FBI Arrests Al Qaeda Blogger

Source Article HERE:

From 'The Weekly Standard Blog': The FBI has arrested Tarek Mehanna and charged him with lying in an affidavit about his relationship to Daniel J. Maldonado, "a former Methuen resident who was suspected of training at an Al Qaeda terrorist camp to overthrow the Somali government." Maldonado pled guilty to receiving training from a foreign terrorist organization and is currently serving time in a U.S. federal prison.

The FBI picked up Mehanna, a U.S. citizen, as he was boarding a plane to "start a new job overseas," the Boston Globe reported. Mehanna's family and lawyer claim he is innocent of the charges, but the FBI recorded Mehanna's phone call in which he admitted to lying to the FBI. Mehanna's lawyer, J.W. Carney Jr., dismissed Mehanna's activities as small-time. "If this is the FBI's idea of a terrorist, they are using a net that is designed to catch minnows instead of sharks," he told the Globe.

But Dr. Rusty Shackleford at the indispensible Jawa Report notes that Mehanna did more than lie to the FBI. Mehanna was in fact one of several bloggers who incites others to fight jihad overseas and recites the words of al Qaeda ideologues:

Mehanna goes by the online handle "Abu Sayaba" and runs the "Iskandari" website which is devoted to promoting the Salafi ideology.

For instance, Tarek "Abu Sayaba" Mehanna has, literally, dozens of posts recounting the words of Abdullah Azzam, the intellectual backbone of al Qaeda. Also among his favorite authors are Sayyid Qutb.

Mehanna is part of a network of online jihadis here in the United States and in Europe who support al Qaeda and other jihadi causes. Their activities are out there for all to see, yet little effort is made to detain them or shut down their sites. As Rusty notes, it will be interesting to see if Mehanna is charged with aiding and abetting al Qaeda by serving as a propaganda mouthpiece on the Internet.