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Jewish Militants Arrested in Foiled Plot to Bomb U.S. Mosque
With additional reporting by Neveen A. Salem
WASHINGTON D.C., Dec 12 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has arrested two members, including the head of a militant Jewish group, for allegedly plotting to blow up Arab American institutions in the Los Angeles area, including a prominent mosque, law enforcement agents said Wednesday.
The chairman of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) Irv Rubin, 56, and another JDL member, Earl Krugel, were picked up late Tuesday by federal investigators, U.S. Attorney's spokesman Thom Mrozek told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"The two men are in custody and we will be charging them today in relation to a failed bomb plot that we have been investigating for the past six weeks," said Mrozek. "We are working on a complaint charging Rubin and Krugel to blow [up] some type of target based on an inside informant. The plot was not carried out."
Rubin and Krugel are reported to have been targeting the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Islamic Center of Southern California and an unnamed mosque in Culver City, CA, for bombings. The FBI disclosed that the terrorist cell had been under FBI watch since October, and arrests have now been made in the face of overwhelming evidence.
According to Matthew McLaughlin, an FBI spokesman in Los Angeles, "The tools might have been in place to do this thing," he said. "We don't put people in [custody] just for superficial reasons. We put people in place for their physical actions."
Explosive materials were found Rubin's residence, and upon inspection, law enforcement authorities determined that they possessed all the components necessary to build a bomb.
Channel 7 News in Washington DC, an ABC affiliate station, announced that the group also had plans to bomb the offices of Republican
U.S. Congressional member Darrell Issa.
In addition, "the group has a long history of threatening Muslim leaders, particularly more moderate ones, who they deem more effective and therefore more dangerous," stated the Muslim Public Affairs Council's Washington D.C. office.
Rubin and Krugel are also considered suspects in the 1985 murder of Alex Odeh, West Coast Regional Director of the Washington-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), who was killed when a package bomb was sent to his office.
ADC also reiterated the group's history of violence saying, "the group was linked to a series of violent attacks on various targets in the '70s and '80s, including Arab-American organizations such as ADC."
Prosecutors declined to provide further details of the alleged planned bombing in the Los Angeles area, and would not reveal whether further arrests were expected in the case.
The men were arrested after federal and local police raided a home in the Reseda area of the city Tuesday night. Television footage showed rifles and other weapons being carried out of the house.
The militant JDL, which was founded in 1968 in New York by controversial Rabbi Meir Kahane as an "armed response group", has lobbied for the punishment of Nazi war criminals and for the release of Jews from the former Soviet Union.
The Kahane group is on the U.S. State Department's terrorist list.
Its members were linked to a number of bombings in the United States, some of them aimed at Soviet targets.
The Jewish Defense League advocates use of "all necessary means - even strength, force and violence" to defend the interests of Jews, as well as the return of all Jews to Israel, according to its Web site. Its logo contains a silhouette of a clenched fist over the Star of David, news agencies reported.
Kahane later left the group and moved to Israel. A power struggle ensued, with Rubin among the contenders for its leadership.
Kahane, who was assassinated by an Egyptian on a New York street in 1990, founded an outlawed party in Israel called Kach that advocated the expulsion of Arabs from Israel and the Occupied Territories.
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