Kathryn Kersten decides to do what her employer has thus far refused through its news division and report on the terror connections of the Flying Imams. In her latest Star Tribune column, Kersten notes the affiliations of the six imams who got booted from a US Air flight for their suspicious behavior:

Who are the parties involved here, who seem so interested in linking airport security with racial bigotry?

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the imams' legal representative, is an organization that "we know has ties to terrorism," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in 2003. And the Muslim American Society, which is also supporting the imams? It's the American arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to the Chicago Tribune, which called it "the world's most influential Islamic fundamentalist group."

How about Omar Shahin, the imams' spokesman and also president of the North American Imams Federation? He is a native of Jordan, who says he became a U.S. citizen in 2003. From 2000 to 2003, Shahin served as president of Islamic Center of Tucson (ICT), that city's largest mosque.

The ICT is well known. The mosque has "an extensive history of terror links," according to terrorism expert Steven Emerson, who testified about terrorist financing before the Senate Banking Committee in July 2005.

The Washington Post described these links in a 2002 article. "Tucson was one of the first points of contact in the United States for the jihadist group that evolved into al Qaeda," the Post reported. And the ICT? It held "basically the first cell of al Qaeda in the United States; that is where it all started," said Rita Katz, a terrorism expert quoted by the Post.

Kersten has plenty more. What seems so strange about Kersten's column is that these facts didn't get reported by the Strib's field reporters. In fact, the Strib has seemed strangely willing to accept the imams' stories at face value as well as their purported moderation without lifting a finger to check their affiliations.

The more one digs into this story, the worse it looks. It seems very apparent that the imams wanted to provoke a security reaction, and that they succeeded in doing so. Their insistence on taking seats not assigned to them, the seat belt extenders they placed under their seats, and their interference with boarding are all explicit acts that would set bells off in any airport.

At first, the provocation seemed designed to promote Muslims as a victim class. With the kinds of connections that Kersten details, it looks more like a serious attempt to force a retreat on airline security that would allow terrorists to conduct another attack. The Star Tribune's refusal to do actual reporting on this subject and their abdication of their journalistic responsibilities to their local columnist do a disservice to their Minneapolis readers and to the nation as a whole. Be sure to read Kersten's attempt to make up for both. (via Power Line)

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Please see my previous related posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.The flying imams: Connecting the dotsScott Johnson Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten has not gotten the word from editor Anders Gyllenhaal that the story of the [Read More]

Tracked on December 11, 2006 10:16 AM