How much trouble could only 2 Islamists cause the United States?
They Paralyzed and Terrorized Millions of D.C. Area Americans For 3 Weeks
Lee Malvo’s jailhouse picture of Osama bin Laden
The D.C. sniper attacks (also known as the Beltway sniper attacks) were a series of coordinated shootings that occurred during three weeks in October 2002 in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. Ten people were killed and three others were critically wounded in the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area and along Interstate 95 in Virginia.
The snipers were John Allen Muhammad (aged 41 at the time) and Lee Boyd Malvo (aged 17 at the time), who traveled in a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice sedan. Their crime spree, begun in February 2002, included murders and robberies in the states of Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, and Washington, which resulted in seven deaths and seven wounded people; in ten months, the snipers killed 17 people and wounded 10 others.[1]
May 24, 2006 update : The snipers are back in the news, now that John Allen Muhammad is on trial in Montgomery County, Maryland, and Lee Boyd Malvo is for the first time testifying against him. Malvo had much to say during his five hours of testimony, including these points, quoted from a Washington Post report:
John Allen Muhammad on trial.
- Muhammad’s ultimate goal was to indoctrinate 140 young homeless men at a compound in Canada who would “shut things down” in cities across the United States, Malvo testified.
- Muhammad introduced Malvo to the Nation of Islam and spoke to him about race and socioeconomic disparities. “The white man is the devil,” Malvo said, summing up Muhammad’s thinking.
- Under Muhammad’s tutelage, Malvo began a strict diet that involved taking 72 vitamins and eating only one meal a day.
- Malvo said Muhammad told him he intended to recover his children, who were taken from him after he kidnapped them for 18 months. “No white man in a black robe is going to tell him when and where and why he can see his children,” Malvo said, quoting Muhammad.
- The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had a considerable impact on Muhammad. “He said bloodshed begets bloodshed,” Malvo said, summarizing Muhammad’s reaction. “It’s a process. America began this. Osama bin Laden didn’t develop in a vacuum.”
- During summer 2002, Malvo said, Muhammad told him about the two-pronged scheme he had designed to terrorize the nation’s capital. Phase one was the month of random shootings. The next stage, which was intended to heighten the terror, involved setting explosive devices—which Muhammad told Malvo he had learned to use in the military—to kill massive numbers of children in the Baltimore area, Malvo testified.
- Muhammad believed Montgomery County was the ideal place to unleash the terror, Malvo testified, because it was affluent and predominantly white.
The National Post adds:
- Malvo said Muhammad told him, “We are going to go to the Washington, D.C., area, and we are going to terrorize these people,” relating how Muhammad hated America for its “slavery, hypocrisy [and] foreign policy.”