Two arrested on Terrorism charge

Accroding to information released by Fedral investigators on Sunday, two New Jersey men were arrested at Kennedy International Airport on Saturday after suspicions that they were going to Somalia to join a terrorist organization with a motive to kill American troops.

The men, Mohamed Haoud Alessa, 20, and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, 24 were to join Al Shabaab, which claims ideological kinship with Al Qaeda, and was thought to have provided a haven to Qaeda operatives wanted for bombings of United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The men were arrested as they were about to board two different flights to Egypt on their way to Somalia, the officials announced. They have been charged with consipring to kill and kidnap people outside the United States of America and would be produced before a federal judge in Newark on Monday.

The FBI officials had been keeping constant surveilance on these men after a tip off in 2006, that these men were conspiring to join Islamic terror outfits. Undercover agents from the New York Police Department had been crucial to the success of this operation.

New York State Police Department has recorded evidence against the accused that shows that the accused were planning to join a terror outfit in Somalia with a motive to kill American soldiers. The two men, both United States citizens — Mr. Almonte lives in Elmwood Park, N.J., and Mr. Alessa in North Bergen, N.J. — physically conditioned themselves, engaged in paintball and tactical training, saved thousands of dollars for their trip, acquired military gear and apparel, according to a criminal complaint filed against them.

They talked about what they said was their obligation to wage violent jihad and at times expressed a willingness to commit acts of violence in the United States.

Al Shabaab was designated as a terrorist organization by the State Department in 2008. Federal authorities have said that as two dozen young men of Somali descent who had disappeared in the past two years from their homes in the Minneapolis area had been being recruited by Al Shabaab, which means “the youth” in Arabic, and one of them carried out a suicide bombing there in 2008.

The two men were taken into custody at the airport based on arrest warrants issued by the United States District Court in Newark, according to the news release. Both were charged in a criminal complaint with a single count of conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim, or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country. If convicted, they face a maximum sentence of life in prison.