Times Square bomb suspect might have received Jihadi education online
By ANIThursday, May 6, 2010
NEW YORK - Thirty-year-old Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad may have received Jihadi liternature and knowledge via the Internet for years before moving ahead with his plan to plant a car bomb in New York’s Times Square last Saturday.
According to Fox News, several dozen postings have been uncovered in the name of Faisal Shahzad.
Experts suspect this is the same Faisal Shahzad whom authorities have charged with plotting to explode a massive car bomb in New York on Saturday.
If so, then he has been educating himself on the Internet for years on the legitimacy of holy war.
Shahzad visited numerous websites devoted to ideological discussion of Islamism and Shariah law.
His apparent online posts date back to at least 2006 - three years before the Times Square suspect became a naturalized American citizen.
“If the person on these websites is indeed the suspected bomber, the postings show that he was intellectually thinking about engaging in jihadism for a few years,” said Dr. Walid Phares, director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“These can be coined as Islamist Salafist websites where lots of material is posted, including theological, ideological and political texts and blogs,” Phares added.
“Individuals do not become jihadists overnight or because of one major crisis or event, as some social scientists proclaim. They become jihadists over time, after a gradual change, consciously in a stable intellectual process,” he said.
An FBI spokesman said any possible online postings by Shahzad would be investigated. (ANI)
