Interfaith Group: FBI's $50,000 Reward to Capture Fugitive Northeastern Graduate Spotlights Boston's Extremist Networks

BOSTON, Oct. 5, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Dr. Charles Jacobs, President of Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), a Boston-based interfaith group, today praised the FBI for its recent issuance of a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Northeastern University alumnus and terrorist fugitive Ahmad Abousamra.

Jacobs said, "According to his indictment, Abousamra justified murdering civilians, as in the September 11, 2001 attacks because he believes such civilians were not innocent -- because they paid taxes to support the government and because they were Kufar (non-believers)."

Abousamra is charged with traveling to Pakistan and Yemen to seek military training so he could kill American soldiers, as well as conspiracy to provide material support to Al Qaeda. His co-conspirator in the case, Tarek Mehanna, a Sudbury Massachusetts native, was captured and sentenced to 17 years in prison on similar charges.

During Mehanna's trial, some of Boston's Muslim leaders openly encouraged their constituents to support him. A former Northeastern University Muslim Chaplain who gave sermons and organized demonstrations in his support was severed from the University in the aftermath of a video (www.shameonneu.com) that revealed the chaplains' defense of Mehanna.

"Indeed," said Jacobs, "Mehanna's supporters have built a large web presence among online extremists, who post messages like `Close Guantanamo Bay, Reopen Auschwitz' on `Free Mehanna' websites."

Jacobs said, "It is important to know that Ahmad Abousamra is intimately tied to Boston Islamist circles. He is the son of a former vice-president of the Muslim American Society (MAS) of Boston, a group identified by Federal prosecutors as the American front group of the Muslim Brotherhood. In Boston, the MAS runs the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center – the largest mosque in the Northeast. This mosque also held an event in support of Tarek Mehanna last year."

Americans for Peace and Tolerance praises the FBI's intensified efforts to capture Ahmad Abousamra.

SOURCE Americans for Peace and Tolerance