At least Aldawsari has the satisfaction of knowing that he tied up the Infidel’s resources and made him spend a good deal of money on this frivolous appeal, and that in itself is a kind of jihad. “Conviction upheld in Saudi student Texas bomb plot,” by Michael Graczyk for the Associated Press, January 24 (thanks to Bill):
HOUSTON (AP) — A federal appeals court has upheld the conviction of a former Texas college student from Saudi Arabia sentenced to life in prison for trying to make a bomb for use in a religious attack that possibly was targeting former President George W. Bush.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday rejected an appeal from Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, 23. A federal court jury in Amarillo in June 2012 convicted him of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.
Prosecutors said Aldawsari, serving his life term at a federal prison in Terra Haute, Ind., had collected bomb-making material in his Lubbock apartment and researched possible targets, including Bush’s Dallas home, the Cotton Bowl, Hoover Dam and “people of New York,” according to the trial transcript.
Aldawsari’s lawyers contended in their appeal before the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit that the trial judge improperly allowed evidence, gave invalid jury instructions and erred in calculating Aldawsari’s sentence….
Aldawsari was arrested in February 2011 after the FBI searched his computer and apartment for evidence under terms of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows such searches if there’s probable cause the offender is an “agent of a foreign power.” The appeal contended the search involving Aldawsari wasn’t valid because there was no evidence of any foreign power’s involvement.
But a three-judge panel of the appeals court said “protection of the nation against terrorist threats” made the search proper under a provision of the act.
Attorneys also argued Aldawsari never completed the bomb but had made “mere preparations,” meaning a single sentence in the jury instruction referring to the crime of attempt was invalid. The court said the reference in the appeal was taken out of context and the instruction as a whole was correct.
In addition, the appeal said the sentence was too severe. While the punishment was the maximum the trial judge could impose, “we do not find the district court abused its discretion,” the appeals panel said.
Aldawsari arrived in the U.S. legally in 2008 to study chemical engineering. A handwritten journal found in his apartment included notes that he believed it was time for “jihad,” a Muslim term for holy war.
Naaah. As Hamas-linked CAIR would have us believe, that just means he was on his way to the gym.
Federal agents also found explosive chemicals, wiring, a hazmat suit and clocks, along with videos showing how to make the chemical explosive TNP.
At his trial, his attorneys claimed he was a harmless failure who never came close to attacking anyone.
He told U.S. District Court Judge Donald E. Walter at his sentencing hearing in November 2012 he was lonely and isolated from family, friends and faith.
The poor guy! Imagine how isolated his victims and their families would have been if his jihad mass murder plot had come to fruition.
“I am sorry for these bad actions, but none of these bad actions did harm to the United States,” Aldawsari said.
FBI bomb experts say the amounts of chemicals he had would have yielded almost 15 pounds of explosive, about the same amount used per bomb in the 2005 London subway attacks….
Aldawsari had transferred from Texas Tech in early 2011 to nearby South Plains College, where he was studying business. A Saudi industrial company was paying his tuition and living expenses in the U.S.

miriam rove says
action of a few according to cair, right?m
mortimer says
Let ALL these would be jihadists go practice jihad on each other on a DEVIL’S ISLAND for JIHADISTS ONLY! Put jihad warriors … Shi’ites, Sunnis and Alawites, Salafis, Wahhabis… all together with no hope of escape and let them show the world the TRUE MEANING OF JIHAD!
No doubt they will produce the BEST gymnasiums and FLORAL ARRANGEMENTS on Jihadist Devil’s Island that the world has EVER SEEN!
Thomas Wells says
You got to wonder a bit about this. A “Saudi industrial company ” was footing the bill. He was initially studying chemical engineering. Phenol is not that hard to make. Is this guy a “lone Wolf”; or maybe a “red herring”?
gravenimage says
Thomas Wells wrote:
You got to wonder a bit about this. A “Saudi industrial company ” was footing the bill. He was initially studying chemical engineering. Phenol is not that hard to make. Is this guy a “lone Wolf”; or maybe a “red herring”?
……………………………………..
Why would you doubt this? Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi; Saudi Arabia has a long history of exporting Jihad. The evidence for his Jihad plotting seems overwhelmingly conclusive.
And the term “Lone Wolf” is pretty meaningless when it comes to Jihadists. Not every one of them is backed by Al-Qaeda or a specific Muslim government, but they are *all* backed by Islam.
More, from the article:
He told U.S. District Court Judge Donald E. Walter at his sentencing hearing in November 2012 he was lonely and isolated from family, friends and faith.
……………………………………..
*Good grief*. Lots of university students feel homesick or lonely at times—how many of them respond to that loneliness by plotting attacks on the home of former presidents, on major sporting events, on national landmarks, and on the people of their host country’s greatest city?
Only pious Mohammedans…
Thomas wells says
I don’t doubt the guy was a jihadist. The term “red herring” means to make a distraction. Maybe the guy was a “sacrificial wolf’so the FBI could claim victory and not look around anymore. Then the real units would have more freedom of action.
dumbledoresarmy says
After Iraq’s “Doctor Germ”, and Aafia Siddiqui of Pakistan, and that bloke A Q Khan was it? – who stole all those nuke plans and took them back to Pakistan, and now this bloke…you’d think perhaps infidel countries would figure out that it is NOT a good idea to admit Muslims into non-Muslim countries to “study”. Time to stop letting these dangerous “students” in, no matter how much they pay in student fees. Even if they *don’t* do what this bloke was planning to do, they will take back home to the Ummah HQ all sorts of things – knowledge of
chemicals, explosives, biological agents, etc and so forth – that may end up coming back at us in deadly forms.
END ‘student visas’ for foreign Muslims. Let’s keep them out of the USA, Canada, Australia, France, Britain, wherever. It’s far too dangerous, far too great a risk.
This bloke was essentially a Fifth Columnist. He may not have been formally signed up with the Saudi Arabian army; he may not have been, officially, a spy in the pay of the Abominable House of Saud; but he was a “soldier of allah”, a card-carrying member of the Ummah or Allah Gang, the transnational Mohammedan Mob. *That* Mob is the “foreign power” of which he was and is an agent.
JessieJames says
I agree DDA, but there seems to be no logical way to stop the insanity of allowing them into the country and go to our schools to learn how to make the bombs they will ultimately use against us. They answer is really very simple, if they are muslim, they are the enemy. Would the U.S. have let the Japanese into this country at the close of the war the way they are letting muslims in now?
dumbledoresarmy says
The correct wording of your question would be – “Would the U.S. have let the Japanese into this country in 1942-1944 the way they are letting muslims in now?”
LemonLime says
The problem is that we are not going to rationally limit immigration — even of a small sub-section of suspect Muslims (except for a tiny 0.000001% of wild-eyed bearded jihadists) — for many more years to come. What should have already been done years ago, will likely not get done for many more years (if not decades) in the future; in the meantime, a few million more Muslims will infiltrate into the West. In this realistic context, the prospect and recommendation of Limiting (or even Stopping) Immigration of Muslims is only to Close the Barn Door After the Wolves Have Gotten In.
What to do with all those millions of wolves inside the barn? No, we should agitate only for one policy: total deportation. The West will come around to this — because Muslims are metastasizing and will perpetrate horrific attacks on us in the coming decades. The only question is when, not if. The sooner the West does this, the less costly, less messy, and less bloody the process will be. We canaries in the coalmine, we in the Counter-Jihad, at the flickering candle of a spearpoint of public persuasion in the “battle space of the war of ideas” (as Frank Gaffney has aptly put it) must press for the best and most rational policy, rather than push for incoherent and distracting peripherals that will only tend to serve to slow us down and encumber us in distractions (including the counter-productive and fantasy-based hypothesis that we can sufficiently distinguish Dangerous Muslims from Harmless Muslims) in the near future by fostering the erroneous conclusion that this problem of Muslims metastasizing can be solved by anything other than total deportation.
Closing the barn door—not after the horse has got out, but after the wolves have got in.
http://hesperado.blogspot.com/2009/10/closing-barn-doornot-after-horse-has.html
Jackson L. Forney says
Test