By MIKE BAKER

RALEIGH, N.C. — A North Carolina man trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan has been charged along with six of his alleged recruits with conspiring to support terrorism and traveling overseas to participate in “violent jihad,” according to an indictment unsealed Monday.

Daniel Patrick Boyd, 39, and the six other men were arrested Monday and made their first appearances in Raleigh, charged with providing material support to terrorism.

“These charges hammer home the point that terrorists and their supporters are not confined to the remote regions of some far away land but can grow and fester right here at home,” U.S. Attorney George E.B. Holding said in a statement. He declined further comment.

The indictment said Boyd, a U.S. citizen, trained in Afghanistan and fought there between 1989 and 1992 against the Soviet Union before returning to the United States. Court documents charged that Boyd, also known as ‘Saifullah,’ encouraged others to engage in jihad.

Two of the suspects are Daniel Patrick Boyd’s sons: Zakariya Boyd, 20 and Dylan Boyd, 22. The others are Anes Subasic, 33; Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan, 22; and Ziyad Yaghi, 21.

Hysen Sherifi, 24, a native of Kosovo and a U.S. legal permanent was also charged in the case. He was the only person arrested who was not a U.S. citizen.

All were residents of North Carolina, but it wasn’t immediately known where they lived. It was not immediately known if they had attorneys. No attorneys for the men were listed in court records.

The indictment claims Boyd traveled to Israel in 2007 with several of the defendants, hoping to engage in “violent jihad.” The attempt was unsuccessful, though, and the men returned home, officials said.

Boyd was also accused of trying to raise money last year to fund others’ travel overseas to fight. One of the men, Hysen Sharifi, allegedly went to Kosovo to engage in violent jihad, according to the indictment, but it’s unclear if he did any actual fighting.

Several of the defendants, including Boyd, were also charged with practicing military tactics on a private property in Caswell County in June and July of this year.

Well. Well well well.

Gee, this all begs a few key questions, doesn’t it?

Why would a “not like that” Kosovo Muslim have anything to do with people who are trying to kill Israelis?

An exception, the apologists might say. Not representative of the Albanian people at large — despite their siding with the Nazis for their own purposes.

Agreed.

So then let’s get to the more pertinent, ever-present and ever-ignored question: Here we have yet another Albanian exception to add to the ever-growing pool of Albanian exceptions. I am not being entirely sarcastic with the word “exception.” My point is this: If the number of Albanian exceptions is continuing to grow, please tell me again: Why did we and are we taking the side with so many exceptions over the side that doesn’t have this “exception” problem?

There is one other question that needs asking. Why is the Kosovo Albanian being charged with anything at all? According to the article, he was merely sent back to Kosovo by the ringleader in order to engage in violent jihad there. How is that different from what the United States has supported materially and militarily in Kosovo since the dawn of the 90s?

Another report is here.

Note the last name of “Subasic” which appears in both reports. That makes one of the defendants a Bosnian Muslim.

A relevant note on that point: the earliest known donor list for al Qaeda was found in Bosnia in 2002, dated to 1988 or 1989, two years before the Bosnian war ever began.

While we’re at it, let me point out that videotapes of a sniper picking off American soldiers, at least one a day, are a hot commodity in Bosnia these days. Plus, volunteering to kill Americans in Iraq are veterans of Bosnia’s El Mujaheed unit — of Middle Eastern origin but holding Bosnian citizenship, married to Bosnian women, and attending radical mosques at which the imams are in fact Bosnian Muslims. Check it out:

Bosnian Jihad cinema
Jan 16, 2009

A half-hour long film about a Muslim sniper who is killing American soldiers in Iraq is being shown in Bosnia, reports Bosnian Muslim television.

The film is shown in central Bosnia where [the] concentration of radical Islamists is the greatest, reports Bosnian government TV station.

The film is about a mysterious Muslim named Juba who is using a sniper to kill an American soldier once every day. The sniper has been doing this for several years now and each soldier is hit with one bullet in the forehead, the movie shows.

Bosnian TV news show 60 Minutes reports that the mysterious sniper has killed several hundred Americans so far. After each killing, the sniper leaves one shell and a message in Arabic that says “What’s taken by blood cannot be brought back without blood.”

The DVD also says that Bosnian Muslim Jihad veterans from the notorious Bosnian Muslim Army unit El Mujaheed are also volunteers among the Jihadists in Iraq that are killing the Americans.

Clip showing American soldiers falling dead from a sniper

During the Bosnian civil war in the 1990s, United States blamed and then bombed the Bosnian Serbs who were targets of massacres by the El Mujahedeen units and other Bosnian Muslim government forces.

The film about Juba is also sold as a DVD in Bosnia, and is narrated in the so-called Bosnian language, reports Bosnian TV.

Parts of the movie are also available on the Bosnian Muslim religious site islamika.net where it shares space along with Islamic hutbas, or teachings.

Some analysts say that the purpose of the movie is to be used to recruit Bosnian Muslims into al Qaeda.

These analysts say that Bosnian Muslims are especially prized by al-Qaeda leadership because of their European features that can blend into Western society much more easily and be less noticeable during Islamic terrorist planning.

Bosnian TV says that there are increasing number of visits by Wahabis from Austria and Germany into central Bosnia where the film is being shown.