45°
The pair also watched an assortment of videos of radicals toting AK-47s and terrorist leaders preaching jihad, says a complaint filed before investigators nabbed the two at JFK airport last night.
They even trained on Garrett Mountain in Woodland Park, a short distance from an FBI field office and the headquarters of two North Jersey newspapers, federal authorities said.
They’d waited three years for the opportunity, Carlos Eduardo “Omar” Almonte, 24, of Elmwood Park, was recorded telling an undercover agent about him and his companion, Mohamed Hamoud Alessa, 20, a Union Hill High School graduate who lived in North Bergen.
Federal and state investigators arrested the pair late last night as they prepared to board an Egypt-bound flight at JFK Airport on their way to Somalia, where they intended to join al Shabaab (‘Mujahideen Youth Movement’), an al Qaeda-linked Islamist terror group of several thousand soldiers spread throughout the country’s southern region, authorities said.
(See: Locals charged with joining “holy war” versus U.S.)
“They keep saying that Americans are their enemies, that everybody other than Islamic followers are their enemies… and they all must be killed,” a tipster who knows the pair wrote to the FBI, the complaint filed in Newark says.
At one point while FBI agents were interviewing Almonte outside his house, his parents told investigators Alessa was hiding inside the house, holding a large knife and vowing to “kill the agents if they entered the residence,” the complaint says.
In a conversation recorded by an undercover agent, Alessa says: “I got a knife this big in my house, and whoever gets next to me, I’m a cut them in half with it, even if I die.”
The undercover from the NYPD was brought in and won the pair’s confidence two years ago. Late that year, Alessa was recorded telling both Almonte and the agent:
“A lot of people need to get killed, bro, swear to God… I have to get a … assault rifle and just kill anyone that even looks at me the wrong way.
“[M]y soul cannot rest until I shed blood. I wanna, like, be the world’s known terrorist.
“I‘m gonna get locked up in the airport? Then you‘re gonna die here, then. That‘s how it is. Freaking Major-Nidal-shaved-face-Palestinian-crazy guy. He‘s not better than me. I‘ll do twice what he did.”
(He was referring to Major Nidal Hassan, charged with shooting and killing several people in Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov. 5, 2009.)
At various times, the complaint says, Alessa showed both Almonte and the agent hand-to-hand combat tactics, including how to kill a guard with a knife.
Almonte was recorded telling the agent that he and Alessa had gone to Jordan three years ago to join the mujahideen fighters but were rejected.
During a Jan. 3 weight-lifting session at a North Bergen gym, Alessa told the agent that “stronger muscles mean bigger muscles, which means killing more non-Muslims,” according to the complaint.
Almonte and the agent used a first-person-shooter computer simulator at a Jersey City store, it says, adding that Almonte asked for a simulator for Somalia but was told the store didn’t have it. Alessa joined in a week later at a store in North Bergen, where they used fake names, the FBI said.
There were also recorded purchases of hydration systems (portable water cannisters often used by police and firefighters), camouflage pants and other equipment, as well as instances of Alessa playing recordings of jihadists urging followers to kill Americans, federal authorities said.
The pair also gave the agent thousands of dollars to deposit in accounts that both could access in Egypt, while Alessa got his parents to buy him a ticket to Cairo out of JFK instead of Newark Liberty International Airport to avoid a connecting flight — and the possibility of being caught, the FBI said.
Almonte was recorded saying he wanted to someday meet Omar Hammami (also known as Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki), a member of Al-Shabaab who has received extensive media coverage.
“I just want want troops to come back home safely and cozily,” Almonte told Alessa during another recorded chat.
ALESSA: “In body bags, in caskets.”
ALMONTE: “In caskets.”
ALESSA: “Sliced up in 1,000 pieces cozy in the grave, in hell.”
Click here to follow Daily Voice South Passaic and receive free news updates.
