This is why I’m glad I moved out of NYC:
Authorities busting a suspected ID thief in Brooklyn stumbled upon a possible terrorist nest full of al Qaeda news clippings, chemical manuals and weapons literature, sources told The Post yesterday.
Cops made the disturbing find Thursday evening after a landlord found the photocopied IDs inside the apartment of a former tenant on Classon Avenue in Prospect Heights and dialed 311.
The tenant, Hisham Khaleel, 35, had been evicted.
Responding officers found 13 copied licenses, all of which appeared to belong to customers from the Vanderbilt YMCA on East 47th Street in Manhattan, where Khaleel worked briefly as an unarmed security guard.
They also found news clippings about al Qaeda, literature on chemical purchasing and processing, an owner’s manual for a Beretta handgun, a reference guide for modern airplanes, a video on rifle-shooting fundamentals and a sniper’s manual.
Cops also uncovered lab glassware catalogs and a book, “Hostile Planet: The Essential Guide to Surviving Natural Disasters, Pandemics and Terrorist Attacks.”
Khaleel’s former co-worker Pierre Andre Leonard, 35, said the suspect worked for six months on the 3-11 p.m. shift.
“He didn’t hang with the crew,” he said, adding that Khaleel seemed to disappear one day.
I worked for the Greater New York Y.M.C.A. and I’m frankly not surprised they not only tolerated a radical Islamist as an employee at their swankiest facility, but that they allowed him access to the needed information they collect to forge documents
But Khaleel wasn’t just a secret Al-Qaeda operative, he was a “soft Jihadist’ who spent his time trying to intimidate people into thinking twice before firing Muslims:
According to federal court filings, Khaleel has been a frequent – if unsuccessful – litigant.
A 2005 lawsuit against the staffing company Metro One Loss Prevention Services alleged that he had been discriminated against on the basis of his Egyptian background when he was let go.
The suit was dismissed, as was a nearly identical claim against the US Postal Service, where Khaleel worked from 2001 to 2004.
He’s on the run now, but how much damage has he already caused? More importantly, how much will he cause in the future?
h/t N.T.A.