Texas Jihad Update. “FBI agent describes group’s jihad plot: Photos show a Dallas student and 2 from Houston at weapons-training camps near Willis,” by Thomas Korosec in the Houston Chronicle, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:
DALLAS “” An FBI agent testified in federal court Friday that at least four aspiring jihadists conducted firearms training and discussed going to war against the United States on two weekend camping trips near Willis earlier this year.
“The group had discussions about traveling to Pakistan to engage (the) United States and coalition forces,” Special Agent John McKinley, who is assigned to an international counterterrorism squad in Houston, told a federal judge.
McKinley, testifying during a detention hearing for 19-year-old Syed Maaz Shah, described how the group conducted paramilitary training, fired high-powered guns such as AR-15s, and referred to themselves as mujahedeen, or Muslims involved in a fight or struggle.
The group included two Houston-area men who were arrested and charged earlier this week with conspiracy to aid the Taliban.
During the first weekend gathering, which began Jan. 13, Shah held up his passport, which shows he has traveled to Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan and Great Britain and asked the group “if they wanted to see the passport of a terrorist,” McKinley testified.
Shah, a sophomore electrical engineering student at the University of Texas at Dallas who lists Islam as his religion in several Web postings, lectured the group on jihad and criticized certain Islamic imams for “what he described as weak sermons on jihad,” the agent said. A second weekend training session began March 10.