Whack the punk

The New York Times has an article by James Dao and David Johnston about a 'convert to Islam' (which is, after all, the Religion of Peace, right?):

A 23-year-old man charged with killing one soldier and seriously wounding another in a shooting outside an Army recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas, was once detained in Yemen for possessing a fake Somali passport and other counterfeit documents, law enforcement officials said Tuesday. The episode in Yemen prompted a preliminary inquiry by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other American law enforcement agencies into whether the man, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, had ties to extremist groups, the officials said. But that investigation was inconclusive, they said, leaving the bureau with insufficient evidence to wiretap his phone or put him under surveillance.
It is not clear when Mr. Muhammad, an American convert to Islam who was traveling on a valid United States passport, was detained in Yemen or why he would have been carrying counterfeit documents. His detention in Yemen was first reported Tuesday by ABC News. Mr. Muhammad has been charged with one count of capital murder and fifteen counts of terroristic acts in Monday’s shooting, in a parking lot outside the recruiting office. He pleaded not guilty Tuesday in a preliminary hearing before a state judge in Little Rock and was ordered held there without bond at the Pulaski County jail.
Mr. Muhammad has told investigators that he acted alone, the Little Rock police said. But his travels to Yemen and possibly Somalia raise questions about whether he met with any of the militant Islamic groups that are active in both countries.
“Mr. Muhammad stated that he was mad at the military because of what they had done to Muslims in the past,” an arrest report filed by the Little Rock police said. “Mr. Muhammad further stated that he would have killed more soldiers if they had been on the parking lot.”
Private William Long, 23, of Conway, Arkansas, was killed in the shooting. The wounded soldier, Private Quinton Ezeagwula, 18, of Jacksonville, Arkansas, was in good condition Tuesday at Baptist Medical Center in Little Rock, the police said.
The two soldiers were at the recruiting station as a result of a program that uses troops recently out of basic training to promote the Army in their home regions, Army officials said. Neither had ever been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Mr. Muhammad was heavily armed when he was arrested Monday shortly after fleeing the shooting scene in his black Ford truck. The police confiscated an SKS military-style rifle and a .22-caliber rifle found inside the truck, they said, as well as a .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun he had tucked in his waistband.
Mr. Muhammad was wearing a green utility belt holding more than 150 rounds of ammunition for the two rifles, and an additional 24 rounds for the handgun were in his pants pocket, according to a police inventory. Inside the truck, the inventory said, investigators also found several boxes of ammunition and a red duffle bag containing two homemade silencers, binoculars, clothing, and medicine. There were also several CDs labeled in Arabic writing. From Mr. Muhammad’s Little Rock apartment, the police seized a computer, a cellphone and paper with handwriting in Arabic, the inventory said.
Mr. Muhammad changed his name from Carlos Bledsoe some time ago, the police said. His parents operate tour bus and airport shuttle companies in Little Rock, Arkansas; Memphis, Tennessee; and Mississippi. Stuart Thomas, the police chief in Little Rock, said Mr. Muhammad apparently moved there from Tennessee just a few months ago to work at his parents’ business. The Little Rock company, Twin City Tours, was closed on Tuesday, and repeated calls were not returned.
Mr. Muhammad appeared at the brief hearing Tuesday morning in a dark blue prison suit and handcuffs, with shackles around his legs. He did not speak, other than to whisper a few words to his lawyer, and sat expressionless for most of the time. The Little Rock police said he apparently changed his name around the time he converted to Islam, possibly as a teenager living in Tennessee. But, on 23 May, he filed a petition with the Pulaski County clerk’s office to change his name again, this time to Abdulhakim Bledsoe. On the petition, which had not been finalized, he attributed the requested change to “religious reasons”.
Military recruiters said they could not recall a recent fatal attack against a recruiting station. But the shootings were a reminder that recruiting offices are often targets of threats and sometimes actual violence. Last year a small bomb shattered the glass facade of a military recruiting station in Times Square. No one was injured in the early-morning explosion, which remains unsolved. And, in 2004, a 42-year-old man, apparently angry about having failed basic training twenty years before, fired shots at an Air Force recruiter in San Leandro, California, before killing himself.