Monday, January 09, 2012
A former American soldier with specialist intelligence and cryptology
training has been charged with trying to join Somalia's Al-Qaeda-linked
Shebab militants, US justice officials said Monday.Craig Baxam, a
24-year-old from the Maryland suburbs outside Washington, appeared
briefly in court Monday near the US capital to hear charges that he
attempted to join -- and provide material support to -- a terrorist
group.
Baxam, who served in Iraq and South Korea, was apprehended
on December 23 aboard a bus near the Kenyan city of Mombasa with $600 to
$700 in cash that he intended to give the Shebab as an introductory
offer, prosecutors said.
Baxam allegedly told FBI officers he
wanted to die fighting for the Shebab "with a gun in my hand," and
replied "that is awesome" when informed that the militant group
encouraged beating people who did not attend prayers.
Counter-terrorism
experts have expressed growing concern about a steady stream of
recruits, many of them British, making their way to Somalia to join the
Shebab.
An extremist accused of heading a wave of British recruits to the Shebab was arrested four days before Baxam in Mombasa.
Baxam,
who joined the US military in 2007, was deployed to Baghdad shortly
after finishing eight months of advanced training for cryptology and
intelligence.
He returned home after his Iraq deployment and then
re-enlisted before being deployed to South Korea for one year beginning
in August 2010.
According to court documents, it was in South
Korea that he secretly converted to Islam after visiting an extremist
website, quitting the army days later and returning to the United States
in mid-2011.
"One evening, Baxam was surfing the Internet and came across a named Islamic religious website," the affidavit said.
"An
article therein about the Day of Judgment spoke to Baxam. Baxam read
more and immediately realized that Islam was the truth. He wanted to
read more about Islam and the more he read, the more he wanted," it
said.
"Baxam's conversion was in secret, except that his roommate
in the army eventually figured it out because he saw Baxam's prayer rug
and books."
The fresh convert struggled to adjust to life back
home, residing with his father in Maryland and briefly working for a
television services company.
"Baxam said that living an Islamic
way of life in the United States is oppressive," prosecutors said. "To
live as a Muslim in the United States you need to compromise. He finds
the constant playing of music and constant display of pictures
disrespectful. Only Allah can create images."
After considering
Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan and parts of the southern
Philippines under the control of Muslim rebels, he decided on Somalia
and the Shebab, prosecutors said.
He cashed in his army savings and bought a plane ticket to Nairobi -- a round-trip so as not to arouse suspicion.
Baxam
arrived in Nairobi on December 22 and caught a night bus to Mombasa,
where he was arrested the following day as he made for the Somali
border.
"His plan was to cross the border and find the first mosque. That mosque would be a Shebab mosque," prosecutors said.
Baxam
was questioned by Kenyan anti-terrorism police and the FBI in Nairobi
before being put on a plane back to the United States to stand trial.
He
is to appear again in court on Wednesday. If found guilty, he faces a
maximum sentence of 15 years in prison followed by three years of
supervised release.
The Shebab has long sought to recruit
Westerners to join the bloody uprising it launched in 2007 against the
Western-backed transitional government.
The Islamic militants lost
a key source of finance when they pulled out of fixed positions in the
capital Mogadishu last August, switching to guerrilla attacks on African
Union-backed forces there.
Now the extremist fighters largely
rely for funding on the southern port of Kismayo and the charcoal trade,
both of which are under pressure from Kenyan forces who crossed into
southern Somalia to attack them in October.