Of course: American Airlines mechanic who sabotaged a plane had ISIS videos on his smartphone

It’s getting more and more difficult to take complaints from Muslims living in America that they are stereotyped as potential terrorists when Muslims living in America constantly behave like they are potential terrorists.

Yes, yes, we know. Here’s the customary denial: “Not all Muslims are terrorists.” Got it. Everyone knows that.

But isn’t it ironic that nearly all terrorists in the United States who have either launched attacks or plotted attacks in recent years are Muslims?

You may recall within the past several days reading a headline or a story about an American Airlines mechanic — Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani — who was arrested by federal officials for intentionally sabotaging one of the company’s airliners.

The official story, we were told, is that Alani had a beef with the airline about pay and wanted to delay and ground the plane in question (and others) so he could get in some overtime and make more money.

Come to find out, we now learn, the guy had videos on his smartphone of Islamic State terrorists — because he has ties to the group via his brother, who is currently in Iraq. 

And isn’t that just dandy?

Katie Pavlich at TownHall reports: 

The man arrested for sabotaging the navigation system on an American Airlines plane that was scheduled to take off from Florida earlier this year had ISIS propaganda videos on his cellphone. 

According to prosecutors, Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani has ties to the Islamic terrorist group through his brother in Iraq. The new revelations came during a bail hearing in Miami Wednesday. Alani is a naturalized citizen from Iraq. 

As further noted by The Associated Press, a federal judge “cited new evidence of potential terrorism sympathies in denying bail” for Alani, 60, after learning of the content on his phone and his ISIS familial ties. 

“The new evidence presented by prosecutors includes that Alani has a brother in Iraq who may be involved with the Islamic State extremist group as well as statements Alani made about wishing harm on non-Muslims,” the AP noted. (Related: TSA is letting illegal aliens fly on U.S. airlines WITHOUT proper documents while Americans suffer humiliating searches.)

Is this guy part of a terrorist ring in the U.S.?

First of all, AP, ISIS isn’t an “extremist” group it is a terrorist organization; why else would a federal judge impose pretrial detention on Alani over potential terrorism ties? 

Secondly, the crime Alani is charged with is alarming in and of itself: He messed with the navigation system on a 737 aircraft, the same type of system that was responsible for the crashes of two new Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft, which has led to the grounding of the entire global fleet (at a cost of billions to the aircraft maker).

NewsTarget noted: 

According to the report, the mechanic deliberately slipped a piece of foam into the plane’s air data module, which is a sensor that measures the aircraft’s pitch, speed, and other information, the federal affidavit states.

Did others intentionally sabotage the 737 MAX 8 planes that crashed? Boeing hasn’t been able to find a fix yet; maybe the plane maker has yet to find a systemic problem, too, meaning that individual planes were targeted instead.

Pavlich notes that in recent months, a half-dozen or so foreign-born naturalized citizens and refugees have either been arrested, indicted, or sentenced to prison for planning to carry out ISIS attacks in the U.S. Credit our intelligence services and, yes, the FBI, for foiling these plots.

But the fixation with aircraft is especially troubling. No one ever survives when planes fall thousands of feet out of the sky because of equipment failure; it’s a spectacular way to kill a lot of people in a way that will generate global headlines.

And that could have happened last month to the plane Alani sabotaged. Was his real motivation just overtime pay?

Sources include:

TownHall.com

NewsTarget.com