This weepy creepy puff piece from the Miami Herald presents Harlem Suarez, who hoped to commit mass murder with a jihad bomb on a Key West beach, as an innocent naif with only a glancing connection to reality, victimized in an entrapment scheme by “Islamophobic” FBI agents. The persistent problem with these claims of entrapment is that no blandishments, no matter how appealing, could get an ordinary person to agree to commit mass murder. One already would have to have the frame of mind of a murderous jihadi to be susceptible to such “entrapment” in the first place, and Harlem Suarez clearly was in that frame of mind.
“Where FBI sees terrorist, Keys family sees naive young man,” by Cammy Clark, Miami Herald, August 7, 2015:
On July 27, news spread quickly around the country that the FBI had just busted another home-grown terrorist inspired by Islamic extremists, this time a 23-year-old Cuban immigrant who bought a backpack “timer bomb” for $100 with plans to blow up, of all places, a sandy beach in Key West.
Residents and visitors of the tourist town were shocked — and relieved that the mastermind of such evil was caught in time and now behind bars, facing life in prison for attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.
The FBI touted the arrest as foiling another terrorist plot on U.S. soil. But for family, friends and past co-workers of the alleged terrorist, who lives with his parents in a modest apartment on nearby Stock Island, reaction was utter disbelief: “Harlem? A terrorist? No way.”
They say the Harlem Suarez they know is a non-confrontational, happy-go-lucky, hard worker who literally could not hurt even an ant and has the mental aptitude of about a 12-year-old.
He struggles with English and is easily manipulated, eager to please and believes just about everything he sees on TV or the Internet.
Zombies? He believes they are real. Ditto for vampires, werewolves and the blue Smurf comic characters.
He recently watched a show about God being celestial and misinterpreted it to mean God was an extraterrestrial, Suarez’s mother, Vilma Quintana Suarez, said in Spanish through an interpreter. She said she told him he was mixing up his English: “God is not an alien, son. God is the heavenly father. Son, don’t watch the news.”
Suarez’s recent flirtation with the rhetoric of Islamic terrorist organizations — including the existence of his Facebook page under the alias Almlak Benitez that featured postings of pro-ISIL videos with beheadings, according to the FBI — was a surprise to most of his family and friends.
But, they added, “Islamic State sympathizer” most likely was just another of Suarez’s harmless phases.
In the past couple of years he has gone through stages when he has wanted to be black, Mexican, Puerto Rican, a gangster, a vampire, a werewolf, a race boat driver and Key West’s drug kingpin.
“Everyone who knows Harlem knows how he is,” said ex-girlfriend Diane, who wanted her last name to remain anonymous. “Harlem can be anything in his mind. But what he is not is a terrorist or a criminal. He is all talk. And as my friend told the FBI agent, Harlem doesn’t have the balls to do it.”
For all of Suarez’s tough talk among friends, all he has to show on his rap sheet are 24 traffic violations, for offenses ranging from speeding to not wearing eyewear while driving one of his two red and white Yamaha motorcycles….
On Thursday Suarez was indicted for allegedly attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempted provision of material support to a known terrorist group, for creation of an ISIL — also known as ISIS — recruiting video in a Homestead hotel. The second lesser offense is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Family and friends say the FBI took advantage of a gullible young man with a boy’s mentality, ensnaring him in a questionable counterterrorism sting operation in which undercover employees encouraged Suarez to concoct the plan and then provided him with the inert bomb. One angry family friend told TV reporters camped out in front of the Suarez apartment that the real criminals are in Miami wearing suits and ties.
Suarez’s lawyer, Richard Della Fera, is planning to have his client undergo extensive mental health evaluations….
In April, the FBI had received a report from the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office, which had got a tip about the Facebook page of Almlak Benitez that espoused extremist rhetoric and was recruiting people to join the Islamic State of Iraq and ISIL. Posts included: “Be a warrior, learn how to cut your enemies head and then burn down the body learn how to be the new future of the world Caliphate.”
The FBI also found that on the Facebook page under Harlem Suarez’s real name, his “likes” included “Jihadist,” “Extraordinary Prayer for ISIS, and “Prayers for ISIS: Weapons of our Warfare.”
While the FBI began investing Suarez as a potential terrorist, a good friend and former co-worker of Suarez, who did not wish to be identified because he would lose his job, said when he heard about Suarez’s desire to “join the Muslims,” he saw it as just another phase.“He told me he wanted to be a Muslim so he could lose weight because he thought he was fat,” the friend said. “He must have seen a new diet that mentioned Muslims. But when I told him he couldn’t eat pork, which is a main part of a Cuban’s diet, he didn’t know that.”
Quintana, who wore a brown cross around her neck and raised her son Catholic, said that Suarez is “curious.”
Somehow, he went from wanting to be Muslim to lose weight to espousing hatred that his lawyer said was likely “cut and pasted” because his English is poor and he certainly does not know what “Caliphate” means.
Suarez also had an obsession with guns. The first time he tried to buy one, he was so nervous he dropped it on the display counter and broke the glass, one friend said. His attempt to buy an AK-47 fell through when he filled out paperwork wrong, according to the federal complaint.
Suarez did buy a Glock, according to Diane, who said he wanted it for protection because his sister had once been robbed in Miami. “And,” she added, “he wanted to be prepared for the zombie apocalypse. He also wanted us to buy canned food so when the world ends, we will have something to eat.”
Diane said she knew of only one time he fired the gun, at a driving range.
He fired a gun at a driving range? Were terrified golfers diving for cover? In reality, he probably fired a gun at a firing range, and this is a case of careless and inept writing.
After watching a YouTube skit involving President Barack Obama declaring martial law and all of California taking up arms against the government, he told another friend they had to start getting weapons ready. “He didn’t understand it was not real,” his friend said….
Jihad is real.
Friends and family have many stories about Suarez’s inability to hurt anything. His father said his son can’t even scale a fish and his mother said one time she swatted away an ant that was carrying a crumb and her son got upset. “He said that ant was working so hard to get that crumb of food.”
Friends say he once saved an injured pigeon and took it to the animal shelter for treatment and never shot at iguanas or got involved in cockfights, as many young men have done living in Key West.
So they couldn’t believe he really meant any of the violent things he told FBI undercover employees or wrote on the Internet, including: “One day I will cook American” … “In cages” … “Flaming.”..
Well, all right. But the Qur’an doesn’t say to wage jihad against ants or injured pigeons or iguanas.
john spielman says
poor Harlem, he has sold himself to the devil (allah) and he is no longer the harmless dimwitted, wouldn’t hurt a fly, happy go-lucky lad, but a potential mass murderer thief liar rapist and pedophile just like islam’s founder and “perfect man” muhammed pbuh*
pbuh* PERPETUAL BANISHMENT UNTO HELL
VRWC member77 says
*fbuh* …..FILTH BE UPON HIM
Shane says
He is now a rabid dog who should be put down before he slaughters innocents. He is infected with the jihad disease and the only cure is death.
Angemon says
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight…
mortimer says
Cammy Clark of Miami Herald sees Harlem Suarez as a naif, but what does Clark know about jihad?
Nothing whatsoever, I suspect. Otherwise, he wouldn’t consider jihad ‘harmless’.
Why do news editors send NAIVE journalists (like Clark) to write about Islam? Islam is a complex subject…much more complex than SPORTS or SCIENCE journalism
Islamic journalism takes an EXPERT to report it! Editors, are you LISTENING?
Westman says
This is an example of how the dangerous ideology contained in Islam is like an infecting virus that makes no differentiation between the competent or incompetent host. In this sense, Muslims really are victims of an ideology that was transferred from someone else and directs the host to infect, subjugate, or even kill them. It is more like a computer virus, altering the mental programming, rather than changing cellular level functions. There are Zombie-like symptoms such as group praying for Supremacism.
This young mentally-deficient is not fully responsible yet dangerous because of the programming. He needs to be in a mental institution and may never be recoverable. The war against jihadists can never be totally won without stopping the transfer of the virus. It may lie dormant for decades waiting for advantageous conditions.
Westman says
It may be that the disease of jihad runs in cycles; the last full-scale outbreak being terminated by the Crusades.
Modern communications, particularly electronic bulletin boards, internet video, browsing, texting, and biased news are the most likely methods of speading the virus in addition to the traditional Saudi-financed madrassas and mosque indoctrinations. The employment of these vectors has resulted in the current epidemic.
There has not yet been a coordinated response to jihad, equivalent to the Crusades. If history is a guide, it is a matter of time and irritation level. Hopefully, a more modern revised Islam may emerge after the hostilities.
mortimer says
RADICAL ISLAMIC CHIC is rampant among Muslim youth! So why are no teachers, social workers or police reporting it and trying to change it?
Westman says
Hi Mortimer,
I’m guessing that, like the national politicians, many think it’s just a phase that, if handled with appeasement gloves, will pass as the good ol’ boys become adults. Somehow they forget that wars are fought by young people directed by older men before they understand the issues.
Perhaps those adults that understand and agree with the ideology are quite willing to let the youth die for them, and those who disagree and understand the ideology are too frightened of losing their jobs, reputations, etc, when the larger society will punish them as Islamophobes for doing the right thing.
Gen. Billy Mitchel, father of the US Airforce, was demoted to Colonel and court-martialed for insubordination after accusing Army and Navy leaders of an “almost treasonable administration of the national defense….” After he was dead and proven quite correct he was awarded the rank of Major General.
Nobody seems to want to be a dead hero…
Beth says
If you support murderers – then you are one. Period.
mortimer says
All jihadists start as cheerleaders, then progress to being perpetrators.
Paladin says
This guy is the classic example of a useful idiot. Islam has a history of taking children, mental defects, handicapped and others with lesser faculties and using them as a vessel for their hatred. Some jihadi handler would have gladly pumped this guy up full of rhetoric and then had him walking into a Dolphins game with a suicide bomb strapped to his chest.
mortimer says
“HARMLESS”?
Jihad is harmless? 270 million deaths from jihad…harmless?
Ethel Mertz says
“Friends say he once saved an injured pigeon and took it to the animal shelter for treatment and never shot at iguanas or got involved in cockfights, as many young men have done living in Key West.”
Yes, and Hitler was an animal lover, vegetarian and artist.
This family is a special kind of stupid. If your adult child is known to be a mental midget with the mentality of a 12 year old, then why the hell would you let him buy a firearm!? Let alone even touch one!
Larry A. Singleton says
What’s unfortunate is that you have to take these entrapment charges seriously.
Read Mean Justice: A true account of a prosecutorial misconduct, power and betrayal by Edward Humes, The Innocent Man by John Grisham, and even though it’s a little slanted on the liberal side, Snitch: Informants, Cooperators & the Corruption of Justice by Ethan Brown and One Nation Under Arrest: How Crazy Laws, Rogue Prosecutors and Activist Judges Threaten Your Liberty by Reosenzweig & Walsh.
None of you will probably bother, but I suggest to people that if they don’t actually read the books to, at least, go to Amazon and read the Introduction to Taken Into Custody: The War against Fathers, Marriage and the Family by Stephen Baskerville to get a flavor of just how heartbreakingly out of control our “justice” system really is and for all veterans to watch Purple Heart’s Final Beat – A Soldier Suicide Story (You Tube video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_StCzStBy0
I also include with this book and video the suggestion to also read the Preface to The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men by Christina Hoff Sommers. (This is almost a “companion book” to my copy of Indoctrination U. by Horowitz.)
Followed by:
Plunder: How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation by Steven Greenhut
And also by the economic genocide aimed at dads through the totally corrupt Child Support and Family Law Courts.
As well as the other suggestions below.
Law enforcement in this country has gotten bone lazy. A perfect example is the problems in the black community with cops getting sued or actually arrested for doing their jobs. We’re probably gong to see that with president who instigates the black community to shoot cops is probably the last straw and things are going to get really bad… …for law abiding citizens.
Their hands are tied so naturally they’re going to apply their manpower in other directions like speed traps. And being under pressure to “make arrests” they go after the private citizen.
I’ve spent the better part of my almost sixty years going to city and county meetings and have personally witnessed the cops used as their personal goons to bully and intimidate those challenging their corrupt policies.
The FBI are probably even worse in this respect because they are in a state of utter confusion on the issue of “terror” and “Islam” so they to are going to get creative… …at the public’s expense.
We’ve already seen our justice, (Just Us), department in action with George Zimmerman and other political targets. They’ll do anything they can to get the numbers on their side, innocence be damned.
Jury Handbook
http://www.apfn.org/pdf/citizen.pdf
Battle for the California Desert: Better Homes and Gardens Gestapo/Code Enforcement (You Tube)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw3RiMdS7sE#t=46
The Man by Irving Wallace (The “Black” President we should have had.)
Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case by Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson (Another book explaining how our universities are totally out of control and taken over by liberal fascists.)
Vince Flynn’s “Term Limits” as a solution to our political problems.
Kelly File Special: Who’s Teaching Our Kids? Part I (and II thru VI)
Larry A. Singleton says
A good book to read too is Buried Secrets: A True Story of Serial Murder, Black Magic and Drug -Running on the U.S. Border by Edward Humes. These people BELIEVE this “black magic” nonsense.
Jack Holan says
VICTIMHOOD
MENTAL INCAPACITY
INSANITY
GOVERNMENT PLOT TO FRAME HIM
They always give arguments so easy to defeat. The 12 year old innocence & insanity is not very plausible if the Family let him buy and keep a real gun that could kill them or someone else. If he were truly in such a state with possession of lethal weapon call the police to remove the weapon from his possession.
Now, let think why the FBI would waste resources on this man without any merit just to make another victim. What’s in it for them Arresting him is only 1 step in the Judicial process and if this case has no merit it will be dropped and someone at the Bureau would need to justify the case. I don’t believe they have no evidence. As always any terror case seems to involve a claim of victim hood Muslim or not.
Uncle Vladdi says
Liberals are proof that retards can be dangerous.