An Islamist's pipe dream?<http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2014/01/20/a-pipe-dream-of-terrorism/>
January 20, 2014. *Posted by: Robert Sibley <http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/author/bitplayer1/>* I can only assume the authorities are being deliberately naïve. Late last week, a 26-year-old man (I use the term loosely) by the name of Asef Mohamed got himself stuck several feet inside an unused pipe at a water treatment plant in Manalapan, New Jersey<http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/01/17/trespasser-freed-from-pipe-at-united-water-plant-in-new-jersey-faces-criminal-charges/>. Passersby eventually heard him screaming for help. Rescue crews spent several hours extricating the idiot. A spokesman for the plant owner, Rich Henning, later explained that Mohamed had scaled an 11-foot chain link, barbed wire fence, climbed into a water holding tank and then crawled up a dozen feet or so into the 20-inch diameter vertical section of an outflow pipe. The pipe lays vertically on the ground and then drop vertically into a basin. Firefighters had to dismantle the pipe to rescue him. Spokesthingies for United Water, the company that operates the treatment plant, expressed amazement at the young man's actions and, according to media reports<http://www.app.com/article/20140117/NJNEWS/301170054/Man-freed-from-24-inch-pipe-United-Water-Manalapan-facility?nclick_check=1>, had "no idea by Mohamed did it." Yeah, right. OK, maybe no one wants to say anything until all the evidence is in - surely we aren't so politically corrected or afraid of offending someone's religious sensibilities that we're afraid to acknowledge the obvious - before pronouncing on Mohamed's motives. But given past precedents it is not unwarranted to consider the terrorist hypothesis. Over the last decade or so there has been several cases involving Muslims plotting attacks on the water supply systems of western countries. Last May, shortly after the Boston Marathon bombing, five men and two women, all Muslims from Pakistan, Singapore or Saudi Arabia, were caught after midnight trespassing at the Quabbin Reservoir near Boston<http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/05/14/7-cited-for-trespassing-at-quabbin-reservoir-patrols-stepped-up-across-state/>. When police questioned them some of the group explained that they were chemical engineers and recent college graduates and had an educational interest in the reservoir. Quabbin Reservoir is one of the U.S.'s largest man-made water supplies, providing water to hundreds of thousands of people in the Boston area. In Canada, meanwhile, at about the same time as this was going on in the U.S., a couple of would-be jihadists were taken into custody for, among other things, wanting to poison the water supplies of North American cities<http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/u-s-terror-suspect-studied-chemical-engineering-at-quebec-university-1.1333162> and kill "100,000 people."<http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/05/09/fbi-arrested-third-suspect-related-to-alleged-via-rail-terror-plot/> A decade earlier, in 2003, security officials in the Privy Council Office<http://www.sdcwa.org/clips/2003/nov/111203/111203alqaeda.html> had issued a report warning of this kind of threat <http://www.wwdmag.com/al-qaeda-may-add-toxins-water-canada>- Al Qaeda supporters trying to poison food and water with lethal substances such as ricin and botulinum as part of a terrorist campaign. Poison plots certainly seem popular with the jihadists. The same year of the PCO report, British authorities arrested a group of Islamists who, it seems, were plotting to place ricin in the food supply of a military base<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/world/threats-responses-terror-network-plot-poison-food-british-troops-suspected.html> in the United Kingdom. In 2002, American authorities picked up a couple of Islamist devotees - James Ujaama and Semi Osman <http://www.foxnews.com/story/2002/07/30/feds-arrest-al-qaeda-suspects-with-plans-to-poison-water-supplies/>- who were walking around with how-to manuals for poisoning the nation's water supplies. In Spain, in August of 2011, Abdellatif Aoulad Chiba<http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i5kz7A_aBEdpjzFtgPCrBR159ZVQ>, a Moroccan, was arrested charged with plotting to poison tourists' water supplies. He'd gone so far as to obtain manuals on poisons, toxins and explosives on jihadist websites. Given all this it would be obtuse of authorities not to question where young Asef Mohamed had more on his mind than an adventure in some warped version of*parkour* (or, in this case, spelunking?). No doubt, the FBI will be asking Asef about his interest in water treatment plants. Presumably waterboarding won't be necessary despite his apparent fondness for the liquid. · <http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2014/01/20/a-pipe-dream-of-terrorism/?share=email> __._,_.___ __,_._,___ -- -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PoliticalForum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. 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