Man Accused in Anti-Islam Cartoon Attack Awaits Verdict

NYTimes:

PHOENIX — Jurors on Friday began deliberating the fate of a Muslim convert accused of financing, training and motivating the two men who tried to attack an exhibit of anti-Islam cartoons last year in Texas. The assault was thwarted, leaving the gunmen dead after a shootout with the police.

Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, a Phoenix resident whose name was originally Decarus Thomas, is accused of transporting guns across state lines, arming the attackers and training them to use the weapons, conspiring to support Islamic extremists and lying to federal agents. Mr. Kareem, 44, who served time in prison on a drunken-driving conviction, is also charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm.

On May 3, Elton Simpson, 30, and Nadir Soofi, 34, drove from Phoenix to Garland, Tex., and opened fire outside the Curtis Culwell Center, targeting an exhibit of images that lampooned the Prophet Muhammad, an event meant to denigrate Islam. The gunmen injured a security guard.

Correction: The event was meant to uphold free speech – our freedom to draw images of Muhammad if we darn well want to.

Mr. Kareem was not with the attackers. Still, Joseph E. Koehler, an assistant United States attorney, said during closing statements in Federal District Court here on Friday, “he was the motivator, he was the bankroller, he was the trainer and an intended participant.”

Mr. Kareem’s lawyer, Daniel D. Maynard, argued that the federal government was trying to cast his client as guilty by association.

“What the government has done in this case is try to deal with your fears, the fears that we have about the unknown, about homegrown terrorism,” Mr. Maynard said.

Earlier this week, Mr. Kareem spent two days on the witness stand, asserting his innocence and denying any knowledge of the plans or of the cartoon exhibit. He told jurors about his past: He was born into a Baptist family in Philadelphia, his father worked as a police officer. Mr. Kareem, who owns a moving company, said he met Mr. Simpson and Mr. Soofi at Mr. Soofi’s pizzeria in West Phoenix in 2011. He said the three men prayed together and attended the same mosque.

Mr. Kareem converted to Islam as an early adult, changing his name in 2013, after serving time in prison. Mr. Maynard said his client had an open-door policy at his home, inviting friends over after evening prayer or taking in those who needed a place to stay.

Mr. Simpson lived with Mr. Kareem for several months, but he said they fought over Mr. Simpson’s use of Mr. Kareem’s laptop to watch promotional videos for Al Qaeda.

“I did not want it in my house,” Mr. Kareem told jurors, though he said he and Mr. Simpson had eventually reconciled.

Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem in an undated booking photo. Credit Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department

For three weeks, witnesses presented a contrasting image of a man who seemed at once kindhearted and angry.

Sergio Martinez-Chavez, a friend of Mr. Kareem’s who testified for the prosecution, described him as “pushy.” Mr. Kareem called repeatedly one week, he said, asking if Mr. Martinez-Chavez could take him and his friends, Mr. Soofi and Mr. Simpson, target-shooting in the desert.

Another government witness, a 13-year-old boy who lived across the street from Mr. Kareem and converted to Islam because of him, remembered hearing him say that “if he had to hurt a kafir” — a derogatory term for a person who is not Muslim — “he would.”

A defense witness, Daniel Van Hook, a Christian friend of the defendant’s, said that Mr. Kareem had at times used the term “kafir” in a “joking context.” —

Terrorism experts said that this was the first case to go to trial for an act of violence inspired or ordered by the Islamic State. The group’s precise role in the attack, if any, remained unclear.

Mr. Maynard acknowledged the existence of a conspiracy — but one that did not involve Mr. Kareem. “Simpson and Soofi were in a conspiracy,” Mr. Maynard said.

Prosecutors said Mr. Kareem had bought weapons and ammunition for Mr. Simpson and Mr. Soofi. Mr. Soofi’s brother, Ali, described Mr. Soofi in court as “very gullible, very easily influenced.” It was Mr. Kareem, Ali Soofi said, who taught the men to assemble and care for the weapons.

On Friday, Mr. Koehler said, “It’s not just one thing, it’s a series of things” that attest to Mr. Kareem’s intentions. For example, Mr. Koehler said, Mr. Kareem inquired about the amount of explosives needed to blow up a football stadium and a mall.

Mr. Koehler reminded jurors of testimony from a witness who had heard Mr. Kareem saying he was so angry about the cartoon exhibit that he “wanted to go there and just shoot them.”

But Mr. Maynard said that prosecutors were conflating Mr. Kareem’s story with that of Mr. Simpson and Mr. Soofi, whom he described as “radicalized.”

Mr. Kareem, Mr. Maynard said, “might have been a knucklehead,” but his association with the Garland attackers “does not make him part of the conspiracy.”