An imam has been arrested in a terror sweep in France: “French anti-terrorist police detained seven people including the imam of a mosque in a series of dawn raids Tuesday targetting Islamic militant circles near the southeastern city of Lyon, police officials said.” This from AFP, with thanks to Nicolei.
In 1999, the Sufi Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani testified before a State Department Open Forum that 80% of the mosques in the U.S. were under the control of extremists. If he is anywhere close to correct, there could easily be imams in this country involved in the same sort of activity that got this one arrested in France.
“The swoop was conducted under a 2002 probe ordered by Paris anti-terrorist judges into a so-called ‘Chechen network’, in which Islamic radicals allegedly underwent terrorist training in camps in the Russian separatist republic of Chechnya and in Georgia in 2000 and 2001.
“Among those detained Tuesday was Chellali Benchellali, an imam who is the father of a man detained by the US authorities at the military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Benchellali has another son who was detained in France in 2002 on suspicion of planning attacks on Russian targets.”