New Jersey Men Plead Guilty to Terrorism Conspiracy Charge

Kayla Morgan (blog # 7)
3/4/11
11:45

New Jersey Men Plead Guilty To Terrorism Conspiracy Charges

Mohamed Alessa and Carlos Almonte pleaded guilty on March 3rd in a federal court in Newark, New Jersey, to conspiring to murder people outside the U.S. by joining a Somali terrorist group. They were arrested June 5th at an airport where both men admitted they were flying to Egypt on their way to join the Islamic Al-Shabaab movement in Somalia. They even confessed that they wanted to murder people whose beliefs were against Muslim law. Both men agreed to a charge saying that they discussed traveling to Somalia from Egypt, quoting “receiving training, instruction and weapons from other violent extremist, and committing acts of violence that included shooting and murder.” Both men a dual citizens. Alessa is a citizen in the U.S. and in Jordan, while Almonte is a U.S. and Dominican Republic citizen. Paul Fishman, a U.S. attorney said in a statement, “ the defendants planned and trained for a mission that began in their New Jersey neighborhoods and would end with the murder of innocent civilians.”

Now I understand the point of a lawyer is to plead your case and get your defendant off the hook, but as I was reading more into this article, I noted that Alessa’s attorney stated, “No one was killed. No one was bombed.” This statement makes absolutely no sense to me. Luckily no one was hurt, but that is not the point. The point is that it was planned for innocent people to get killed just because they did not agree with the Muslim laws. If these two men were not arrested, god only knows what they would have done. Anyone who says and admits to half the stuff these boys did, deserves to be locked up, no if and or buts about it. One of the things Alessa said to his attorney was, “I wanna, like, be the world’s known terrorist.” This is once again another example of terrorist living in your very own neighborhood, maybe people you did not suspect at all.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-03/new-jersey-men-plead-guilty-to-terrorism-conspiracy-charge.html