With a Bronx jazz musician and doctor formerly from Long Island expected to be arraigned today on charges of providing material support to terrorists, more details emerged today, providing a clearer picture of the case against them, reports Newsday. What wasn’t made any clearer by the U.S. attorney’s office releasing the complaint was whether Tarik Shah, 42, and Dr. Rafiq Sabir, 50, were terrorists in the making or just talk. Shah was arrested in his Bronx apartment and Sabir in Boca Raton, Fla., this weekend, capping a probe that began in October 2003 when an ex-convict and paid informant told an FBI agent that Shah told him he had trained “brothers” in hand-to-hand combat for “jihad.”
The probe started with Shah, a self-proclaimed martial arts expert and jazz musician who plays the bass. The complaint says he eventually involved his longtime friend, Sabir. According to the criminal complaint, Shah first attracted attention on Dec. 11, 2003, when he was arrested for damaging an apartment he had rented in Yonkers. Police searched his car and found the phone number for Seifullah Chapman, who would be convicted of aiding terrorists.
Link: http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/nyc-terr0531,0,1918994.story?coll=ny-top-headlines