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EDITOR'S NOTE: Pakistani
authorities have arrested Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani on charges related
to the abduction of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who
went missing more than a week ago while attempting to interview
Gilani for a story about shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Pearl's captors
have threatened to murder their hostage today if the United States
does not release Pakistani prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.
 ilani
is the head of an international organization known as al Fuqra.
The group was recently banned in Pakistan, but it also has an extensive
network in the United States. NR's John J. Miller wrote about
al Fuqra for the December 31 edition of the magazine, reprinted
below.
There are a
lot of Baptist churches along rural Virginia's Route 615, just south
of Appomattox-"where America reunited," as the county
welcome sign puts it-but there's only one Sheikh Gilani Lane. A
gate and a guardhouse prevent the public from driving very far down
it. What lies beyond, however, isn't a closed-off community of rich
retirees. Instead, it's a trailer-park compound of black Muslims,
or "The Muslims of America," according to a green billboard
by the entrance, where an armed guard keeps a wary eye on the main
road's traffic.
Until recently,
this was the home of Vicente Rafael Pierre, a 44-year-old Brooklyn
native with a shadowy past and a dim future. He may never see this
home again. Shortly after September 11, federal agents snared him
in their roundup of crime suspects who have links to terrorist outfits.
Nobody has accused Pierre of any direct connection to the atrocities
in New York or elsewhere-he and his wife, Traci Upshur, were taken
in on unrelated gun charges and convicted of them on November 30.
Yet authorities have detailed Pierre's extensive ties to al Fuqra,
a violent group of black Muslims whose members have been implicated
in at least 17 bombings and 12 murders over the past twenty years.
Pierre's Virginia compound, near the tiny crossroads hamlet of Red
House, is believed to serve as an al Fuqra base. Pierre's story
is compelling in its own right — anybody connected to al Fuqra
is also connected to killers, bombers, and arsonists. During Pierre's
detention hearing in October, Thomas P. Gallagher of the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms said he and his colleagues were
worried about the possibility of "another Waco situation"
developing in rural Virginia. More unsettling is the potential for
al Fuqra to wreak mayhem beyond its remote compound.
Pierre's case
shows how militant groups organize and finance themselves-and also
how federal law-enforcement authorities are responding to these
known threats. Pierre, for instance, might still be free today but
for 9/11. He was the subject of an ongoing gun probe when federal
agents decided to accelerate his indictment. U.S. attorney John
Brownlee explained the strategy: "Prevent first and prosecute
second." Although Pierre has not been charged with any violence,
he's close to those who have been, including at least one person
involved in the 1998 embassy bombings and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda
network.
Al Fuqra —
which means "the impoverished" in Arabic — was founded
in 1980 when Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani traveled from Pakistan to
an African-American mosque in Brooklyn. On this and subsequent trips,
the charismatic sheikh helped create al Fuqra, which is said to
have between 1,000 and 3,000 members nationwide. It is not aligned
with a more prominent and homegrown black Muslim group, the Nation
of Islam, and in fact it has serious theological differences with
Louis Farrakhan's flock. And it may pose a much greater threat to
civil society.
About two dozen
families live at the 44-acre compound near Red House, but al Fuqra
is headquartered in Hancock, N.Y., and maintains extensive ties
to Gilani in Lahore. Members of the sect occasionally travel abroad
for what Gallagher calls "paramilitary and survivalist training"
under Gilani's supervision. Although Pierre has testified that he
has not visited Pakistan, the BATF says at least one of the other
Red House residents did go there, and Gallagher claims there is
evidence of training in Afghanistan as well. Gilani recruited Americans
to fight with the mujaheddin against the Soviets during the 1980s.
Al Fuqra demonstrated
its violent streak and national reach early on. A study written
by Yehudit Barsky and published by the Anti-Defamation League catalogues
the group's activities. From its first days more than two decades
ago, members have attacked a virtual rainbow coalition of targets,
including Hare Krishnas in San Diego, Hindus in Toronto, Sikhs in
Seattle, and Buddhists in Illinois. Many of their favorite victims
have links to India; Gilani is obsessed with the Kashmir conflict
and views India as a mortal enemy. In 1983, al Fuqra firebombed
a Portland, Ore., hotel owned by the late Indian guru Bhagwan Shree
Rajneesh. But al Fuqra's hatred also extends to Muslims with whom
they have doctrinal differences. A month after the Portland attack,
for instance, two members murdered a rival Muslim leader in Michigan,
and then were themselves killed when they set fire to an Islamic
center in Detroit.
An incident
in 1989 demonstrated the group's calculated ruthlessness and also
introduced Pierre to federal agents. Police on a search warrant
raided a Colorado Springs storage locker registered to Pierre's
father-in-law, who is also an al Fuqra member. Inside they found
information on a scam Pierre and others were running against Colorado's
workers' compensation fund; they had defrauded the state of some
$355,000 over several years. The locker's other contents were more
alarming: ten handguns and silencers, 30 pounds of explosives, and
target-practice silhouettes pierced with bullet holes and labeled
"FBI Antiterrorist Team" and "Zionist Pig" (in
Pierre's handwriting, according to Gallagher). Police also found
information on local military installations and electrical power
lines, plus "attack plans" against various targets. One
of the targets, a moderate imam, was stabbed to death four months
later.
Pierre dropped
from sight, but he was located several years later working as a
security guard in Pennsylvania. Put on trial in Colorado in 1993,
he was convicted for his role in the workers'-comp swindle and sentenced
to four years of probation. He was not linked to the murder of Khalifa,
however; that crime was charged to James D. Williams, who remained
a fugitive until last year, when he was arrested in Lynchburg, Va.,
not far from the Red House compound where he is believed to have
lived and where he would have been one of Pierre's neighbors. (Earlier
this year, Williams was sentenced to 69 years in prison.) During
his detention hearing in October, Pierre denied knowing Williams,
even though their names appeared alongside each other on documents
found in the storage locker; he also denied the existence of al
Fuqra. "This is a phantom, nonexistent organization which does
not exist," said Pierre. "It's just a figment of someone's
imagination due to their ignorance of the Arabic language or perhaps
due to their hate or prejudice of al-Islam."
This was a
surprising claim, because many others — including Sheikh Gilani
— have discussed al Fuqra's activities. Pierre's very real
participation in the al Fuqra plot to rip off the state of Colorado
is what made his arrest this year possible: Because of his 1993
felony conviction, federal law bars him from buying firearms, yet
this is precisely what he tried to do at a gun store near Red House
by having his wife make a "straw purchase" on his behalf.
Al Fuqra's
activities may be small-scale compared to those of al Qaeda, but
there is evidence linking the two groups. According to Gallagher,
one of the men who assisted al Fuqra in monitoring the murdered
imam in 1989 was Wadih el-Hage, an al Qaeda member sentenced to
life in prison this October for his role in the 1998 embassy bombings.
Pierre and
his wife won't be sentenced until April 5, and there's reason to
think that others who live in the Red House compound continue to
stockpile illegal weapons. On December 3, another Red House man,
Bilal Abdullah Ben Benu, was indicted on federal firearms charges.
Some have questioned
why the Bush administration wants to detain and prosecute people
like Pierre and Benu, who have no apparent connection to the events
of September 11. But the alternative to charging them with relatively
minor crimes is to wait and see if they commit major ones later,
and to catch them afterwards — if we can, and when it's too
late.
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