trend in which U.S. citizens or residents are become more regularly involved in real and would-be violent jihadist plotting. As we reported, over the last 18 months, government records show, at least 25 American citizens have been charged with serious federal terrorism violations.

One of the two latest cases involves two New Jersey men who, federal officials allege, sought to travel to Somalia to join al-Shabaab, a jihadist movement that has become increasingly prominent in that lawless country for its alleged loose affiliation with Al-Qaeda. The other new case centers on an American-born Texan who converted to Islam and then allegedly sought to provide "material support" to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Qaeda affiliate that operates in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Officials say they arrested the New Jersey defendants on Saturday at New York's JFK airport when they showed up to take flights to Somalia via Egypt. A statement from the U.S. Attorney's office in Newark identifies the suspects as Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, 20, of North Bergen, N.J., and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, of Elmwood Park, N.J. Prosecutors say both men are U.S. citizens and are due to appear in court in Newark on Monday morning.

In a court affidavit, an FBI agent, Samuel P. Robinson, says that the FBI had been aware of possible suspicious activities involving Alessa and Almonte since early October 2006, when "a member of the public" who knows them sent a tip to the FBI website alleging that every time the men "access the internet all they look for is all those terrorist vide3os about the Islam holly [sic] war." A few weeks later, Robinson says, cops interviewed "a member of Almonte's family" who said that Almonte and Alessa had watched a video about suicide vests. The two men visited Jordan in February 2007, though in conversations monitored by U.S. investigators after their return to the U.S., Almonte complained that they had tried but failed to get recruited as mujahidin fighters while in Jordan.

Sometime in 2009, Robinson says, an undercover officer, who the U.S. attorney's office said worked for the intelligence division of the New York Police Department, began "spending time" with Almonte and Alessa. During the course of those interactions, the feds recorded a series of conversations that give one of the most disturbing insights available to date of the kind of radicalization process that experts worry more and more American citizens are succumbing to.

According to the Robinson affidavit, a few days after Major Nidal Hasan, an American-born Muslim and U.S. Army psychiatrist, allegedly went on a deadly shooting spree at Ft. Hood, Alessa was recorded as declaring, "I'm gonna get a gun. I'm the type of person to use it at any time ... I'll have more bodies in it than the hairs on my beard ... It's already enough, you don't worship Allah, so ... that's a reason for you to die ... Freaking Major-Nidal-shaved-face-Palestinian-crazy [sic] guy, he's not better than me. I'll do twice what he did."

A few weeks later, after meetings at which Alessa showed off military gear he had acquired, during a car ride Almonte played for Alessa and the undercover officer a recording he had stored on his cell phone of al-Awlaki lecturing about the importance of violent jihad and different types of martyrs. In January, during another car ride, Alessa played for the undercover officer an audio recording that, the feds say, "included the sounds of automatic-weapons fire, explosions and screams, over which two Arabic speakers called upon the listeners to wage violent jihad." Later in January, the feds recorded Almonte talking about how he had learned about the story of Omar Hammami, alias Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, an Alabama-born man of Syrian ancestry who had travelled to Somalia and become a major al-Shabaab spokesman. Later that day, Almonte also shared with Alessa and the undercover agent a pamphlet on jihad by Awlaki.

Over the next several weeks, according to the FBI, the defendants engaged in weight training at a gym in Jersey City; watched more violent videos, including pictures of attacks on tanks in Iraq; and went for a hike in the snow and mud in a Passaic County, N.J., mountain reservation. In March, Alessa watched a video at the undercover agent's residence that included a diatribe by Adam Gadahn, the American convert to Islam who has become the principal English-language mouthpiece of what remains of Al-Qaeda's Pakistan-based central command. By the end of March, the feds say, Almonte was telling the undercover officer, "Any Muslim that gets an opportunity, or a chance, or even ten-percent out of one-hundred chance of making it there [referring to waging violent jihad abroad] should--should risk it ... Because what's better than sitting back here and working like a dog and ... being somebody's puppy, basically what I call it, than moving forward to ... a life of honor, life of dignity, once Allah ... takes your soul upon that."

During May, federal officials say, Alessa and Almonte stocked up further on military gear, including clothing and boots, and watched more jihadist videos, including another featuring Omar Hammami and one in which al-Awlaki "justified the killing of civilians in the course of waging violent jihad." The two men booked themselves to travel on separate flights on June 5 from JFK to Egypt, but were arrested before they were able to board. The narrative produced by federal officials is one of the most explicit accounts yet of the degree to which the messages of Awlaki and other English-speaking jihadist spokesmen are getting through to susceptible Americans. Some law enforcement officials also undoubtedly will be disturbed that the suspects were also recorded discussing carrying out possible terror attacks with guns, rather than with more spectacular, but harder-to-operate devices, such as the failed underpants bomb that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to use on a transatlantic flight last Christmas Day, and the car bomb that Faisal Shahzad allegedly tried (and failed) to detonate at New York's Times Square on May 1.

In the Houston case that federal officials went public with last Friday, prosecutors indicted 29-year-old Barry Walter Bujol Jr. of Hempstead, Texas, on charges of attempting to provide material support to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in the form, among other things, of currency, mobile telephone SIM cards, GPS equipment, and restricted U.S. military publications, including one about drone aircraft.

According to a Justice Department release, the feds had begun investigating Bujol in 2008, and learned that he had been in e-mail communication with al-Awlaki. Officials say al-Awlaki provided Bujol with a document titled "42 Ways of Supporting Jihad" and that Bujol asked al-Awlaki for advice on how to send money to mujahidin overseas. According to a law enforcement official familiar with the case, Bujol, a former employee at Hewlett-Packard, would contact al-Awlaki using a public-access computer at Prairie View A&M, a small university in East Texas. The feds say they arrested Bujol after he boarded a ship docked at a port near Houston, having been encouraged to do so and provided with a false ID card that gave him port access by someone the feds describe as a "confidential human source," who had been dealing with Bujol since last November.

Federal officials say they have asked the courts to hold Bujol in custody without bail pending trial. A hearing on the case is set for Tuesday afternoon.

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N.J. terror plot highlights use of paintball facilities for training exercise

By Rohan Mascarenhas/The Star-Ledger
June 07, 2010, 5:15AM
John O'Boyle/The Star-Ledger

Throngs of children flocked to the paintball fields in West Milford Sunday to engage in mock-warfare. Dressed in Army fatigues, they donned face masks, shot tiny round balls at each other and laughed as the balls exploded in colorful paint.

But two years ago, authorities say, Mohamed Mahmood Alessa and Carlos Eduardo Almonte did not paintball battle ? as the sport lingo calls it ? just for fun. Instead, authorities said, the two terror suspects used the activity as a training exercise for violent jihad, perfect for honing guerrilla warfare skills.

According to the arrest complaint, Alessa and Almonte "engaged in simulated combat" at an unspecified outdoor facility in West Milford in early 2008. Two years later, according to the complaint, Almonte showed off his skills again, practicing "various shooting and crawling positions using a paintball gun" in an apartment in Jersey City.

This is not the first time paintball has emerged in terror investigations. The connection has become so well-known, in fact, that facility owners in New Jersey say they receive regular visits from FBI agents on the look-out for suspicious activity.

"They?ve been here twice," said Cathy Escobedo, the owner of ABC Paintball Field and Supplies near West Milford, in Passaic County. "I guess it?s the only way in New Jersey to ?battle? against somebody and not get in trouble for it. But if they want to learn how to shoot a gun, they should go to a shooting range."

Escobedo FBI agents first visited her facility after the Fort Dix terror plot, in which five men were convicted in 2008 of trying to kill American soldiers at the South Jersey military installation. Investigators said the men in that case rented a house in the Pocono Mountains, where they trained in part by playing war games with paintball.

In 2004, nine men were convicted in another terrorist ring, dubbed the "paintball jihad network," after authorities said they trained with paintball in Virginia.

Managers at three of the main paintball facilities near West Milford ? ABC Supplies, Paintball Depot and New Breed Paintball ? said they had never heard of Alessa and Almonte until Sunday. Officials at a fourth facility, New Jersey Paintball, also near West Milford, could not be reached Sunday.

First developed about 30 years ago, paintball has emerged as a major leisure industry, with at least a dozen parks in New Jersey alone. Rules for the mock-warfare game vary, but players carry guns, most of which resemble semi-automatic rifles, and "eliminate" opponents by shooting them with pellets filled with paint. When someone is hit, the balls explode.

The game can be played indoors or outdoors. Outdoor facilities often add features to the terrain, like boulders or log bunkers, as players try to maneuver for the perfect shot.
"It doesn?t relate to real war," said David Artler, the owner of Paintball Depot. "The triggers of paintball guns are generally heavier. There are so many differences with real guns."

At the same time, he said, the trend has shifted to try and provide children with more realistic weapons that look like real handguns and other firearms.

The first paintball guns looked like pistols and fired single shots. Now, guns can cost much as $800, and are capable of holding clips of 50 shots that deliver on target almost every time. The pellets from some guns travel at speeds of 280 to 300 feet per second, according to police. Although not lethal, the pellets often leave welts on people who are hit at close range, and there have been cases in which people struck in the eye have lost their sight, police said.
Staff writer Brian T. Murray contributed to this report.