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Feds nervous about Hispanic converts to Islam
by Joseph Ernest December 9, 2010
Newscast Media -- A muslim convert was arrested on Wednesday by the FBI and charged with plotting to blow up a military recruiting center. Antonio Martinez, a 21-year-old Muslim convert, generated interest amongst counterterrorism officials in this particular case. The first is that Martinez appears to have been radicalized in the U.S. The second is that he is Latino. Latino converts to radical Islam have been connected to terrorism cases in this country with increasing frequency -- and officials are trying to understand why.
The FBI began tracking Martinez, who also went by the name Muhammad Hussain, in October. That's when, according to the criminal complaint against him, Martinez allegedly struck up a conversation with an FBI source and told him that he wanted to attack U.S. military personnel.
Martinez allegedly believed that the U.S. had long been at war with Muslims, and he said that Muslim brothers needed to strike back. After taping hours of Martinez's conversations, the FBI ended up providing him with what he thought was a car bomb. He allegedly parked it outside an armed forces recruiting station in Catonsville, Md., on Wednesday and was arrested after he allegedly tried to detonate it.
The question is, why do a small number of Latinos in this country seem to convert not just to Islam but to a radical form of it?
"In some ways, it is not the volume of conversion necessarily. It is not like folks are worried about vast communities or subcommunities of Latinos joining al-Qaida," said Juan Zarate, a former deputy national security adviser in the Bush administration who is now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "What has got people's attention is the nature of individuals who have been caught in this web."
The individuals involved have been at the center of what terrorism officials consider important cases. There is Jose Padilla, the former Chicago native who pleaded guilty to training with al-Qaida; or Daniel Maldonado, a Latino-American who was one of the first U.S. citizens to join an al-Qaida affiliate group in Somalia. Officials also point to Bryant Neal Vinas, a Latino from Long Island who found himself in al-Qaida's inner circle a couple of years ago. He talked to the group's leadership about how to attack the Long Island Rail Road and, according to officials close to the case, "has been a gold mine of information about al-Qaida ever since."
"It's both the nature of these individuals but also their case studies, the substantive dimensions of their work, and who they are in contact with, and what they represent that I think is why Latino converts have garnered some attention from counterterrorism analysts and the community," Zarate said. "These are cases people are still following. They are still instructive."
Before Wednesday's arrest, the most recent terrorism case involving a Latino happened over the summer. That's when two New Jersey men, Mohammed Alessa and Carlos Almonte, were arrested as they boarded a plane for Somalia. They allegedly planned to join the ranks of a terrorist group there called al-Shabab. The New York Police Department, the FBI and New Jersey law enforcement had had the two men under surveillance for years; Almonte, in particular, became of interest because he was Latino and allegedly so firmly embraced radical Islam.
"Carlos Almonte was of Dominican heritage, a naturalized U.S. citizen, from a middle-class family; his father was a school bus driver; and he grew up in a Catholic family," said Mitch Silber, the head of the New York Police Department's intelligence unit. "And as Almonte started to change, he dropped his non-Muslim friends and his change was visible to others."
Feds say that the Internet is a popular recruiting place and another is prison. The concern, Zarate says, is that prison recruits will redirect their criminal energies and engage in terrorism.
"I think that it is in that intersection with prison radicalization, gang culture, religious zealotry that you have a potential problem," Zarate said. "I wouldn't say it is a wave, but it is a potential problem authorities watch for."
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