Ohio Islamic State Cell Slipped Under the Radar

by RYAN HEALY May 19, 2016

An NBC News report listed 15 Americans with connections to the Islamic State (IS), including a cell featuring three residents of Columbus, Ohio . The names were connected to a flash drive that former IS member Abu Mohammaed stole when he defected from IS. While most of the names were known to law enforcement these three had successfully left America to join IS undetected. The three IS members were identified as Jaffrey Khan, Zakia Nasrin, and Rasel Raihan.

Nasrin was described as a promising student whose family immigrated from Bangladesh in 2000. She graduated valedictorian of her senior class at Metro Early College High School and enrolled at Ohio State University as a pre-med major. Nasrin’s family says she met Khan online and married him in 2010. Jaffrey was the son of immigrant parents who moved to Palo Alto but divorced when he was still young.

Khan had always struggled in school and in life according to his father, Salem Khan, who runs a multi-million dollar healthcare IT business. friends say that the younger Khan became a devout Muslim, and according to family members shortly after began to espouse anti-American sentiment. ” Khan’s family noticed he was very strict with his new bride making her wear a hijab and veil cover her face. Ahmed Khan the cousin to Khan noted he made all men leave the room if Nasrin was present, or Khan made her sit in the car.

They returned to Columbus and moved into an apartment on Riverview Drive just north of Ohio State University.

According to Terrorism investigator Patrick Poole, Riverview had been previously connected to a case of terrorism in 2007, when Christopher Paul was arrested and charged with helping al-Qaeda bomb makers with identifying potential targets in the United States (U.S.) and Europe. Paul was given a 20-year prison sentence; his wife though still lives in the building, and claims she did not know Nasrin or Khan.

Poole notes that according to the apartment complex’s landlord of the apartment complex, several residents worshipped at the nearby Omar Ibn al-Kattab mosque, which has a history of being tied to Islamic terrorism. The board of the mosque admitted that Jaffrey had attended the mosque for several weeks before disappearing. Other notable terrorism related cases tied to Omar Ibn al-Kattab mosqueinclude Iyman Faris who in 2003 attempted to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge and Nuradin Abdiplotted to blow up a Columbus shopping mall in 2007. Abdulhakim Muhammad who shot and killed a U.S. service man in Arkansas admitted to attending the Omar Ibn al-Kattab mosque from 2006-2007.

Nasrin’s brother Rasel Raihan was also an outstanding student at Metro. Raihan reportedly greatly admired his older sister and even told a friend she “guides me right from wrong.” A friend of Raihan’s noted that after Rasel talked with his sister he stopped taking his medication and immediately became a devout Muslim. After graduation friends say that Raihan disappeared and they never saw him again.

Khan was placed on a terror watch list by the FBI when an informant notified authorities that Khan had traveled abroad and might be involved with jihadists. Khan, Nasir, and Raihan crossed the Turkey-Syrian border near Tal Abyad in July 2014. Khan took the name Abu Ibrahim al-Amriki and Raihan took the name Abu Abdullah al-Amriki. Raihan is believed to have been killed fighting for IS, and Khan and his wife are reportedly working in a hospital in Raqqa and have a daughter.

Once again jihadists have been previously identified (and placed on the terror watch list) despite still being able to successfully complete their goals. It also notes the impact of continued effort to divorce individual jihad supporters from wider networks of support and indoctrination.

Ryan Healy writes for the Center for Security Policy

Via divineoffice.org

From a homily on Ecclesiastes by Saint Gregory of Nyssa
There is a time to be born, and a time to die

There is a time to be born and a time to die. The fact that there is a natural link between birth and death is expressed very clearly in this text of Scripture. Death invariably follows birth and everyone who is born comes at last to the grave.

There is a time to be born and a time to die. God grant that mine may be a timely birth and a timely death! Of course no one imagines that the Speaker regards as acts of virtue our natural birth and death, in neither of which our own will plays any part. A woman does not give birth because she chooses to do so; neither does anyone die as a result of his own decision. Obviously, there is neither virtue nor vice in anything that lies beyond our control. So we must consider what is meant by a timely birth and a timely death.

It seems to me that the birth referred to here is our salvation, as is suggested by the prophet Isaiah. This reaches its full term and is not stillborn when, having been conceived by the fear of God, the soul’s own birth pangs bring it to the light of day. We are in a sense our own parents, and we give birth to ourselves by our own free choice of what is good. Such a choice becomes possible for us when we have received God into ourselves and have become children of God, children of the Most High. On the other hand, if what the Apostle calls the form of Christ has not been produced in us, we abort ourselves. The man of God must reach maturity.

Now if the meaning of a timely birth is clear, so also is the meaning of a timely death. For Saint Paul every moment was a time to die, as he proclaims in his letters: I swear by the pride I take in you that I face death every day. Elsewhere he says: For your sake we are put to death daily and we felt like men condemned to death. How Paul died daily is perfectly obvious. He never gave himself up to a sinful life but kept his body under constant control. He carried death with him, Christ’s death, wherever he went. He was always being crucified with Christ. It was not his own life he lived; it was Christ who lived in him. This surely was a timely death – a death whose end was true life.

I put to death and I shall give life, God says, teaching us that death to sin and life in the Spirit is his gift, and promising that whatever he puts to death he will restore to life again.