Fourth Man Pleads Guilty In Alleged Va. Jihad Group

[LARED]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49496-2003Sep22?language=printer

A fourth member of an alleged Virginia jihad network pleaded guilty yesterday to preparing to fight for Muslim causes abroad and told a federal judge that he and his co-conspirators might have taken up arms against the United States if they had not been arrested.

Muhammed Aatique, 30, of Norristown, Pa., said that he used paintball games in Northern Virginia to train for combat and that he fired weapons in Pakistan at a camp run by Lashkar-i-Taiba, which is fighting to end Indian control over much of Kashmir and has been designated a terrorist group by the U.S. government. He is one of 11 men charged in the conspiracy.

As he pleaded guilty, Aatique was asked by U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in Alexandria: "Did you understand that one of the countries against whom you might ultimately have to pick up arms could be the United States?"

"Yes," Aatique replied in a soft voice. "The United States could have been one of the possible opponents if the conspiracy had gone ahead."

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[RH]

3. Motivation.

I have met a lot of people in my time: Some became pop stars; others went into politics; some succeeded; some spent time in jail; others vanished without trace. Many different fates, there but for fortune etc. but on meeting them face to face who would have guessed what was to come? While age accentuates our superficial differences experience betrays our deeper similarities.

Reading up on the background to somebody such as Hani Hanjour all sorts of questions arise. He was not obviously the sort that you'd cast in a movie to play the part, not the sort to impress in any way.

A suicide consipracy then, involving a full 19 participants?

It is simply not possible to understand a human motivation without to some extent being similarly inclined, but in the mean time the feeling I have of the affair is that whoever did it, it was done for the hell of it.

The urge to discover master minded conspiracies is infantile. It arises mostly as a sort of wishful thinking that can't quite cope with the more mature need to face the full extent of the chaos without a father figure to turn to, to sort it out.