Leland Yee is accused of “conspiring with an undercover FBI agent posing as a Mafia gangster to purchase up to $2.5 million in weapons from a source with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines.” But the Moro Islamic Liberation Front “is not among the 56 foreign terrorist organizations designated by the U.S. State Department, although its three-decade reign of terror, including bombings, kidnappings and killings of civilians mirror other designated groups.” So therefore Yee is not a supporter of terrorism, even though he would have been helping finance a bloody jihad in the Philippines. Such are the wonders of Washington’s arbitrary and myopic designation of terror groups.
“Why did state Sen. Leland Yee escape terrorism charges?,” by Matthias Gafni for the Contra Costa Times, April 4:
Shocking enough are the allegations that a long-perceived unassuming state senator tried brokering an international arms deal with military-style rifles and rocket launchers, but Leland Yee may have narrowly escaped an even more ominous label: supporter of terrorism.
Yee, whose arrest after an FBI undercover sting shook the California political world last week, would likely have been charged with aiding terrorists if not for a bureaucratic label missing from the militant Filipino group that he is accused of sourcing for an international arms deal, counterterrorism experts told this newspaper.
His ties to the group, whose leader has said he personally met with Osama Bin Laden, are spelled out in a 137-page affidavit. It accuses Yee and two associates of conspiring with an undercover FBI agent posing as a Mafia gangster to purchase up to $2.5 million in weapons from a source with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines.
The group is not among the 56 foreign terrorist organizations designated by the U.S. State Department, although its three-decade reign of terror, including bombings, kidnappings and killings of civilians mirror other designated groups.
Groups identified as terrorist organizations cannot legally receive financial support, services, training or any assistance from U.S. residents, among other restrictions.
The State Department designates groups every two years based on a combination of factors, including intelligence, input from the U.S. Embassy in the host country and the stated goals of the organizations.
“If (the Filipino group) were a designated terrorist group (Yee) would be subject to prosecution,” said Michael Kraft, former senior adviser for the State Department counterterrorism office and co-author of 1996 legislation creating laws against supporting terrorist groups.
Yee could have still been charged with material support to an undesignated group if the FBI found Yee intended to help the terrorists or if the money went to a specific act of terrorism, but the sting never went that far.
A spokeswoman with the law firm of Yee’s new attorney, Jim Lassart, said he had no comment.
The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment Friday. The office announced the indictment Friday of Yee and 28 other defendants arrested following a five-year FBI investigation. The indictment formalizes the allegations the government outlined against Yee in the affidavit.
Yee was charged with corruption, wire fraud and conspiracy to traffic arms. A terrorism charge would carry a 15-year sentence or life if a death could be linked to the aid. Yee faces a five-year sentence for gun trafficking.
On March 27 — the day after Yee’s arrest — the Philippines government signed a peace accord with the leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the country’s largest separatist group.
The group — which has reportedly had ties with al-Qaida and two designated terrorist groups in the Philippines — may have only been kept off the State Department list so as not to disturb those peace talks, said Joseph Felter, a senior research fellow with Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.
“In the United States, ever since post-9/11, many folks have wanted to put (the Moro Islamic Liberation Front) as a designated terrorist group,” said Felter, who has worked with the Philippines military on security issues.
Kathi Austin, executive director of the Conflict Awareness Project and an internationally recognized arms trafficking expert, said it’s clear to her the feds were chasing possible terrorism charges, continually asking Yee to talk about the Filipino group. And Yee, according to the affidavit, did not disappoint.
At a March 5 meeting with the undercover agent, Yee explained how Mindanao, a southern island of the Philippines, was largely populated by Muslim rebel groups, including the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which had many factions. The state senator told the agent Muslims in Mindanao had access to a lot of money and were financed by Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi before his death, according to the complaint.
A week later, the agent asked Yee about the proposed peace treaty and Yee said the Philippines government was secretly funding some of the groups in an effort to distract people from government corruption. Yee said factions within the terrorist group didn’t agree with the treaty and that those elements had no problem “kidnapping individuals, killing individuals and extorting them for ransom,” according to the complaint.
Yee reportedly told the agent he took an “agnostic” stance on the weapons deal: “People want to get whatever they want to get. Do I care? No, I don’t care. People need certain things,” he is quoted as saying.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front has been linked to 30 years of brutality, including the Maguindanao massacre in November 2009, when armed men kidnapped and killed 58 people, including a politician, his wife, two sisters, journalists, lawyers and aides.
On the four-year anniversary, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines-USA Chapter held a commemoration in Carson to honor the 32 journalists killed and a Yee aide read a statement on the state senator’s behalf: “Let us never forget the ultimate sacrifice that these journalists made for the public good.”
Just a few months later, authorities say Yee brokered a deal with the terrorist group linked to that attack.
But the Moro Islamic Liberation Front remains off the terror list. And because of that and the evidence in the complaint, “there’s really no chance of a terrorism-related charge,” said Gregory McNeal, an associate law professor at Pepperdine University School of Law and expert in national security law.
It’s not enough that prosecutors prove Yee knew his support would benefit terrorism; they would need to prove Yee intended for the gun money to further the terrorists’ goals, he said.
“Intent requires him to act with the goal or conscious object to bring about the terrorist end,” McNeal wrote in an e-mail. “So to prove that, you would need evidence along the lines of ‘I’m really hoping we can buy these weapons so they can use the money to successfully attack the government.'”
jewdog says
Yee Ha! What hypocrisy from Mr. Gun Control.
Say, doesn’t the 2nd amendment refer to US militias and not Fillipino jihadists militias? Maybe he misunderstood…
Shane says
Yes is a traitor and an supporter of Islamic jihad. He should be deported after serving his sentence. Let him join the jihad in the Phillipines, if he wants, but get him out of the USA.
EYESOPEN says
I concur.
MAKAYA says
This is April Fools, right? Right?
Saleem Smith says
Mr.Lee is lucky that he is NOT a Mohammedan believer OPPOSED to jihad warfare.
If he were a Mohammedan believer opposed to jihad warfare, he would likely be put to death by another Mohammedan believer for being opposed to jihad warfare and being the pubic figure that he is.
We ex-Muslims living with Islam’s formal and informal death penalty for apostasy know that any Mohammedan believer opposed to jihad ware is a brazenly disobedient Muslim deserving of death according to Islamic theology and law.
Islam’s canonical texts (the Quran, hadith and sira) record that Muhammad the mad prophet of Islam instructed his followers to kill those Muslim that attempt to leave the fold of Islam.
The 164 jihad verses in the Quran make jihad warfare a central tenet of the Islamic creed.
At least 75% of the Sira (biographies of Muhammad and quotes attributed to him) is about jihad.
The largest part of the Islamic texts (the Qur’an, hadith and sira) relate to the treatment of unbelievers, kafirs. Approximately 67% of the Qur’an written in Mecca is about the unbelievers, or politics. Of the Qur’an of Medina, 51% is devoted to the unbelievers.
Mohammed preached his religion for 13 years and garnered only 150 followers. But when he turned to politics and war, in 10 years time he became the first ruler of Arabia by averaging an event of violence every 7 weeks for 9 years. His success did not come as a religious leader, but as a political leader.
Political Islam asks: What is the real jihad? The jihad of inner spiritual struggle, or the jihad of war?
Statistical analysis of the Bukhari hadith (considered by Muslims to be the most authentic of the hadith collections) show that Muhammad repeatedly speaks of jihad. In Bukhari, 97% of the jihad references are about war, and 3% are about the inner struggle. So the statistical answer is that jihad is 97% war and 3% inner struggle.
There are 146 references to Hell in the Qur’an. Only 6% of those in Hell are there for moral failings ” murder, theft, etc. The other 94% of the reasons for being in Hell are for the intellectual sin of disagreeing with Mohammed, a political crime.
Islam is no “religion of peace”. Islam is primarily a religion of “injustice, intolerance, hatred, and violence.” The fact is, if we non-Muslims were to say about Muslims what the Quran says about us, we would be arrested for hate speech. The Quran largely preaches discrimination, death, and imposition of its dogma on everyone. Certainly some Muslims will be offended by such statements, but frankly, so what? Judaism and Christianity, the world’s two other major monotheistic religions, have had to face the harshest of scrutiny and criticism for several hundred years which continues to this day. Islam must not be granted any special privileges or be exempt from such treatment – the implications are of tremendous importance.
Here is a recent statement from a group of Bangladeshi apostates living in the UK explaining the reasons why they have abandoned Islam:
“One who claims to be a messenger of God is expected to live a saintly life. He must not be given to lust, he must not be a sexual pervert, and he must not be a rapist, a highway robber, a war criminal, a mass murderer or an assassin. One who claims to be a messenger of God must have a superior character. He must stand above the vices of the people of his time. Yet Muhammad’s life is that of a gangster godfather. He raided merchant caravans, looted innocent people, massacred entire male populations and enslaved the women and children. He raped the women captured in war after killing their husbands and told his followers that it is okay to have sex with their captives (Quran 33:50). He assassinated those who criticized him and executed them when he came to power and became de facto despot of Arabia. Muhammad was bereft of human compassion. He was an obsessed man with his dreams of grandiosity and could not forgive those who stood in his way…
The statement continues,
Muhammad was a narcissist, like Hitler, Saddam or Stalin. He was astute and knew how to manipulate people, but his emotional intelligence was less evolved than that of a 6-year-old child. He simply could not feel the pain of others. He brutally massacred thousands of innocent people and pillaged their wealth. His ambitions were big and as a narcissist he honestly believed he is entitled to do as he pleased and commit all sorts of crimes and his evil deeds are justified.”
Mazo says
And here JW is obfuscating again. The reason MILF is not on the terror list, is because the Philippine government does not have them on their terror list and openly signed a peace agreement with them, not because Washington is being arbitrary. Why would Washington DC blacklist them as terrorists if the Philippine government is openly negotiating them them and doesn’t have them on their terrorist list?
Does Washington have the provisional IRA on their terror list, now that they signed a peace agreement with Britain?
I busted JW for falsely attributing the MNLF and BIFF’s actions to the MILF, and JW as of now has still not made corrections and redacted its false claims.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/03/robert-spencer-in-frontpage-mag-leland-yee-an-anti-gun-democrat-jihadists-can-love/comment-page-1#comment-1029178
JihadWatch and Frontpage Mag caught in the act of lying-
“”That’s the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the Islamic group in that wants to establish an Islamic state in the southern Philippines, and to that end last September took over four Christian towns, terrorizing the residents and murdering six, wounding 24, and murdered six more people in a restaurant bombing last summer””
WRONG. It was the MNLF, Moro NATIONAL liberation front which took over the four towns, and it was the BIFF (Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters) which did the restaurant bombing. NOT the MILF, which the Philippine gov is signing a peace deal with.
I sincerely hope you learn to read before humiliating yourself like this
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/09/philippines-muslim-group-takes-over-four-villages-takes-38-hostages
“MANILA, Philippines (4th UPDATE) “” At least 100 suspected members of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) have taken over 4 barangays in Zamboanga City Monday, September 9, Mayor Maria Isabelle “Beng” Climaco told Rappler.”
And again, BIFF did the restaurant bomb.
http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2013/08/02/1041781/biff-linked-cdo-blast
MILF, MNLF, and BIFF are seperate groups. MILF and MNLF in fact engage in clashes against each other, and BIFF split from MILF because they opposed the peace deal.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/03/california-state-senator-leland-yee-offered-to-set-up-arms-deal-with-islamic-jihadists-for-2-million-in-cash/comment-page-1#comment-1028795
Palomino says
“And here JW is obfuscating again… “—
Cool projection, bro! Even if the Philippines doesn’t have them on a terror list -hard to believe & you didn’t provide any official link to a Philippino gov. site to begin with- that doesn’t mean they are not terrorist, many governments around the world don’t even have any terror lists to begin with.
Keep defending the undefendable and denying the undeniable, keep trying to hide the sun with your pinky
duh_swami says
Mazo…You seem to spend a lot of time, hanging on every Spencer word, looking for any irregularity you can spot, or think you spot. Do you have a job, or do you do this full time? Who pays you > Danios of Loonwatch? Nathan Lean? Reza Aslan? CAIR? Well, no matter who is paying you, you are way overpaid.
mileaway says
WHAT?!! Hang this fker at dawn on a Traitors Rope!!!
Michael Copeland says
Track record is what shows a group’s terrorist nature. Designation by the U.S. Government comes after that record is shown, not before. It took the government years, and a huge trail of bloody slaughters, burnings, and bombings, to designate the “People…. etc. for Jihad” in Nigeria as a terrorist organisation. The tainted media prefer to use their nickname Boko Haram, “Books, him bad”, which conveniently obscures their Islamic identity. That group has been terrorist for years: the terrorism did not suddenly start when the official designation was eventually made.
MrSquat says
Is this guy Uighur?
Kepha says
@Mr. Squat: Leland Yee isn’t Uighur at all. The last name is purely Sinitic rather than Turkic; and I don’t this that Yee is Muslim at all. His heritage is from Taishan County, Guangdong, which is the place to which a very disproportionate number of Chinese-Americans trace their roots. Even as late as the 1990’s, Taishan and three other counties in Guangdong accounted for roughly 50% of the immigrant visa caseload at AmConsul Guangzhou (where I served). The most noteworthy thing about Taishan County is that the dialect is something like Cantonese, but sufficiently different that it’s not completely comprehensible in Guangzhou.
If you want an Uighur name, look at Wu’er Kaixi (伍尔凯西Chinese transliteration of Uerkesh–a name that is probably older Turkic than Islamic). And I’ve heard a rumor that since settling in Taiwan and marrying, he’s become a Christian. In any case, you can see that Wu’er Kaxi’s name is nothing like a standard Chinese name.
Mazo says
Many non-Muslim Chinese in Mindanao and Sulu have been historically sympathetic to the Moro cause, albeit the Chinese over their are Hokkien, and not from Taishan. They used to fight alongside Moros against the Spanish, doing gun running for the Moros and advising the Sulu Sultan.
The former Moro Governor of ARRM (Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao), Abdusakur Tan, himself is of Chinese Hokkien descent whose ancestors married with the Moros and converted to Islam.
The Sulu Sultanate royal family itself has relatives in Dezhou in Shandong province, descended from Sulu Princes who were left in China during a tribute mission to the Ming dynasty. Sulu Sultanate was a protectorate of Ming and Qing China.
Kepha says
Thanks for the info, Mazo. I know that Zheng Chenggong planned to drive the Spaniards out of Luzon as he had driven the Dutch from Taiwan back in the 1660’s, but died before he could carry out that ambition.
Do you have a bibliography on connections between Chinese Muslims and those in the Philippines? I will accept titles in Chinese as well as in English, because I read Chinese decently enough.
Mazo says
There is nothing comprehensive as a whole exclusively on Chinese-Moro ties, it is bits of information scattered in many different books on either the history of the Sulu Sultanate in general or other topics.
Go look up articles about “Shandong” + “Sulu” or “Qing” + “Sulu” or “Ming” + “Sulu” on the internet in Mandarin and you can find articles easily enough. Sulu Sultanate is 苏禄苏丹国 and you know how to write Shandong, Qing, Ming, etc.
The Sulu Sultan (claimant to the throne) himself visited Shandong.
As for English works, Samuel Tan is a Moro historian of Chinese descent, but as far as I’m aware he never wrote anything exclusively about China-Moro ties.
The Sulu Zone, 1768-1898 by James Francis Warren
Migration, Indigenization and Interaction: Chinese Overseas and Globalization
Muslims in the Philippines by Dr. Cesar Majul.
State and Society in the Philippines
By P. N. Abinales, Donna J. Amoroso
http://www.zamboangatimes.ph/zamboangatimes/top-news/1602-tausug-team-to-visit-china-to-renew-ancient-ties.html
http://alqalam.addu.edu.ph/sulu-treaties/
If you want to comprehensively look at Moro history, read all of Samuel Tan and Cesar Majul’s works (I have not done this). Majul mentioned something about Hui people accompanying the first Muslim Sultan of Sulu, but after that initial event, all the Chinese in Sulu are non-Muslim, all the Chinese who appeared in and supported the Sulu Sultanate are non-Muslims.
Go email a history professor in the Philippines if you have any questions. I don’t know if Majul and Tan are actively teaching now.
They must have contacts, email them and ask for a Professor’s contact.
http://www.msumain.edu.ph/
kikorikid says
I’m guessing he is a San Fran Fruit looper.
Anthony Rose says
Spencer, please don’t forget to mention the Philippines government negotiations with the Moro Islamic radicals, in search of a lasting peace, because according to your worldview this should be impossible since Muslims are destining by outside forces for war, regardless of empirical facts disproving your grandiose claims of Muslim evil for evils sake.
Anne Sardine says
It is the Koran, not Robert Spencer, that destines muslims for war:
“Fight them and kill them until Islam is the only governance” (8:39)
duh_swami says
There is no such thing as an Islamic radical. And just because the frustrated gov is negotiating for a lasting peace, does not mean they are going to get it.
It’s not Spencer’s world view, it is jihad and it is sunnah as described and demanded in Quran, Sira, Sunnah and Sharia. The evils of Islam are visible, observable and reported on. Your protests are weak and not to bright.
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
I’m surprised to hear that the mujahadin are still murdering Infidels in the Philippines. Manila gave them a big island in the south in the hope that this would sate their urge for Sharia. Apparently that plan, which sold millions of Infidels into dhimmitude, didn’t work out. And why is this gun control bureaucrat sending them weapons money from Cal, shouldn’t it be flowing in from Tehran, Jidda or Abu Dhabi?
duh_swami says
I doubt Yee cared much if he was aiding jihad and terrorists. He’s just greedy.
Greedy people compromise their own standards all the time, which means they basically have no standards. California must be setting records electing greedy people with low or no standards to political office. Yee is just happened to get caught.