In February 2006, three men in

Toledo, Ohio Toledo ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Lucas County, Ohio, United States. A major Midwestern United States port city, Toledo is the fourth-most populous city in the state of Ohio, after Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, and accordin ...

(Mohammad Zaki Amawi, Marwan Othman El-Hindi, and Wassim Mazloum) were arrested and charged with conspiracy to

provide material support to terrorists In United States law, providing material support for terrorism is a crime prohibited by the USA PATRIOT Act and codified in title 18 of the United States Code, section2339Aan2339B It applies primarily to groups designated as terrorists by th ...

in Iraq and engage in violent jihad in their home town, as well as making verbal threats against the President of the United States. The investigation was conducted by the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...

and the Toledo

Joint Terrorism Task Force In the United States, the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) are locally-based multi-agency partnerships between various federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies tasked with investigating terrorism and terrorism-related crimes, led by the ...

, with the cooperation of an informant called 'The Trainer' who has a U.S. military background in security. The Cleveland FBI Special Agent in Charge

C. Frank Figliuzzi Cesare Frank Figliuzzi, Jr. (born September 12, 1962) is a former federal law enforcement agent. He is the former assistant director for counterintelligence at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

and the U.S. attorney's general office credited the local Muslim and Arab-American community for passing along the information that lead to the arrest of the three terror suspects. During a February 2006 press briefing in Washington, DC, in the presence of the Deputy Director of the FBI

John Pistole John S. Pistole (born June 1, 1956) is the former administrator of the United States Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and a former deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He is currently the president of Anderson Un ...

, Attorney General

Alberto Gonzales Alberto R. Gonzales (born August 4, 1955) is an American lawyer who served as the 80th United States Attorney General, appointed in February 2005 by President George W. Bush, becoming the highest-ranking Hispanic American in executive govern ...

accused the men of educating themselves on how to make and use explosives and suicide bomb vests by downloading videos off the internet, seeking firearm training, conspiring to provide terrorist funds abroad by using Mazloum's car dealership as a cover for traveling to and from Iraq, and making verbal threats against the President of the United States. This plot was mentioned as one of three examples of homegrown terrorism in a speech by the director of the FBI

Robert Mueller Robert Swan Mueller III (; born August 7, 1944) is an American lawyer and government official who served as the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 2001 to 2013. A graduate of Princeton University and New York ...

on 23 June 2006 on the morning that the Miami bomb plot to attack the Sears Tower was announced. On 15 December 2007 Mohammad Zaki and two cousins Zubair Ahmed, Khaleel Ahmed, received indictments on further terrorism charges of conspiring to kill, kidnap or maim persons outside of the United States, including US military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, including taking weapons training, doing bodybuilding exercises and taking steroids, allegedly to prepare for attacks. A 2011

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

report claimed some of the people associated with this group were imprisoned in a highly restrictive

communication management unit A communications management unit (CMU) is a type of self-contained group within a facility in the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons that severely restricts, manages and monitors all outside communication (telephone, mail, visitation) of inmat ...

References

DATA & GRAPHICS: Population Of The Communications Management Units
Margot Williams and Alyson Hurt,

, 3-3-11, retrieved 2011 03 04 from npr.org

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Toledo terror plot, 2006 February 2006 crimes February 2006 events in the United States Islamic terrorism in Ohio Islamic terrorism in the United States Islamic terrorist incidents in 2006 History of Toledo, Ohio Terrorist incidents in the United States in 2006