Failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad gets life in prison sentence - Los Angeles Times

An artist's rendering of convicted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad during his sentencing hearing in New York. (Reuters / October 5, 2010)

During his sentencing Tuesday to life in prison, Faisal Shahzad — a Pakistani immigrant who gave up a secure suburban life in America to become a terrorist for Islam — was unapologetic about his botched attempt to kill dozens of people in Times Square last spring.

After a federal judge declared that he would never leave prison, Shahzad smiled faintly, held up an index finger and declared, "Allah Akbar."

U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum did not bother to review parole possibilities because she said there were none.

"You appear to be someone who was capable of education," she said later, "and I do hope that you will spend some of the time in prison thinking carefully about whether the Koran wants you to kill lots of people."

As he did throughout the half-hour sentencing, Shahzad, 31, interrupted her to press his religious viewpoint: "The Koran gives us the right to defend, and that's what all I'm doing."

On May 1, on a bustling corner of Broadway in the theater district, Shahzad parked an SUV loaded with three homemade bombs and tried to set them off. When his attempt fizzled, he returned by train to suburban Connecticut, where he'd been living off and on since he moved to America to attend college. Authorities tracked Shahzad through the vehicle and the keys he left dangling from the ignition, and two days later he was arrested at JFK International Airport aboard a plane that was about to take off for the Middle East.

At one point Tuesday, Cedarbaum asked whether Shahzad hadn't taken an oath of allegiance to the United States when he became an American citizen a year before the bombing attempt.

"I did swear, but I did not mean it," Shahzad said. "Human-made" laws, he elaborated, were corrupt and meant nothing to him because he abided by "sharia," or Islamic law.

"I see," the judge said, "You took a false oath?"

"Yes," Shahzad said.

Shahzad's beard and hair, spilling out from under a white prayer cap, had grown long and bushy since he last appeared in court in late June and announced his desire "to plead guilty 100 times over." Again, Shahzad lectured the judge and a packed courtroom about his guilt: "If I am given 1,000 lives, I will sacrifice them all for the sake of Allah fighting this cause, defending our lands, making the word of Allah supreme over any religion or system."

He went on to explain how Muslims would never accept having Western forces in their countries fighting on a "pretext for your democracy and freedom." The past nine years of war, he said, had achieved nothing except to awaken Muslims to defend their "religion, people, honor and land."

The son of a retired Pakistani air force marshal, Shahzad grew up mostly in a secular, upper-middle class neighborhood in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city. He came to the United States in 1998 as an undergraduate student, and over the years attained many of the trappings of what many here consider a successful life — two university degrees, a wife and two small children, a house in the suburbs, credit cards and a job as a junior financial analyst.

But the U.S. military presence in Muslim countries and perceived insults by Westerners toward Islam apparently had begun plaguing Shahzad, according to reports of what he told investigators, and he became increasingly religious. He returned last winter to his native Pakistan, first to spend time with family in Peshawar and later to attend terror camp in the volatile Waziristan region, where he learned to make bombs.

After he returned to America, he left his job, allowed a house he owned in Shelton, Conn., go into foreclosure and sent his young family to live in Pakistan with his parents. Living in a rundown neighborhood in Bridgeport, Conn., he began monitoring via the Internet a crowded corner in Times Square where he planned to blow up his vehicle. He told police he'd hoped to kill at least 40 people on the first try, and that if hadn't been caught he would have kept trying to blast through crowded areas in New York City until he was arrested or killed.

Toward the end of the hearing Tuesday, the judge, who had commented with obvious disgust on Shahzad's lack of remorse, explained the appeal process to him. He nodded and again smiled at her before plainclothes officers handcuffed him and escorted him out of the courtroom.

geraldine.baum@latimes.com

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Jewish voters don't reflexively back Rahm Emanuel for Chicago mayor - Chicago Tribune

Some might assume that the idea of a Rahm Emanuel candidacy for mayor would be cause for celebration along Devon Avenue, the longtime rialto of Chicago's Jewish community.

After all, Emanuel attended an Orthodox synagogue before going from Chicago to the White House, and his family is highly respected in West Rogers Park, where his father, Benjamin, was a pediatrician. The numbers of those who say Dr. Emanuel took care of their kids is roughly similar to the legion that claimed to have witnessed Babe Ruth point to the Wrigley Field bleachers and hit that famed home run.

But Rahm Emanuel, who begins his Chicago "listening tour" this week, is about to discover that all politics aren't local.

In the Jewish neighborhoods on the Far North Side, Rahm Emanuel is more associated with what he did in Washington than what he might do in Chicago's City Hall.

"There are questions about his positions on Israel," said Chesky Montrose, 32, who was wearing a skull cap and pushing one child in a stroller while keeping an eye on two others bicycling down Devon. "It's not logical that international policy would influence a race for mayor. But there is some resentment here, no doubt."

There was rejoicing along Devon on Friday because it was Simchat Torah, a festive celebration of the divine laws Moses received on behalf of the ancient Israelites. But there also were questions about Emanuel timing his White House farewell announcement for that day.

"On yontif?" said Montrose, using the Yiddish for the holiday.

During the run-up to Simchat Torah, it's traditional for Jews to take their meals in a sukkah, an improvised hut like their ancestors dwelled in during their wandering years in the deserts of Sinai. A fast-food restaurant on Devon provides customers with a sukkah.

With rituals marking their forebears' exiles, it's hardly a wonder Jews fret over modern-day Israel. Obama got a huge percent of Jewish voters, many of whom assumed Emanuel would give voice to their concerns as chief of staff, noted Cheryl Jacobs Lewin, Chicago co-chair of Americans for a Safe Israel.

"That has not happened, judging by the White House's heavy-handedness toward Israel," Lewin said in an e-mail.

A spokeswoman for Emanuel said Sunday he is a strong backer of Israel.

"Rahm's support for Israel is well known, and he had many supporters in the Jewish community when he represented a half-million Chicagoans in Congress. But he takes nothing for granted and will work to earn the support of every voter in communities across the city," said Lori Goldberg, Emanuel's spokeswoman.

Another person leery of Emanuel on the Israel issue is Norm Levin, who said, "I used to be a devout Democrat."

Levin is president of the Great Vest Side Club, an alumni association of the West Side neighborhood that was once the epicenter of Chicago's Jewish community. (The pronunciation "vest" commemorates the immigrant accent of members' parents.)

"I like to vote for Jewish people," Levin said. "But if they're sort of negative on Israel, they lose me."

Yet that very quality could be a plus for Emanuel among lakefront liberals, many of them secular Jews uncomfortable with a right-leaning Israeli administration.

"I'm sort of hostile to Israel," said James Alter, a founding father of independent politics in Chicago.

He and his late wife, Joanne Alter, also Jewish and a Metropolitan Water Reclamation District trustee, made their Lakeview home a longtime clubhouse for anti-machine activists.

Even so, there are other issues on which liberals clash with Emanuel, said political consultant Don Rose, who is Jewish, a reigning guru of the independent movement.

"We progressives found him unresponsive as a congressman when we wanted him to speak out against the Iraq war," Rose said.

Then there could be a linguistic problem attached to an Emanuel candidacy. Jews think of a Jew in the public eye as representing all of them with his or her behavior, said Chayim Knobloch, a rabbi and proprietor of the Kol Tuv supermarket on Devon.

Emanuel is famous for peppering his conversations with swearing, while Jews have a longstanding caution: "Don't make a shandah for the goyim" — be aware of your behavior in gentile company.

"So I have a small request," Knobloch said. "Rahm should watch his language."

rgrossman@tribune.com

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Israeli settlers respond to mosque burning allegations - Christian Science Monitor

Tel Aviv

A day after a mosque was torched in a village near Bethlehem, Jewish settlers' reaction to assertions that one of their own had carried out the attack was a mix of annoyance and contrition.

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The mosque in the Palestinian village of Beit Fajar became the fourth in the last two years to be the target of arson. Many Israelis assume the attack was the work of a small group of Jewish extremists who have embarked on a campaign of vigilante violence – known as "price tag" – to derail the peace process and deter the government from evacuating settlements.

On Tuesday, a delegation of settler rabbis visited the torched mosque and made statements that implied that they, too, assumed that an extremist was responsible.

"This is not the way of the Torah or of Judaism,'' said Rabbi Shlomo Brin, from the nearby settlement of Alon Shvut, according to Israeli news website Ynet News. "This incident does not add anything to the settlements."

On Monday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak condemned the attack as inspired by Jews.

But some in the settler community see the finger-pointing as an attempt to slander Israeli settlers in the West Bank ahead of a possible new settlement freeze and the resumption of peace talks.

They argue that despite many arrests and interrogations, the Israeli police have yet to indict anyone in the previous cases of mosque arson.

"The immediate hand-pointing is irresponsible. [Mr. Barak] is trying to achieve political goals," says David Ha'Ivri, a resident of the settlement of Kfar Tapuach, referring to Israeli's left-leaning politicians who want to restart the peace process and stop settlement expansion.

"It's productive of them to give a bad image of the residents of Judea and Samaria (the biblical names for the areas making up the West Bank), and by doing that they smear an entire community," he says.

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