FBI Entraps US Citizen Attempting to Join US-funded Al Qaeda in Syria

Tony Cartalucci
Activist Post

Image: FBI’s latest entrapped patsy, Abdella Ahmad Tounisi, a U.S. citizen, attempted to join Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, Jabhat al-Nusra. The irony is, as Tounisi is charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, the US State Department has announced an additional $123 million in military aid to these very same terrorists. 

As the FBI reels from its bungled Boston bombing case, where the suspects turned out to have been contacted and perhaps monitored (even directed) by the FBI up to 2 years prior to the attacks, the Chicago Tribune has now reported of yet another bizarre FBI entrapment case hyped as a “foiled” would-be terrorist.

In its article, “FBI: Aurora man wanted to join al-Qaida in Syria,” the Chicago Tribune would report: 

An 18-year-old Aurora man with ties to a foiled attempt last year to bomb a downtown Chicago bar was arrested as he was about to travel to the Middle East to join the al-Qaida terrorist network, federal officials said Saturday.

Abdella Ahmad Tounisi, a U.S. citizen, was held without bail Saturday after being arrested the night before at O’Hare International Airport, where he was about to board an airplane to Istanbul, Turkey, FBI officials said in a press release.

Bizarre, considering US ally and NATO-member Turkey has hosted thousands of other known terrorists  passing through Turkish territory to invade Syria, and even facilitated their activities along with US CIA agents near the Turkish-Syrian border since the conflict in Syria began in 2011.

The Chicago Tribune would specifically mention Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, Jahbat al-Nusra:

Tounisi had hoped to eventually join a jihadist militant group operating inside Syria called Jabhat al-Nusrah, according to a federal complaint unsealed Saturday and filed in U.S. District Court. The organization is an alias for al-Qaida in Iraq, the complaint said.

Tounisi had the year before, assisted another FBI-entrapped patsy. The Chicago Tribune reports: 

According to the complaint, Tounisi was a close friend of Daoud, who on Sept. 14, 2012, traveled into Chicago with an undercover agent who brought him to a Jeep that had an inert explosive device in it, officials have said.

Daoud allegedly drove the Jeep to the target — identified by the Tribune as the Cactus Bar & Grill at 404 S. Wells St. — and walked to an alley a block away, where he pulled a triggering device he thought would explode the vehicle, authorities said. The bomb never exploded and Daoud was apprehended and is being held without bail. 

“Tounisi and Daoud appeared to share an interest in violent jihad, a topic about which the two exchanged a number of emails, phone calls, and text messages,” according to the complaint filed Saturday.

FBI officials said that in preparation for last year’s foiled attack, Tounisi had “recommended certain attack techniques, offered ideas about targeting, and researched those locations online to analyze their feasibility.”

While Daoud allegedly continued his role in the plot, Tounisi backed out in mid-August because he suspected that the person Daoud was working with was an undercover law enforcement officer, according to the complaint. Daoud told the undercover officer that Tounisi wanted to go overseas and join a terrorist group.

According to the complaint, hours after Daoud was arrested, Tounisi was interviewed by FBI agents “and admitted to assisting Daoud in target selection and acknowledged that he had contemplated traveling to Yemen to carry out jihad.”

After Daoud’s arrest, Tounisi allegedly continued to research travel to Syria and terrorist organizations. He also applied for and obtained a new passport, officials said.

Perhaps most ironic of all is what Tounisi is being charged with:

He was was charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, a felony offense that could bring 15 years in federal prison.

This is particularly ironic because US Secretary of State John Kerry has just announced an additional $123 million in military aid that is headed directly to this very same foreign terrorist organization, Jahbat al-Nusra – and unlike Tounisi, Kerry and his collaborators are not being charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

US is Funding, Arming Jabhat al-Nusra

The FBI’s bizarre entrapment racket is revealed to be a nationwide operation with multiple patsies being cultivated at any given time, with FBI agents literally running around the country with bombs, weapons, vehicles and would-be terrorists carrying out attacks only to be foiled at the last possible moment. That FBI agents have now arrested a target attempting to join a terrorist group who owes its continued existence in Syria to the US, British, French, Saudi, and Qatari governments, tells the tale of “War on Terror” out of control – inspiring hapless would-be terrorists and real threats alike.

While the US maintains that the inception and expansion of Al Qaeda in Syria is merely an unintended consequence of a spontaneous crisis in Syria, it was reported as early as 2007 that the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel plotted to arm and fund Al Qaeda affiliated sectarian extremists to overthrow the government of Syria in a sectarian-driven bloodbath. In Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s 2007 New Yorker article,  “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” the strategy was described as follows:

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

It is now revealed that the US CIA is working along Syria’s borders, funneling cash, equipment, supplies, and thousands of tons of weapons into Syria. It would be these very CIA agents, the FBI’s witless patsy, Abdella Ahmad Tounisi, would have passed on his way to slaughter Syrians alongside Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists.

The New York Times in their article titled, “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With C.I.A. Aid,” admits that:

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.

The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports.

The New York Times piece attempts to spin America’s role in arming militants in Syria. The Times continues by stating:

The American government became involved, the former American official said, in part because there was a sense that other states would arm the rebels anyhow. The C.I.A. role in facilitating the shipments, he said, gave the United States a degree of influence over the process, including trying to steer weapons away from Islamist groups and persuading donors to withhold portable antiaircraft missiles that might be used in future terrorist attacks on civilian aircraft.

However, this contradicts both documented intentions reported by the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh in 2007, and the strategic realities on the ground in Syria today. While the US claims it is “steering weapons away from Islamist groups,” the US State Department admits that al-Nusra, (listed by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization), operates in every major Syrian city, has carried out hundreds of terrorist operations since 2011, and is clearly the most prominent militant group in Syria today. The official US State Department statement announcing al-Nusra as a foreign terrorist organization and an alias of Al Qaeda in Iraq stated: 

Since November 2011, al-Nusrah Front has claimed nearly 600 attacks – ranging from more than 40 suicide attacks to small arms and improvised explosive device operations – in major city centers including Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr. During these attacks numerous innocent Syrians have been killed.

Western media would elaborate on the prominence al-Nusra has achieved in Syria’s 2 year-long conflict. The New York Times’ article “Syrian Rebels Tied to Al Qaeda Play Key Role in War,” states:

The lone Syrian rebel group with an explicit stamp of approval from Al Qaeda has become one of the uprising’s most effective fighting forces, posing a stark challenge to the United States and other countries that want to support the rebels but not Islamic extremists.

Money flows to the group, the Nusra Front, from like-minded donors abroad. Its fighters, a small minority of the rebels, have the boldness and skill to storm fortified positions and lead other battalions to capture military bases and oil fields. As their successes mount, they gather more weapons and attract more fighters.  

The group is a direct offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Iraqi officials and former Iraqi insurgents say, which has contributed veteran fighters and weapons.

While the London Telegraph reports in their article, “Syria: how jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra is taking over Syria’s revolution,” that:

And in recent weeks it is Jabhat al-Nusra, a radical jihadist group blacklisted by the US as terrorists and a group that wants Syria to be an uncompromising Islamic state governed by sharia, that is holding sway.

The group is well funded – probably through established global jihadist networks – in comparison to moderates. Meanwhile pro-democracy rebel group commanders say money from foreign governments has all but dried up because of fears over radical Islamists. 

The effect is changing the face of the Syrian revolution.

How does the West reconcile admissions it and its regional allies are sending torrents of cash, equipment, supplies, and thousands of tons of weapons to “moderates” in Syria, with al-Nusra’s rise in prominence? If the West, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Jordan are substantially propping up “moderates,” who then, is sending even more aid to Al Qaeda’s al-Nusra? The reality is, there are no moderates, and as stated in Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker report in 2007, the plan was from the beginning to arm and fund Al Qaeda in Syria to overthrow the Syrian government in a sectarian bloodbath. Statements of steering arms to “moderates” are crafted for the gullible public’s consumption only.

That the FBI is arresting entrapped patsies attempting to join al-Nusra in a conflict intentionally perpetuated by the West, while the US State Department and Pentagon openly provide real material aid to the very same foreign terrorists, illustrates the unhinged nature of American domestic and foreign policy. It also depicts a nation out of control, orchestrating an increasingly complex and dangerous militant threat that is creating and inspiring real human suffering, from Boston to Damascus.

Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at Land Destroyer Report, Alternative Thai News Network and LocalOrg. Read other contributed articles by Tony Cartalucci here.