Police renew focus on Muslim cabbies

Police renew focus on Muslim cabbies
Authorities worry about 'taxi jihadists' in cities

With the arrest of a Philadelphia taxi cab driver in the Fort Dix terror plot, authorities are paying closer attention to Muslim cabbies, many of whom are militant believers, WND has learned.

Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, a U.S. citizen born in Jordan, was charged earlier this week with conspiring to kill at least 100 soldiers on U.S. soil. The FBI says the 22-year-old drove a cab in Philadelphia.

"My intent is to hit a heavy concentration of soldiers," said Shnewer, the alleged mastermind of the terror plot.

Muslims account for the majority of cab drivers in many major U.S. cities – including the nation's capital. And a number of them have ties to terrorism, federal and local authorities say.

After 9/11, the U.S. Park Police, which enforces laws on federal roads leading into such places as CIA headquarters, ran a search of Islamic terror suspects against a database of traffic stops in the Washington, D.C., area going back decades.

"It came back with a nearly 25 percent hit rate," a U.S. Park Police official said. "Many of them were cab drivers."

The official, a veteran police detective who wished to go unidentified, says roughly 80 percent of cab drivers in the Washington area practice the Islamic faith. Their numbers concern police, who believe they make up part of the terror support network in America.

"If they're not suspects themselves, they pick up suspects at airports and take them to safehouses here," he told WND. "It's a jihadi network."

The federal Park Police work with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies assigned to the National Counter Terrorism Center, or NCTC, headquartered in McLean, Va., a Washington suburb. The FBI is now closely monitoring the activities of taxi drivers in the area, bureau sources confirm.

A great many of them worship at the large Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., another D.C. suburb. On Fridays, FBI case agents say they typically observe 50 or more cabs and limos parked among other cars in the parking lots used by the radical mosque, which has included several Hamas and al-Qaida terrorists among its members.

Some of the 9/11 hijackers also attended services at Dar al-Hijrah, while receiving assistance obtaining housing and IDs from mosque members and officials, some of whom are admitted members of the dangerous Muslim Brotherhood.

In between fares, many taxi drivers congregate at the Starbucks located down the road in a shopping center in Baileys Crossroads, which has the highest concentration of Muslims of any area outside Dearborn, Mich.

The shopping center is within a few miles of the Pentagon, and right across the street from two luxury apartment high-rises that erupted into cheers when the World Trade Center fell on 9/11. Law enforcement has dubbed the Skyline Towers the "Taliban Towers" after conducting several counterterrorism investigations involving tenants.

Washington is not alone. Other major cities are dealing with radical Muslim taxi drivers.

9/11 'Party Platters'

Miami-Dade County Police Department officials tell WND that after 9/11 a group of Muslim cab drivers at Miami International Airport held a celebration on a carpeted area of the concourse reserved for Islamic prayer.

Some were overheard allegedly saying, "Finally, the Great Satan got what it deserved."

"They brought out party platters," a Miami-Dade police detective said. "We tried to ID the taxi drivers who celebrated and give their names to the FBI."

New York also has had its share of "taxi jihadists," as law enforcement calls them.

Take Mahmud "The Red" Abouhalima, a former Manhattan cabbie. He helped plant the explosives-packed van that the terrorists used to try to blow up the World Trade Center in the first attack on the towers in 1993.

Those who knew him say he transformed his cab into a mobile Islamic institute, filled with copies of the Quran, jihadi books and tapes of sermons recorded in Arabic.

Like the Jersey jihadists accused of targeting Fort Dix, Abouhalima lived in New Jersey, which has a large Muslim population. Police believe he also was the intended getaway cab driver in the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane.

More recently, in Nashville, a Muslim cab driver for United Cab this year was charged with assault and attempted homicide. Ibrahim Ahmed allegedly tried to run down two Vanderbilt University students. One was seriously injured.

Surprisingly, the 9/11 attacks emboldened many Islamic taxi drivers.

In Minneapolis, for instance, they've asserted the tenets of their faith, refusing airport passengers carrying duty-free wine and even blind riders accompanied by seeing-eye dogs. Alcohol is forbidden in Islam, and dogs are considered unclean.

About three of every four cabbies at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport practice Islam. Even after authorities last month agreed to slap fines on them for refusing "infidel" fares, some refuse to bend.

"I am Muslim. I'm not going to carry alcohol," insisted Abdi Mohamed, a driver for Bloomington Cab.

Islamic Foot-Baths

Muslim taxi drivers also have demanded special accommodations at airports.

In Kansas City, for one, airport authorities recently built several foot-baths in a restroom for Muslim drivers after they requested them to help them prepare for Islamic prayer, as WND first reported. Kansas City International Airport police say about 70 percent of the taxi drivers there are Muslim.

A great many taxi drivers are immigrants from the Mideast or Pakistan. Last November, Homeland Security agents rounded up dozens of Pakistani immigrants across the East Coast working illegally as cabbies. Pakistan is an al-Qaida hotbed.

Before last year's congressional election, a U.S. lawmaker was widely criticized for suggesting Muslim cabbies were a terrorist threat.

Republican Sen. Conrad Burns said the U.S. is up against a faceless enemy of terrorists who "drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night."

The longtime senator lost his seat to Democrat Jon Tester.