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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Killed imam's son arrested in Windsor

Two Canadians still sought in radical Islamist sting

By: Colin Perkel

Posted: 10/30/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Imam Abdullah, 53, imam of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque, was killed in gunfight. Two Canadians are still sought in radical Islamist sting. (MUSLIM ALLIANCE OF NORTH AMERICA / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)

TORONTO -- The son of an imam killed in a shootout with the FBI in Detroit was apprehended in neighbouring Windsor, Ont., Thursday while two other Canadian residents were still being sought amid allegations they were involved with a radical Islamic group.

Mujahid Carswell, the eldest son of Luqman Ameen Abdullah, was taken into custody at a residence without incident, city police confirmed.

Carswell -- also known as Mujahid Abdullah -- was turned over to the Canada Border Services Agency, which said Thursday evening that he had been voluntarily turned over to FBI custody.

"We arrested him," said Jerome Brannagan, deputy chief of the Windsor police service. "He was brought into immigration custody."

Abdullah, imam of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit, died in a gun battle Wednesday as police sought to arrest him at a warehouse in Dearborn, Mich.

Seven men, alleged to be his followers, were arrested by the FBI.

An FBI complaint, the result of a two-year investigation, alleges the men conspired to commit crimes of a relatively minor nature, such as stealing and fencing laptop computers.

However, the underlying thread is that the group espoused violence and sought to establish a Sharia-law state within the United States.

Carswell's father Imam Abdullah, also known as Christopher Thomas, 53, was a leader of a "nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group consisting primarily of African-Americans, some of whom converted to Islam," FBI special agent Gary Leone said in an affidavit in support of the complaint.

"The primary mission is to establish a separate, sovereign Islamic state ('The Ummah') within the borders of the United States, government by Sharia law," Leone, a member of the FBI's counter-terrorism squad, said in the 45-page complaint.

"(The imam) regularly preaches anti-government and anti-law enforcement rhetoric."

Abdullah told an informant that if the FBI came to get him: "I'll just strap a bomb on and blow up everybody."

On another occasion, he said: "We've got to take out the U.S. government," the complaint states.

Carswell has no felony convictions but a confidential FBI source said he once saw him "use toilet-bowl cleaner to clean up blood in the basement of the (Detroit mosque) following a murder," according to court documents.

Andrew Arena, the head of the FBI office in Detroit, said Thursday that the 11 men charged follow "a very hybrid radical ideology" that mainstream Muslims "would not recognize."

Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the imam opened the mosque to the homeless and ran a soup kitchen.

Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, told The Associated Press that the FBI was now trying to determine if the men were a "bunch of thugs with bluster" or possible homegrown jihadists.

Still being sought was Mohammad Al-Sahli, 33, who was known as Mohammad Palestine or Mohammad Philistine. FBI documents also spell his last name as Alsahi.

The resident of Windsor, Ont., is alleged to have taken an active role in fencing what he thought was stolen merchandise in a police sting, and claimed to have given money to Abdullah.

"Luqman Abdullah told (a source) that Philistine is a 'soldier and a warrior,' " according to the complaint.

A friend of Al-Sahli's, Yassir Ali Khan, 30, was the second Canadian resident still being sought.

He, too, was wanted amid allegations he fenced stolen goods.

Any decision on whether to try the suspects on more serious charges will only be made after the investigation is complete, police said.

RCMP spokesman Sgt. Marc LaPorte, who said his force was not involved in the arrest, said no Canada-wide warrants had been issued for the suspects.

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 30, 2009 A17

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