Abdullah al Muhajir, a US citizen of Puerto Rican descent, had an extensive criminal record, including committing murder at age 13, long before being arrested as a suspected al Qaeda operative in an alleged plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb," authorities have said.
Muhajir, 31, was a street gang member in Chicago who got into trouble with the law early and often, law enforcement officials said. He spent time in juvenile detention in the 1980s in Chicago with a murder conviction, and was behind bars in Florida in the early 1990s in connection with an assault charge, the officials said.
|
|
Abdullah al Muhajir photographed by Florida police in 1991
|
Authorities said Muhajir left the United States in 1998 from Florida.
He was born Jose Padilla, a Latino of Puerto Rican background, on October 18th, 1970, in New York. He later changed his name. His family arrived in Chicago four years later, authorities said, and he began committing crimes as a youth.
Muhajir was convicted of a gangland-style murder he committed at age 13, and was confined to Chicago's juvenile detention facility in 1985, authorities said. He attended grammar school while incarcerated, Chicago school officials said.
He spent 10 months in a Florida jail awaiting trial on a 1991 assault, pleading guilty in Broward County in August 1992 to charges of discharging a firearm and aggravated assault, officials in Florida said. He was sentenced to serve one year of probation.
Padilla was believed to have converted to Islam while incarcerated.
When or how he was recruited into al-Qaeda was not divulged by authorities.
He was arrested on May 8th at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport by federal agents tracking him on a flight from Pakistan, authorities said.
Law enforcement officials said his arrest foiled a potential attack with a dirty bomb, possibility in Washington, although some officials said the plot was not fully developed.
"He doesn't seem to have the wherewithal to carry out a complicated plot to plant a radioactive device, but maybe the lesson here is that (al-Qaeda) doesn't have to import terrorists, they can be recruited right here," said Mr Tom Kirkpatrick of the Chicago Crime Commission, a group that studies organized crime including street gangs.
A dirty bomb is a conventional explosive device wrapped in or laced with radioactive material. It is not an actual nuclear bomb, but its explosion could spread radioactive material.
Muhajir would not be the first street gang member recruited for a larger criminal task. Long-time Chicago gang leader Jeff Fort - whose gang adopted some of the trappings of Islam - was convicted of trying to buy a missile to blow up a federal building or police station in a 1980s-era plot, supposedly on instructions from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.