The search for Adnan El Shukrijumah

By Paul L. Williams

Monday, September 18, 2006

Adnan el Shukrijumah possesses the uncanny abilities to blend into a crowd, to alter his looks, and to assume a multitude of identities. He is the proverbial Mr. Cellophane. Few things about Shukrijumah indicate his radical Islamic orientation. He is often clean-shaven and never wears a long shirt or chews a toothpick. He has been known to have a beer on occasion (like an average American Joe), to smoke an occasional Camel, and to carry rosary beads in his pocket. He has posed as an Italian-American, a Mexican-American, a Canadian, a Saudi, a Jamaican, and a Latino from Trinidad. He stands somewhere between 5'4" and 5'6" and weighs 140 pounds. He has black hair, black eyes, an olive complexion, and a pronounced nose. This guy's face does not appear on the nightly news, even though a BOLO ("Be-On-the-Lookout") was issued March 21, 2004, by FBI Director Robert Mueller and former Attorney General John Ashcroft. He hasn't even made the spotlight of"America's Most Wanted" with John Walsh. But no one on planet earth is more of a threat to the lives and well-being of every man, woman and child within the United States than ferret-faced Adnan.

ANOTHER PRODUCT OF BROOKLYN'S FAROUQ MOSQUE
Next Attack Imminent: Muslims ordered to leave the United States
Adnan el Shukrijumah was born in Guyana on August 4, 1975 -- the first born of Gulshair el Shukrijumah, a 44-year-old radical Muslim cleric, and his 16-year-old wife. In 1985, Gulshair migrated to the United States, where he assumed duties as the imam of the Farouq Mosque at 554 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. The mosque, as noted earlier, has served for many years as a center for terrorist activities and a recruiting station for al-Qaeda.[i]

In 1995, the Shukrijumah family relocated to Miramar, Fla., where Gulshair became the spiritual leader of the radical Masjid al Hijah Mosque and imam of the Boca Raton Islamic Center. Adnan became friends there with such wannabe terrorists: as Jose Padilla, who planned to detonate a radiological bomb in midtown Manhattan; Imran Mandhai, who was convicted of attempting to blow up nuclear power plants in southern Florida; Moessa Shuyeb Jokham, who was arrested for plotting to blow up Jewish community centers and businesses; and a group of other home-grown terrorists.[ii] Questioned about the aspiring terrorists, Sofian Abdelaziz Zakout, director of the American Muslim Association and a friend of the Shukrijumah family, said: "I saw [Adnan el Shukrijumah, Padilla and Mandhai] at different times in different mosques, and I always said hello. Does that make me a terrorist?"[iii]

TRAINED FOR TERROR
Adnan attended flight schools in Florida and Norman, Oklahoma, along with Mohammad Atta and the other 9-11 operatives, and he became a highly skilled commercial jet pilot, although he, like Atta and the other terrorists, never applied for a license with the Federal Aviation Commission.[iv]

In April 2001, Adnan spent 10 days in Panama, where he reportedly met with al Qaeda officials to assist in the planning of 9-11. The following month, he obtained an associate's degree in computer engineering from Broward Community College, where Mandhai and Jokhan had been enrolled as full-time students.[v]

SLICK AS AN EEL
Shukrijumah came to appear as a blip on the FBI's radar screen in March, 2001, after special agents in Miami launched an investigation of the Darul Uloom Institute and Islamic Training Center, which operates out of a large storefront on the Hollywood/Pines Boulevard in Pembroke Pines. The agents were interested in the activities of Imran Mandhai, who frequented the mosque and stated his intention to create a jihad cell that would consist of 25 or 30 men, including his pal, Adnan el Shukrijumah. The cell, Mandhai maintained, would target electric substations, Jewish institutions, a National Guard armory, even Mount Rushmore. "It was no secret that [Adnan] was pretty radical," says a federal law enforcement source, "and that Mandhai thought he would be interested in what they were doing."[vi]

But Shukrijumah was too slick and smart to become involved in the creation of a cell with a loudmouth like Mandhai. He declined to join their plans for jihad, correctly surmising that Mandhai already had attracted too much attention. But his name had been mentioned, and the federal investigators discovered that Shukrijumah had lied on his green-card application regarding a prior arrest. For this reason, a confidential report with cursory information in his name was opened at FBI headquarters. The record was filed and quickly forgotten.[vii]

ADNAN'S ADVENTURES
Between 1996 and 2000, Adnan became a jet-setter. He traveled to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, where he met with Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and other members of the al Qaeda high command. He also spent considerable time within al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, where he received training in explosives and special operations[viii]. He traveled to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, where he met with Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and other al Qaeda leaders.. He also spent considerable time within al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, where he received training in explosives and special operations[ix]. He traveled to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, where he met with Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and other members of the al-Qaeda high command. He also spent considerable time within al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, where he received training in explosives and special operations[x].

In May, 2001, he headed off to Trinidad, where his father Gulshair had worked as an official for the Saudi Arabian government. From Trinidad, he trekked to Tobago and Guyana. He managed to amass passports from Guyana, Trinidad, Saudi Arabia, Canada and the United States and began to adopt a number of aliases, including Abu Arifi, Jafar al-Tayyar, Jaafar at-Yayyar, Ja'far al-Tayar, and Mohammed Sher Mohammed Khan (the name that appeared on his official FBI file).[xi] Adnan also found time, according to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, to take part in the 9/11 attacks as a"fixer," that is, a behind-the-scenes operative who helped with the plans for hijacking the aircraft.

A NUCLEAR MISSION IN CANADA
Following the success of 9-11, Shukrijumah became singled out by bin Laden and al-Zawahiri to spearhead the next great attack on America -- a nuclear attack that would take place simultaneously in seven U.S. cities (New York, Boston, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Washington D.C.), leaving millions dead and the richest and most powerful nation on earth in ashes.[xii]

To prepare for this mission, Shukrijumah and fellow al Qaeda agents Anas al Liby, Jaber A. Elbaneh, and Amer el Matti, purportedly were sent to McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, a facility that boasted a five-megawatt nuclear research reactor, the largest reactor of any educational facility in Canada. At McMaster, Adnan reportedly kept to himself, made few new friends or acquaintances, kept strictly to his studies, and left the facility at the same time as his colleagues.[xiii] He also managed to obtain employment at the reactor - - allegedly as a guide.[xiv] Adnan's"normal' behavior on the Hamilton campus, a source said, gave him entry to places where dangerous materials were stored without raising undue suspicion. Bit by bit, the al-Qaeda operative allegedly managed to pilfer approximately 180 pounds of nuclear material from the university - - enough to build several radiological bombs.[xv]

According to Debka, an internet outlet for Israeli intelligence, Shukrijumah was under surveillance by Canadian officials in early October 2003, when he suddenly stopped attending classes and failed to show up for work. His disappearance aroused no concern, the sources say, until a few days later when the nuclear material was reported missing.[xvi]

Jayne Johnson, a spokesperson for McMaster University, declined to comment on the reports of Shukrijumah and the other al-Qaeda agents at the school. Other McMaster officials denied that any al Qaeda agents were on campus and that any nuclear or radiological material was missing from the campus. But witnesses have verified Shukrijumah's presence in Hamilton and the school, according to several sources, has experienced radiological"leakage."[xvii]

THE UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Upon investigating the matter, Debka raised the following questions concerning Shukrijumah at McMaster and mind-boggling vanishing act:

Why were there no agents observing the subject inside the reactor? These sources did not disclose which security agencies were responsible for the surveillance.
Who gave Shukrijumah, a Saudi Arabian under suspicion, access to the reactor? And how is it that no one noticed increasing amounts of nuclear or radiological materials were disappearing over a period of months?
How was Shukrijumah able to give his watchers the slip?
Was the subject tipped off by an inside source in the U. S. or Canadian security services?[xviii]
Upon their departure from Canada, Adnan and his terrorist friends made their way to Buffalo where they may have been harbored by some members of the notorious Lackawanna (LA) Mosque, where Jaber A. Elbaneh had been a prominent member. It is also possible that they may have received monetary and logistical support from Mohammed Albanna, who managed to escape under the radar of the bust of the LA 6 (members of the Lackawanna mosque who were taken into custody for serving al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations) in 2002.

THE POCKET LITTER
In the wake of Operation Enduring Freedom (the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan), CIA and military intelligence officials discovered the reoccurrence of the names of Jaffar al Tayyar ("Jafer the Pilot") and Mohammed Sher Mohammed Khan in "pocket litter" -- documents and scraps taken from prisoners and dead al Qaeda soldiers.[xix] In May 2002, U.S. intelligence and military officials starting asking a pressing question to al Qaeda detainees who were being interrogated at foreign prisons and secret CIA and military facilities abroad."Whom," the officials asked,"would al Qaeda pick to lead the next big attack against U.S. targets?" Intelligence sources told U. S. News and World Reports that several of the detainees coughed up the same answer: "Jaffar al Tayyar."[xx] The detainees said they had encountered "the Pilot" during al Qaeda training exercises in Afghanistan. Intelligence officers presented photos of hundreds of suspected al Qaeda operatives to the detainees. Several identified an individual who bore a resemblance to Adnan el Shukrijumah. But the resemblance was not reality, and it would take months before the FBI and CIA teams, with their sophisticated equipment and state-of-the-art search engines, would realize it. "We were pursuing a lead," says one official, "that in the end turned out to be a dead end. We found out we were after the wrong person."[xxi] Indeed, the teams might still be searching for the wrong suspects and hitting dead-ends, if not for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda's military operations chief, who was captured, quite by accident, in Karachi, Pakistan March 1, 2003.

THE PLOT REVEALED
After days of interrogation, coupled with severe sleep deprivation, Mohammed told U.S. officials that bin Laden was planning to create a "nuclear hell storm" in America.[xxii] Unlike other attacks, the terrorist chief said, the chain of command for the nuclear attack answered directly to bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and a mysterious scientist called "Dr. X." Mohammed later admitted that "Dr. X" was Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani father of the Islamic bomb and the godfather of modern nuclear proliferation. He further confessed that the field commander for this operation was a naturalized American citizen whom he also referred to as Mohammed Sher Mohammed Khan and "Jafer al Tayyar" ("Jafer the Pilot").[xxiii] Both names are aliases of Adnan el Shukrijumah.

Khalid Mohammed went on to say that Adnan represents a"single-cell" - - a lone agent capable of launching a solo nuclear or radiological attack on a major American city. The news of such a cell reportedly startled U. S. officials who assumed that al Qaeda cells contained several members who were supported by broad logistical back-up crews.[xxiv]

'DEMANDING, RUDE, AND OBNOXIOUS'
On March 21, 2004, Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller issued a BOLO ("be-on-the-lookout") alert for Shukrijumah and Amer el-Maati, along with Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman who received a biology degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and penned a doctoral thesis on neurological science at Brandeis University; Ahmed Kalfan Ghailani (aka "Foopie"), who took part in the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania; Adam Yahiye Gadahn (aka Adam Pearlman), a convert to Islam who grew up on a goat ranch in Riverside County, California; and Abderraouf Jdey, the leader of the al-Qaeda cell in Toronto.[xxv]

Several days after the BOLO was issued, Adnan and Jdey were spotted at a Denny's restaurant in Avon, Colo., where one ordered a chicken sandwich and a salad. Samuel Mac, the restaurant manager, described them as "demanding, rude and obnoxious."[xxvi] They told Mac they were from Iran and were driving from New York to the West Coast. Upon calling the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., Mac said the agent who answered the telephone said he had to call the bureau's Denver office and declined to take down any information. When Mac called the Denver office of the FBI, he said he was shuttled to voice mail because"all the agents were busy."[xxvii] It was five hours before a seemingly uninterested agent called the restaurant manager. This agent, according to Mac, took a few notes and said she would pass the information along to the field agents who were handling the case.[xxviii]

This promise represented the full extent of the government's interest in the sighting even though Shukrijumah had been labeled by FBI Director Robert Mueller as"the next Mohammad Atta" and even though the FBI had posted a $5 million reward for any information leading to his capture. The federal and state law enforcement officials failed to interview the restaurant workers and the patrons, purportedly even those who were willing to verify the presence of the terrorists in the restaurant. No forensic evidence was obtained from the scene by any law enforcement officials - - not even the utensils that had been used by the suspects. When contacted by The Denver Post, Monique Kelso, spokeswoman for the Denver bureau, said the office had received at least a dozen calls as a result of the BOLO. The calls, Kelo said, were all taken seriously. She added, "We follow up on every lead."[xxix]


THE WAZIRISTAN SUMMIT
Following the incident in Colorado, the diminutive Shukrijumah resurfaced at a terrorist summit in the lawless Waziristan Province of Pakistan in April 2004. The summit has been described by the FBI as a "pivotal planning session" in much the same manner as a 2000 meeting was held in Kuala Lumpur for the 9-11 attacks. Attending the summit were Abu Issa al Hindi, a Pakistani technician whose company contained plans for staging attacks at financial institutions in New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., and Mohammed Babar, who has been charged with buying materials to build bombs for attacks in Great Britain [xxx] Babar is an American citizen and resident of Queens, New York, where he was a leading member of the Islamic Thinkers Society, a group that burned the American flag during a demonstration before the Israeli consulate in 2006 and held up placards stating:"The mushroom cloud is on its way."[xxxi]

SHUKRIJUMAH SOUTH OF THE BORDER
On May 27, 2004, Adnan el Shukrijumah was spotted at an Internet café in Tegucigalpa, the hilly capital of Honduras, where he made calls to France, Canada, and the U.S. He was described as badly dressed and bearded. At his table were Mara Salvatrucha leaders (jefes) from Panama, Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador.[xxxii] According to the café owner, who recognized Adnan from photos in the newspaper, he spoke to the jefes in English and Spanish. Shukrijumah's presence at the cafe was later verified by the Honduran Security Ministry, who confirmed that the elusive terrorists had made telephone calls from there to France, the U. S., and Canada.[xxxiii]

On June 12, Gulshair el Shukrijumah, Adnan's radical father, died in Miramar as a result of a stroke. Some sources attributed his demise to "the will of Allah." His funeral was attended by around 1,000 people who "prayed for Allah to accept their departed Sheik into his arms." Ibrahim Dremali, the Imam of the Boca Raton Islamic Center, said that Gulshair had"a positive effect on people."[xxxiv]

From Tegucigalpa, Adnan made his way north to Belize in British Honduras and, from Belize, to Mexico's Quintana Roo State, south of Cancun.[xxxv] He remained in Mexico for much of the summer of 2004. In late August, he was spotted in the northern Mexican province of Sonora near "terrorist alley," the main passageway for illegal aliens, including OTMs (other than Mexicans) and "Special Interest Aliens" - - to the land of Mickey Mouse, MTV, and George W. Bush.[xxxvi]

NUKES ARRIVE IN MEXICO
Concern about Shukrijumah's extended stay in Mexico was heightened in November 2004 with the arrest in Pakistan of Sharif al-Masri, a key al Qaeda operative. Al Masri, an Egyptian national jihadist with close ties to al Zawahiri, bin Laden's No. 2 man, informed interrogators that al-Qaeda had made arrangements to smuggle nuclear supplies and tactical nuclear weapons into Mexico. From Mexico, the weapons were to be transported across the border with the help of a Latino street gang. The gang was later identified as Mara Salvatrucha, the gang that Adnan had trekked across the North American continent to meet in a Honduran café, and the plans that he discussed with the gang leaders were the plans that had been purportedly finalized at the terrorist summit in Waziristan.[xxxvii]

In response to this information, U.S. officials began monitoring all heavy trucks crossing the border, while Mexican officials pledged to keep close watch over flight schools and aviation facilities. Such precautions may have been adopted too late. A Piper PA Pawnee crop duster was stolen from Ejido Queretaro near Mexicali on November 1, 2004. The plane's tail number was XBCYP. The thieves, Mexican officials surmised, were either drug dealers or al-Qaeda operatives, and clearly one was a highly trained pilot who met the description of Adnan el-Shukrijumah.[xxxviii