The arrest of Lashkar-e-Taiba operative David Coleman Headley, which helped to bust a plot for terror strikes in India, has been classified by the FBI as its second biggest case for 2009.
The case stands second in the 10 biggest cases of the year, with the case of two young American extremists standing first.
“The threat posed by extremists is real, and it continues to morph and evolve in new and dangerous ways. We had our hands full during the year, from heading off potential plots on the U.S. soil to identifying Americans being recruited to wage jihad overseas,” the FBI said in a statement.
Headley was arrested in October, along with his schoolmate Tahawwur Hussein Rana, on the charge of planning terrorist attacks in India and Denmark. He has also been charged with being involved in the Mumbai terror attacks in November 2008.
At the top was the case of the ‘Jihadists of Georgia.’ The FBI busted a terror plot by two young Americans, Ehsanul Islam Sadequee and Syed Haris Ahmed. “Their story is indicative of both the evolving home-grown extremist threat and the FBI’s post-9/11 intelligence-driven investigations,” it said. “With little more than an Internet connection and the radicalising influences of overseas terrorists, two middle-class young men in Atlanta went from rhetoric to plotting jihad.”
Among the other prominent cases listed for this year are young men from Minnesota travelling to Somalia to join extremist groups, Najibullah Zazi’s attempted bombing of the federal building, and the arrest of seven men, including father and two sons, on the charge of conspiring to provide terrorists with material support and wage jihad overseas.
The other foiled plots include the arrest of four people outside a New York synagogue for planning to blow up Jewish targets and shooting down military planes; conviction of five men of the charge of providing material support to al Qaeda and planning attacks on U.S. targets, including the Sears Tower in Chicago; and the sentencing of Ali al-Marri, al Qaeda “sleeper” operative in the U.S., who pleaded guilty to the charges relating to his role in the 9/11 attacks
