Waterproof Socks as a Weapon of Mass Destruction

By Jacob Freeze, Section Diaries
Posted on Fri Aug 28, 2009 at 06:00:39 PM EST
Tags: Syed Hashmi (all tags)

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Syed Hashmi is an American citizen who has been held in an extremely restricted form of solitary confinement in a federal prison in New York for more than two years for providing "miltary equipment" to al Qaeda in Pakistan.

MSNBC was all over this story way back in 2006, when Mr. Hashmi was arrested in London...

U.S. officials say the military gear was intended to support al-Qaida's jihad activities overseas, especially in Afghanistan, where it could be used against U.S. soldiers.

Lots of information was apparently leaked to NBC "terrorism expert" Michael Sheehan...

"Hashmi was a jihadi. He was interested in fighting jihad in Pakistan," says Michael Sheehan, a terrorism expert and NBC News analyst. "He had connections to serious terrorists in the U.K. He was an American citizen, a very troublesome character, and we're glad that he's been picked up."

But not even the mysteriously well-informed Mr. Sheehan seemed to know exactly what kind of "miltary equipment" Syed Hashmi had provided to al Qaeda in Pakistan.

All charges against Syed Hashmi arise from a visit by his friend Junaid Babar, who arrived at Mr. Syed's apartment in London with a suitcase full of "miltary equipment" which eventually found its way to a high-ranking al Qaeda operative in Pakistan.

And what did that sinister suitcase contain? Was it bombs or guns or a surface-to-air-missile?

Prosecutors have said that Hashmi's friend, Junaid Babar, stayed at his London apartment for two weeks, while Hashmi was studying for a master's degree in Britain. Babar stored luggage containing raincoats, ponchos, and waterproof socks in the apartment. Babar later delivered them to the third-ranking member of al Qaeda in Pakistan.

And that's all there was to it, at the time, but after Junaid Babar had been arrested and confronted with a sentence of 70 years in prison... and who knows what other inducements applied to himself or his family in Pakistan... he began to unfold a life-story which rivals the finest productions of compulsively talkative al Qaeda luminaries like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who eventually took