“Osman Alaalla, 61, came to pray Monday evening at a 5 p.m. service at the Islamic Society of Germantown. He said Henry typically led that service….’He’s very peaceful,’ he said.”
Yes, clearly.
What is taught at the Islamic Society of Germantown? Did Rondell Henry get his idea to align himself with the Islamic State and take up their call for vehicular jihad massacres at the Islamic Society of Germantown? Did he learn there that he should hate non-Muslims and do violence to them? Is anyone going to investigate this mosque in light of Henry’s jihad plotting, or will any concerns about this mosque be waved away with the claim that he was “radicalized on the Internet”? Would investigating this mosque be “Islamophobic”?
“Man accused of ISIS-inspired plot to ram truck into pedestrians near DC,” Associated Press, April 8, 2019:
WASHINGTON — A Maryland man inspired by the Islamic State group plotted to ram a stolen U-Haul truck into as many pedestrians as possible at a popular convention and tourist destination just outside the nation’s capital, federal prosecutors said Monday….
“I was just going to keep driving and driving and driving. I wasn’t going to stop,” the document quotes Henry as telling law enforcement authorities who questioned him. He said he wanted to create “panic and chaos” similar to a deadly truck attack that killed scores of people in Nice, France in 2016, prosecutors say….
The government’s six-page detention motion describes Henry as harboring hatred for “disbelievers” and looking to emulate Islamic State militants he saw on beheading videos and fighting overseas.
On his phone, which prosecutors say he discarded on a highway in an apparent attempt to conceal evidence, authorities found images of the ISIS flag, armed ISIS fighters and the man who carried out the massacre in an Orlando, Florida, nightclub three years ago.
The document alleges that Henry, a computer engineer, walked off his job in the middle of the day on March 26 and stole a U-Haul van from the parking garage of a mall in Virginia after determining that his four-door sedan “would not cause the catastrophic damage that he desired.”
He first considered an attack at Dulles International Airport, trying unsuccessfully over two hours to breach the security perimeter by slipping in through a checkpoint or accessing a restricted area, prosecutors said.
From there, he headed to National Harbor – a waterfront complex of restaurants, retail and hotels in Maryland.
“But so early in the morning on a weekday,” prosecutors wrote, “the defendant did not find the sizable crowd upon which he desired to inflict his radical conduct.”…
Acquaintances of Henry expressed surprise at the allegations.
Osman Alaalla, 61, came to pray Monday evening at a 5 p.m. service at the Islamic Society of Germantown. He said Henry typically led that service. Alaalla described Henry as a quiet, nice man but said he didn’t know anything about his personal life. He said he would come to pray and leave.
“He’s very peaceful,” he said.