Qaeda Member Pleads Guilty in Brooklyn on Terrorism Charges
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Version 0 of 1. A member of Al Qaeda who led a firefight in Afghanistan in 2008 that killed an Army Ranger pleaded guilty on Tuesday in Brooklyn to four counts related to his terrorism activities. Saddiq Al-Abbadi, 40, also helped get a Long Island man, Bryant Neal Vinas, into Al Qaeda, prosecutors said in court documents; Mr. Vinas, who later planned a bomb attack on the Long Island Rail Road that was not carried out, eventually became a cooperating witness for the government. Mr. Al-Abbadi, a Yemeni man, faces a minimum of 30 years in prison, and a maximum of life, when he is sentenced in September. He delivered the guilty plea in Federal District Court in Brooklyn about four months after he was extradited to the United States from Saudi Arabia, where he had served five years of a 12-year sentence in a terrorism case. When his extradition was announced in January, Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, both Republicans, complained in a letter to the United States attorney general’s office about the length of time it had taken the government to bring him into American custody. They said in the letter that to “transfer him to New York, read him his Miranda rights and give him an attorney” was “no way to fight a war.” Instead, they suggested, a military detention and interrogation would be more appropriate. Mr. Al-Abbadi told the court on Tuesday that he “fought in Iraq between 2005 and 2009 against the United States of America with the intention to hurt, wound or kill these forces.” He also admitted to being a member of Al Qaeda and said he knew that the United States considered it a terrorist organization. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder American nationals abroad, to providing material support to a terrorist group, to conspiracy to provide that support and to unlawful use of firearms. Mr. Al-Abbadi led attacks against American troops in Paktia Province, Afghanistan, in May and June 2008, prosecutors wrote in court papers. In the May battle, two Army Rangers were wounded and one was killed. Two weeks later, he plotted another attack, planning on luring soldiers to a compound in Ghazni Province that was designed to blow up when they entered. However, an American soldier spotted suspicious wiring, and the soldiers backed off. Mr. Al-Abbadi went from his home in Yemen to Iraq in 2003, according to a complaint filed by prosecutors. By 2008, he was fighting against American soldiers in Ghazni. Someone who later became a cooperating witness for the government — the witness is not named in the complaint — met Mr. Al-Abbadi and his co-defendant, Ali Alvi, at a Qaeda safe house in Pakistan. They both carried Kalashnikov rifles. Mr. Al-Abbadi showed the witness a scar from a bullet wound that he got from fighting the United States military and Blackwater contractors in Iraq, and a video of him celebrating after a jihadist attack in Iraq. In August 2008, the witness saw Mr. Al-Abbadi again at a mosque. Mr. Al-Abbadi said that he had fought in Ghazni, and that the fighting was good. Mr. Al-Abbadi was there to meet with Sheikh Saeed al-Masri, then the third-ranking member of Al Qaeda. He also has strong ties to Al Qaeda’s Yemen branch, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, prosecutors wrote. Indeed, when the witness was having a hard time getting accepted into Al Qaeda in Pakistan, Mr. Al-Abbadi assured the witness he could get him into Al Qaeda in Yemen. |