Alleged terror plot targeted Tampa
Hoping to instill terror in his victims, an extremist Muslim immigrant from Kosovo planned to blow up
nightclubs and bridges, federal authorities said.
By William R. Levesque and Jamal Thalji
Tampa Bay Times
TAMPA --
Sami Osmakac stood in front of a Tampa church one night in 2010, ranting for 13 minutes about Christianity and the evils of the secular world.
“What’s the matter with you?” asked Osmakac in a video later posted on YouTube. “Trying to follow their ways? Trying to go to nightclubs, like them? Trying to fornicate, like them? Trying to get with their women? . . . Submit to the rule of Allah.”
It was the kind of rhetoric that made Osmakac an outcast in Tampa Bay’s Muslim community and helped bring him to the attention of the FBI.
Osmakac, 25, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pinellas Park and a native of Kosovo, was arrested Saturday and charged with trying to use a weapon of mass destruction. He is accused in a federal complaint of plotting to obtain weapons and explosives for a car bomb to carry out attacks in Tampa.
Unknown to Osmakac, he sought his weapons from an undercover FBI agent introduced to him by his employer, who was an FBI informer.
On Osmakac’s shifting list of targets, the complaint said, were an Irish pub in South Tampa, nightclubs in Ybor City, a Hillsborough County sheriff’s operations center and Tampa Bay bridges.
He said he wanted to instill terror in his victims’ hearts, calling it “payback” for the wrongs done to Muslims, an arrest affidavit said. The FBI said he worked alone.
“We all have to die,” Osmakac said at one point, according to the affidavit. “So why not die the Islamic way?”
It was unclear Monday whether Osmakac ever had the means to carry out such sophisticated terrorist attacks.
Leaders in the local Muslim community urged caution, saying it is important for the courts to determine whether Osmakac posed a real threat or was just a big talker entrapped by the FBI.
“Would there have been any real plot without the support and assistance of the FBI?” asked Hassan Shibly, executive director of the Tampa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, who had been briefed by authorities before the arrest was announced.
U.S. Attorney Robert O’Neill, who said the case was made with the assistance of the local Muslim community, said: “Was it real? It was very real in his mind.”
The family declined to comment. A brother, who would not identify himself, said, “It’s a lie. It’s all made up.”
Osmakac, his wrists and ankles shackled, appeared at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Tampa. He sported a long, narrow beard and closely cropped hair. He said little. A judge ordered him held without bail.
The federal public defender’s office was appointed to represent him. He faces the possibility of life in prison if convicted.
Osmakac was known in Tampa Bay’s Muslim community for his extremist views and rhetoric. He had been banned by two area mosques, Shibly said.
In a Muslim community that is often wary of FBI tactics in terrorism cases, some viewed Osmakac with suspicion as he promoted his extremist views, said Ahmed Bedier, founder of United Voices of America, a nonprofit organization promoting Muslim participation in the political process.
“For a while, we thought he was an FBI informant himself,” Bedier said in an interview.
Bedier said Osmakac had threatened him several times and had called him a kafir, an Arab word for infidel. Bedier said he previously had reported Osmakac and several of his companions to authorities.
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