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Wilmington, North Carolina once had a thriving Black middle class and an elected interracial government. In 1898 white supremacists used violence to overthrow that government, kill Black residents and drive many others from the city.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
The Virginia jihad network was a group network of Islamist jihadist young men centered in Northern Virginia that were accused of conspiring to train and participate in violence overseas against US forces in Afghanistan and Indian forces in Kashmir.[1][2] The men, Muhammed Aatique, Hammad Abdur-Raheem, Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Hamdi, Seifullah Chapman, Khwaja Hasan, Masoud Khan, Yong Kwon, Randall Todd Royer and Donald Surratt, were found guilty of various terrorism-related offences.[3]
Ali al-Timimi was found guilty of exhorting his followers to join the Taliban and fight US troops.[4][5]
Ali Asad Chandia was a teacher at a school in Maryland[6] and was accused of providing material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a U.S.-designated Pakistani terrorist organization.[7] Chandia was sentenced to 15 years in prison, with three years of supervised release at the end of his incarceration[8][9]
Randall Todd Royer pleaded guilty to two counts of aiding and abetting the use and discharge of a firearm and carrying of an explosion in relation to a crime and during the commission of a felony.[3] These counts stemmed from assisting other young men to gain entry to the Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp in Pakistan.[3] Three other individuals attending that meeting, Yong Kwon, Muhammed Aatique, and Khwaja Hasan—all of whom pleaded guilty—stated that they went to the Lashkar-e-Taiba camp to obtain combat training for the purpose engaging in violent jihad in Afghanistan against the American troops that they expected would soon invade that country.[3] Al-Hamdi also admitted to carrying a rocket-propelled grenade in furtherance of a conspiracy to undertake a military operation against India.[3]
Seifullah Chapman maintained his intention to travel to the training camp was for a grueling physical challenge, not to seek out fighting in a holy war.[10] Masoud Khan, Seifullah Chapman and Hammad Abdur-Raheem all were convicted of conspiring to provide material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, and to attack India in violation of the Neutrality Act of 1794, as well as of various firearms related offenses, for conduct that spanned from 2000 to 2003.[3] U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema considered the sentences "draconian" and suggested preferring to imposing a lesser sentence for some of the convicted men.[10]
A 2011 NPR report claimed some of the people associated with this group were imprisoned in a highly restrictive Communication Management Unit.[11] A federal judge in Virginia ordered Seifullah Chapman, one of the convicted men from the case serving a 65-year sentence, to be released from prison in July 2018.[10] The decision stemmed from a recent Supreme Court case that overturned a law that was found to be unconstitutionally vague in the way it described a crime.[10] Chapman argued his initial conviction of violating a law was vague in the way it described "a crime of violence".[10] A month later, the same judge vacated the convictions of Masoud Khan, a second man from the case serving a life-sentence, based on the same argument made by Chapman.[12] On January 13, 2009, Yong Ki Kwon testified by video link in the Sydney trial of five men accused of planning a terrorist attack in Australia.[13]
Randall Todd Royer, also known as Ismail Royer, is now the Director of the Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team for the Religious Freedom Institute. He was included as a lay leader on the United States' Advisory Board of the Religious Liberty Commission on 16 May 2025.[14]
On January 9, 2026, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out all remaining convictions of Dr. Ali al-Timimi citing First Amendment protections.[15][16]
A 29-year-old Maryland man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for providing support to Pakistan-based terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
The Virginia jihad network was a group network of Islamist jihadist young men centered in Northern Virginia that were accused of conspiring to train and participate in violence overseas against US forces in Afghanistan and Indian forces in Kashmir. The men, Muhammed Aatique, Hammad Abdur-Raheem, Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Hamdi, Seifullah Chapman, Khwaja Hasan, Masoud Khan, Yong Kwon, Randall Todd Royer and Donald Surratt, were found guilty of various terrorism-related offences.
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is a Pakistani Islamist Jihadist militant organisation driven by a Salafi jihadist ideology. The organisation's primary stated objective is to merge the whole of Kashmir with Pakistan. It also seeks the destruction of India, Hinduism, and Judaism through jihad. It was founded in 1985–1986 by Hafiz Saeed, Zafar Iqbal Shehbaz, Abdullah Azzam and several other Islamist mujahideen with funding from Osama bin Laden during the Soviet–Afghan War. It has been designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations and numerous other countries and been responsible for terrorist attacks on civilians in India, such as the 2000 Red Fort attack, 2005 Delhi bombings, 2006 Mumbai train bombings, 2008 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam attack. It has been supported by Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and is often viewed as a proxy militant organisation used by Pakistan against India in the insurgency in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. Its affiliated front organisations include the Milli Muslim League, a political party, and Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD), the group's "charity wing". The group differs from most other militant groups in Pakistan in following the Islamic interpretation of Ahl-i Hadith (which is similar to Wahhabism and Salafism), and in foreswearing attacks on the government of Pakistan and sectarian attacks on Pakistanis "who have professed faith" in Islam.
Anwar Nasser Abdulla al-Awlaki (April 21, 1971 – September 30, 2011) was an American-Yemeni Islamic cleric, lecturer, and propagandist. He was assassinated in Yemen in 2011 by a U.S. drone strike ordered by President Barack Obama. Al-Awlaki was the first U.S. citizen to be targeted and assassinated by a U.S. government drone strike. Al-Awlaki, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Yemen, was a key organizer for the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda. Al-Awlaki was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, U.S., in 1971 to parents from Yemen. Growing up partly in the United States and partly in Yemen, he attended various U.S. universities in the 1990s and early 2000s. He also worked as an imam despite having no religious qualifications and almost no religious education. Al-Awlaki returned to Yemen in early 2004 and became a university lecturer after a brief stint as a public speaker in the United Kingdom. He was detained by Yemeni authorities in 2006 and spent 18 months in prison for allegedly kidnapping a Shiite teenager for ransom, and allegedly participating in an al-Qaeda plot to kidnap a U.S. military attaché, before being released without facing trial. Following his release from Yemeni custody, Al-Awlaki had significantly radicalized, and began to speak overtly in support of violence, also condemning the U.S. government's foreign policy towards Muslims. He was linked to Nidal Hasan, the perpetrator of the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who attempted to detonate an underwear bomb on Northwest Airlines Flight 253. The Yemeni government tried al-Awlaki in absentia in November 2010 for plotting to kill foreigners and being a member of al-Qaeda. A Yemeni judge ordered that he be captured "dead or alive". U.S. officials said that in 2009, al-Awlaki was promoted to the rank of "regional commander" within al-Qaeda. He repeatedly called for jihad against the United States. In April 2010, al-Awlaki was placed on a CIA kill list by President Obama. Al-Awlaki's father and civil rights groups challenged the order in court. The U.S. deployed unmanned aircraft (drones) in Yemen to search for and kill him, firing at and failing to kill him at least once. Al-Awlaki was killed on September 30, 2011. In June 2014, a previously classified memorandum from the U.S. Department of Justice was released; the memorandum described al-Awlaki's killing as a lawful act of war. Civil liberties advocates have called the killing of al-Awlaki an extrajudicial execution that breached al-Awlaki's constitutional rights. The New York Times wrote in 2015 that al-Awlaki's public statements and videos had been more influential in inspiring acts of Islamic terrorism in the wake of his killing than they were before his death.
Elias el-Hage (Arabic: وديع الحاج, Wadī‘ al-Ḥāj) (born July 25, 1960) is a Lebanese and naturalized American-French citizen, who is serving life imprisonment in the United States based on conspiracy charges relating to the 1998 United States embassy bombings. Struggling financially, he decided to move his family to Quetta, Pakistan, but returned to run the Al Kifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn after the death of Mustafa Shalabi. While running the al-Kifah Refugee Center he met some of the extremists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. At the time of their trial, he was in Sudan working as a secretary for Osama Bin Laden. In 1996 and 1997, after Bin Laden left Sudan for Afghanistan, el-Hage worked in Nairobi, Kenya. Under the pretense of doing charity work, he organized the al-Qaeda network that planned and carried out the embassy bombing in Nairobi. El-Hage was indicted and arrested in 1998, and convicted on all counts and sentenced to life without parole in 2001. His sentence was overturned in 2008 because it was based on federal mandatory sentencing guidelines invalidated by the US Supreme Court in 2005. He was re-sentenced to life without parole in 2013.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →The Greenwood District.
