NY man arrested in Hawaii after visits to radical websites

— When Abdel Hameed Shehadeh arrived at Kennedy Airport in early 2008, he was carrying a one-way ticket to Islamabad and a backpack with a sleeping bag inside.

He was briefly interviewed by federal agents and sent on his way - gone but not forgotten. The very same day, New York Police Department detectives began surfing the Internet for information about him.

Authorities say the Police Department’s intelligence division investigators found a treasure trove of evidence against Shehadeh that helped make the homegrown terror case against him. The evidence, they say, also offered more proof that the Internet has become an incubator for extremism, and demonstrated how a special New York police unit identifies and tracks cyber-threats.

Shehadeh, 21, failed to get into Pakistan. The New Yorker was arrested last week in Hawaii on charges he made false statements. He was in federal custody and was expected to eventually appear in federal court in New York. No date was set.

There was no immediateresponse to a message left Tuesday with Shehadeh’s attorney in Honolulu. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn declined to comment Tuesday.

The New York police investigative unit was formed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - part of the department’s strategy for homeland security that has resulted in the redeployment of about 1,000 officers to counterterrorism duty. Many of the unit’s members are foreign-born and fluent in languages like Arabic and Farsi.

New York police assisted in another case earlier this year in which two men were arrested at Kennedy on charges they wanted to travel to Somalia to get terror training. Investigators allege they were radicalized in part by other Americans preaching violent jihad over the Internet.

In Shehadeh’s case, the New York investigators discovered that he had created a radical road map with websites that posted speeches by al-Qaida leaders including Abu Yahya Al-Libi and Ayman al-Zawahiri, authorities said.

A criminal complaint says he also put up a photo of himself wearing a keffiyeh headdress, another snapshot of a man holding a sign reading“Jihad is Our Way,” videos of Osama bin Laden and a recording titled “Benefits of Jihad in Our Times.” One of his sites had “a montage of still images of jihadist fighters under the heading, ‘What is the least we can do?’” the complaint said.

The investigators followed Shehadeh’s Internet footprints to business records showing his site emanated from two Staten Island addresses. In June 2008, members of the joint FBI-New York police terror task force went to one of addresses to interview him. The complaint said Shehadeh told them he had tried to travel to Pakistan to “study Islamic law.”

Four months later, Shehadeh showed up at a Times Square military recruiting station and tried to sign up, authorities said. An unidentified friend he had worshipped with later told investigators Shehadeh had hoped the Army would deploy him to Iraq,where he could desert and join insurgent forces.

Investigators closed in on Shehadeh after he again tried to travel to the Middle East, this time to Jordan. As with Pakistan, he wasn’t allowed into the country and came home, where he was greeted by FBI agents asking about his websites.

Front Section, Pages 3 on 10/27/2010

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