Freedom Folks: The "New Americans?"

Source: Chicago Tribune

2 arrested in terror conspiracy
Cousins indicted with Toledo men in plot on troops

Federal agents swarmed a suburban apartment complex and a house on the Northwest Side early Wednesday, arresting two cousins allegedly linked to a terrorism conspiracy to kill Americans overseas, including U.S. troops.

Zubair A. Ahmed, 27, of North Chicago, and his cousin, Khaleel Ahmed, 26, of Chicago, have ties to three Toledo men charged in the conspiracy last year, authorities said. Federal prosecutors said the cousins had spoken to at least one of the three about receiving training and at one point were headed to Afghanistan or Iraq.

Zubair Ahmed allegedly wanted to learn to use a .50-caliber machine gun.

"Man, we've been waiting for this," he said, according to the indictment.

The Ahmeds were named in a superseding indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Ohio, joining the three Toledo men, whose indictment was announced by Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales in February 2006.

Mohammad Zaki Amawi, Marwan Othman El-Hindi and Wassim Mazloum have pleaded not guilty and are expected to go on trial in Cleveland in the spring. They were accused of gathering information on explosives and tactics, planning to send money and computers to the Middle East and recruiting others to attack American forces in Iraq.

Recruits were "to train for violent jihad against the United States and its allies in Iraq, and elsewhere, and would propose potential training sites for use in providing ongoing firearms, hand-to-hand combat, explosives, and other paramilitary training to prospective recruits," the indictment states.