By Chuck Hustmyre
October 29, 2007
HOMESTEAD, Fla.(Crime Library) — His name is on the FBI's terrorist watch list. Two weeks ago Tahmeed Ahmad tried to buy a gun to attack a U.S. military base. One week ago he bought two butcher knives and a pair of oversized vodka bottles that he could turn into Molotov cocktail-type bombs. Then he launched what he hoped would be a suicide attack on U.S. Air Force security personnel.
Less than 24 hours later, the FBI said Ahmad was not a terrorist, just a poor, mentally disturbed and troubled young man who had reached the end of his rope and was trying to commit "suicide by cop."
It was a quick diagnosis, and one used all too often in cases that smack of homegrown jihad.
 |
| Miami Central High School |
Tahmeed Ahmad, 22, is a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Kuwait. In June, he graduated with honors in mathematics from City College of New York, according to the Miami Herald. This fall he left his East Flushing, N.Y. home after landing a job as a math teacher at Miami Central High School. The Herald quoted Ahmad's mother as saying her son is a smart, quiet man who was elected to student government at City College three years in a row.
A recent honors math graduate who over the summer successfully sat through a series of job interviews that earned him a position as a high school math teacher. Sound crazy?
An FBI spokeswoman in Miami reached by Crime Library would not comment on why Ahmad was on the agency's terrorist watch list, and would say only that he had not been removed from it.
 |
| Homestead Air Reserve Base |
According to an FBI affidavit prepared by Senior Special Agent Richard Lunn and obtained by Crime Library, Ahmad drove up to a gate on the west side of Homestead Air Reserve Base near midnight Sunday, Oct. 21.
When security police guarding the gate confronted Ahmad, he stepped out of his vehicle and brandished two butcher knives he had just purchased at a nearby Wal-Mart. Armed with the two knives, he "charged the military police officers."
 |
| Molotov Cocktail |
One of the SPs fired a shot at Ahmad but missed. The guards then managed to subdue their attacker and take him into custody. Ahmad then began shouting, "Death to America." He told the security policemen he had intended to use Molotov cocktails, an incendiary device usually made from gasoline-filled bottles, to attack the Air Force base.
Later, Ahmad told the FBI he had tried to buy a gun a week earlier to use in the attack, but the firearms dealer would not sell him the gun because he had not lived in Florida for at least 90 days. Federal law requires gun purchasers to establish residency in a state by living there for at least 90 days before buying a firearm in that state.
In his affidavit, Special Agent Lunn wrote that Ahmad said he was trying to "commit suicide by cop." Although the phrase is in quotation marks in the affidavit, it is unclear whether Ahmad used that exact phrase or Lunn chose it as a way to summarize what Ahmad meant.
Lunn charged Ahmad with assaulting government employees.
Meanwhile, Ahmad's mother, Gulnaz Ahmad, said her son has been suffering from mental problems, for which he has been taking psychiatric medication. She claimed in an interview with the Miami Herald that an unnamed mental hospital recently told her that her son tried to commit suicide but failed because he did not know how to do it.
The Herald did not publish any additional details about Ahmad's alleged attempted suicide, nor did the article mention if or when the first-year high school teacher was a patient at a mental hospital.
Another question left unanswered, is why the Miami school system would hire as a teacher a man on the FBI's terror watch list, who was also being treated for mental problems, and who had recently attempted suicide. Either the school system's background investigation procedures are woefully inadequate, or perhaps Ahmad is not the mental case some have portrayed him as.
Next Page
default
increase
decrease
email
print