He wanted hand grenades and mines for use in turf wars by street gangs. Uh-huh. I expect that mines and grenades are a staple of gang wars in St. Louis, Missouri. Could he have had more than just street gangs in mind? “Man was arming for ‘war,’ FBI says,” by Robert Patrick in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, with thanks to Michael:
A St. Charles man obtained fully automatic weapons and tried to buy as many explosives as possible in preparation for what an associate called “war,” the FBI says in court documents.
He bought three rifles and a Claymore anti-personnel mine and negotiated for a case of hand grenades, documents obtained by the Post-Dispatch show.
Mousa M. Abuelawi, 22, of Franjoe Court, was arrested Dec. 29 and charged on complaints accusing him of three counts of illegal possession or distribution of a machine gun and conspiracy to violate machine gun statutes.
Abuelawi, a Palestinian immigrant free on $50,000 bond, could not be reached. His brother declined to comment on his behalf. His lawyers, Scott Rosenblum and Gil Sison, did not return calls.
The context of the word “war” was not explained in court filings; the FBI declined to comment.
The man to whom the word was attributed, Thaer Abde Sumad, said in an interview Thursday that the purchases were not intended for terrorism but to make money supplying street gangs in a St. Louis turf war….
Sumad suggested that he and Abuelawi attracted special attention because of the sound of their names and their Arab ethnicity….
The FBI thinks it’s a “terrorist thing,” Sumad said, “especially after 9/11. They’re trying to make it bigger than what it is.”
Sumad said Abuelawi was “trying to make a few extra bucks.”