JFK plot: Feds were hoping to nab Shukrijumah

posted at 11:53 am on June 4, 2007 by Allahpundit
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Their antennas went up when they found out the plotters had ties to Guyana and Trinidad. So did mine, as you can see from the early updates of Saturday’s post. Shukrijumah is the lead suspect in the alleged nuclear terror plot against the United States; there’s been a multimillion dollar bounty on his head for years. If they’d caught him, it would have been one of the biggest stings since Khaled Sheikh Mohammed was nabbed.

Damn.

Al Qaeda’s so-called nuclear whiz kid – a “tantalizing terror figure” with a $5 million bounty on his head – was the radical big shot investigators had hoped to snag in their 18-month JFK-plot probe, The Post has learned.

The name of “invisible hand” Adnan Gulshair el-Shukrijumah, reportedly the man Osama bin Laden tapped to lead a previous scheme to detonate nuclear bombs simultaneously in several U.S. cities, came up at several points in taped conversations during the probe, according to law-enforcement sources familiar with the investigation…

So the feds allowed the probe to continue until the last moment, which came when one of the suspects boarded a plane in Trinidad headed for Venezuela – where the United States has no extradition agreement. Authorities weren’t willing to risk losing him, so they “pulled the trigger” on the arrests, one source said.

Investigators had yet to collect evidence linking Shukrijumah to the JFK plot, but it’s clear his name and efforts were well-known to the suspects.

The FBI’s best guest is that he’s in Pakistan now with the rest of AQ, free as a bird in the tribal areas thanks to that super-keen peace treaty with the tribal elders that Musharraf brokered last year.

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