L.A. Terrorists Threaten American Jewry

Daniel Pipes:

The Jewish High Holidays this year fall in early October, and that's when a massacre was planned against two Los Angeles synagogues, as well as other targets, according to an indictment just handed down against four young Muslim men.

Law enforcement traces the origins of this plot to 1997. That's when Kevin Lamar James, a black inmate at New Folsom Prison, near Sacramento, Calif., founded Jam'iyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh (Arabic for "Assembly of Authentic Islam" and known as JIS). JIS promotes the sort of jihadi version of Islam typically found in American prisons As the indictment puts it, James, now 29, preached that JIS members have the duty "to target for violent attack any enemies of Islam or ‘infidels,' including the United States government and Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of Israel."

James, serving a 10-year prison sentence for an armed robbery in 1996, recruited acolytes among fellow inmates Volunteers swore to obey him and not to disclose the existence of JIS. On release from prison, they promised to get directives from him at least every three months, recruit Muslims to JIS, and attack government officials and supporters of Israel.

Levar Haney Washington, 25, allegedly joined the JIS and swore allegiance to James just before being released from New Folsom in November 2004, having served his six-year sentence for a 1999 assault and robbery. On getting out, Washington immediately began recruiting at his mosque, Jamat-E-Masijidul Islam in the Los Angeles area. "He regarded Osama bin Laden very highly," reported one person whom Washington tried to recruit.

Two men, both 21 years old and without criminal records, did sign up: a lawful Pakistani immigrant and student at Santa Monica College, Hammad Riaz Samana; and a black convert who had worked at a duty-free shop in Los Angeles International Airport, Gregory Vernon Patterson The three, plus James, now face up to life in prison for conspiring "to levy a war against the Government of the United States through terrorism."

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