One more suspected jihadist (at least) is still out there, and meanwhile we are hearing about what a decent fellow Daniel Boyd is. North Carolina Jihad Plot Update: “Accused North Carolina Terror Plot Leader: Jihadist … or Regular Family Man?,” from FoxNews, July 28 (thanks to Axel):
Authorities say Daniel Boyd is a veteran terrorist who trained at camps in Pakistan and was the ringleader of a North Carolina-based group of men who sought to wage “violent jihad.”
But Boyd’s wife says her husband is not a homegrown terrorist — he’s a good family man, a father who cares about people.
“We’re an ordinary family. We have the right to justice, and we believe that justice will prevail,” Sabrina Boyd said Tuesday in a prepared statement. “We are decent people who care about other human beings.”
Two of the Boyds’ sons also are charged in the terrorism conspiracy case, and their mother defended them too.
“Just because something is said in the media does not make it so,” she said. “I have raised my sons to be good people, and we are a good family.”
Sabrina Boyd denied her husband trained at terror camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan 20 years ago, as the government charges, and asked the public to refrain from “a rush to judgment,” FOX’s WRAL reported.
Instead, she says, Boyd was in Afghanistan fighting against the Soviet Union “with the full backing of the United States government.”
And who was the U.S. government backing at the time? The mujahedin.
Also Tuesday, the feds said an eighth member of the alleged network is still at large….
Boyd, his two sons and four other men living in North Carolina are accused of military-style training at home and plotting jihad abroad, federal authorities said. They were arrested Monday.
Neighbors have said the Boyds showed no sign of violence and were often seen walking their dog around the lakeside cul-de-sac in a rural area south of Raleigh.
Officials say Boyd lived in an unassuming lakeside home in a rural area south of Raleigh, where he and his family walked their dog and operated a drywall business.
“They were great neighbors. We never had any trouble with them. Their kids played with our kids,” Heather Roegner told WYFF4 in North Carolina.
Jim Stephenson, a neighbor of Patrick Boyd in Willow Spring, said he saw the Boyd family walking their dog in the neighborhood. He said the indictment shocked the residents.
“We never saw anything to give any clues that something like that could be going on in their family,” Stephenson said.
The indictment says the unnamed defendant is a U.S. citizen who went to Pakistan in October 2008 to “engage in violent jihad.” It does not say whether the person returned to the United States. Holding declined to discuss the person’s whereabouts but said the public should not be worried.
Court records indicate Boyd was a veteran of terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan who fought against the Soviet Union.
“These charges hammer home the point that terrorists and their supporters are not confined to the remote regions of some far-away land but can grow and fester right here at home,” U.S. Attorney George E.B. Holding said.
The seven men are charged with providing material support to terrorism. If convicted, they could face life in prison.
The indictment said Boyd, a U.S. citizen, trained in Afghanistan and fought there between 1989 and 1992 before returning to the United States. Court documents charged that Boyd, also known as ‘Saifullah,’ encouraged others to engage in jihad.
Boyd’s faith was so brash that, this year, he stopped attending worship services in the Raleigh area and instead began meeting for Friday prayers in his home.
“This is not an indictment of the entire Muslim community,” Holding said. “These people had broken away because their local mosque did not follow their vision of being a good Muslim.”
Good. Now what else is being done in that mosque and other mosques to teach against the jihad doctrine and Islamic supremacism?
In 1991, Boyd and his brother were convicted of bank robbery in Pakistan “” accused of carrying identification showing they belonged to the radical Afghan guerrilla group, Hezb-e-Islami, or Party of Islam.
They were each sentenced to have a foot and a hand cut off for the robbery, but the sentenced was later overturned.
In accord with Qur’an 5:33 and 5:38.
The wives of the men told The Associated Press in an interview at the time they were glad the truth about their husbands had finally become known. The wives said the couples had U.S. roots but the United States was a country of “kafirs” “” Arabic for heathens.
Two of the suspects are Boyd’s sons: Zakariya Boyd, 20 and Dylan Boyd, 22. The others are Anes Subasic, 33; Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan, 22; and Ziyad Yaghi, 21.
Hysen Sherifi, 24, a native of Kosovo and a U.S. legal permanent also was charged in the case. He was the only person arrested who was not a U.S. citizen.
The suspects face charges of providing material support to terrorism and “conspiracy to murder, kidnap, maim and injure persons abroad.”…
Prosecutors say Boyd’s time in Pakistan included terrorist training that he brought back to North Carolina, where over the past three years he recruited followers willing to die as martyrs waging jihad. Prosecutors would not detail what the group was targeting overseas.
The indictment said they provided money, training, transportation and men to help terrorists. Boyd and some of the others traveled to Israel in June 2007 intending to wage “violent jihad,” but returned home without success, the document said.
Boyd also was accused of trying to raise money last year to fund others’ travel overseas to fight. One of the men, Hysen Sharifi, allegedly went to Kosovo to engage in violent jihad, according to the indictment, but it’s unclear if he did any actual fighting.