Terrorism

Federal prosecutors in Philadelphia are asking for a postponement until spring in the trial for an Ellicott City teen charged with aiding a terrorist, citing complexities in a case filled with classified information, voluminous evidence and multiple defendants. Also, according to documents filed by the U.S. attorney's office for the eastern district of Pennsylvania, an alleged accomplice remains incarcerated in Ireland pending extradition. Prosecutors say he has neither retained an attorney nor had a single court appearance related to the case.

In the wake of Sept. 11, there were many over-reactions. As a result of some of them, our hard-won constitutional rights were eroded. There were also attempts to gain partisan political advantage by claiming to be tougher on terror than the other guy. Unfortunately, some of that kind of dangerous over-reaction and game playing is still happening. A phony problem has been manufactured, and the solution created to solve it would damage all of our rights and undermine our legal system.

Before this year's Maryland bear hunt, Colton Lucas was considered a typical 12-year-old living in the Western Maryland town of Kitzmiller. He loved to hunt and fish with his father, Joe, and play football with his friends. His priorities haven't changed in the past two weeks, but the seventh-grader has become a local celebrity. And a hero. He's received the acclaim for killing a bear — a 376-pound male, which according to Mayor Mike Brady had been terrorizing the residents of Kitzmiller for several years.

A retired FBI agent says the agency was too slow to investigate Antonio Martinez, who is accused of trying to blow up a military recruiting center in Maryland, and showed a "reckless disregard" for evidence collection by failing to record several meetings between Martinez and an informant. "The inattention and the delayed response by the FBI to conduct investigation … is not commensurate with generally accepted reasonable FBI investigative practices," James J. Wedick, a 34-year bureau veteran, wrote in a 13-page report, calling the case a "serious departure from the FBI's authorized mandate to respond quickly to threats, particularly crimes of violence and threats to national security.

— The lanky Ellicott City teenager and Pakistani citizen walked into the federal courtroom here on Monday dressed in an olive drab, one-piece prison jumpsuit, his hands cuffed behind his back, and muttered barely two words during his arraignment on terrorism charges — "not guilty. " And with that, the public proceeding began for one of the country's youngest people charged with aiding a terrorist. A U.S. District Court judge ordered Mohammad Massan Khalid detained until his trial, scheduled for Dec. 13, and defense attorneys asked for a hearing next month to find an alternate holding facility for their young client.

Federal prosecutors in Philadelphia unsealed an indictment Thursday charging a Howard County teenager with conspiring with a suburban Pennsylvania woman known as "Jihad Jane" to provide material support to terrorists. Mohammad Hassan Khalid, a Pakistani citizen and Maryland resident who graduated from Mount Hebron High School this year, is accused of using the Internet to recruit people and solicit funds for a violent jihadist war in South Asia and Europe. He was indicted alongside Ali Charaf Damache, a 46-year-old Algerian man living in Ireland, and allegedly acted under the direction of Colleen R. LaRose, who dubbed herself "Jihad Jane" online, according to the indictment.

Antonio Martinez - aka Muhammad Hussein - was pretty sure he was being set up. A car bomb had been handed to him, and two volunteers he barely knew were suddenly on board with a jihadist plot to murder military personnel in Catonsville. But once he got close to the rigged SUV that December day and got a whiff of the "fumes" emanating from it, he started to think "maybe it was real" - and when he got behind the wheel, "he felt certain," according to paperwork filed in federal court Tuesday . The 30-page document, submitted by federal prosecutors, reveals new information about the "full confession" Martinez allegedly made to the FBI and how a confidential informant helped build the terrorism case against him. Martinez was a recent convert to Islam who thought of himself as a radical "holy warrior" when he parked the vehicle at an Armed Forces recruiting center, where he believed the bomb would have more "umph," the filing states.

In a Woodlawn office park, police can collect and analyze tips that can help find an al-Qaeda cell or a Bloods gang member. Investigators there — representing more than two dozen law enforcement agencies across the state — have access to a wealth of information from their colleagues around the country and the federal government. So when a beat cop from Baltimore needs information on a drug dealer from Los Angeles, the answer can come almost instantaneously. The investigators in such offices in Maryland and around the country are supposed to be focused on identifying terrorists and potential risks.

In a time of great political gridlock, there is at least one issue that both parties still agree on - the urgency to confront and reduce the threat posed by terrorist groups that are actively seeking nuclear weapons. But Congress reduced the fiscal 2011 funding for nonproliferation efforts by the significant amount of $369 million, and more recently the House slashed an additional $428 million from the president's fiscal 2012 budget request for the nonproliferation account, including $85 million for the Global Threat Reduction Initiative.

General Physics Corp. had already built a strong business training police and fire departments in the use of emergency equipment. But after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the doors of opportunity opened even wider. The attacks focused officials at all levels of government on homeland security, and federal money to support it become plentiful. Protecting against terrorist attacks became a high priority for municipalities and federal grants to support the effort became plentiful.