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Claims Police Planted NATO Terror Plot Evidence Raises Questions

Monday, May 21, 2012 19:18

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Alleged NATO terror plotters accuse the police of planting evidence after a failed entrapment plot as the Police version of events appear unlikely to be factual.

On May 19th law the Illinois State Prosecutor’s office announced that 3 NATO of 20 activists who were rounded up in a series of raids on the 16th were being charged with possessing explosive and weapons they planned to use to commit a series of terrorists acts in Chicago.

As as more details are learned about the police’s allegations the less the allegations against the suspects make sense.

According to the law enforcement, the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service launched a covert surveillance operation to monitor the 3 alleged conspirators, Jared Chase, Brent Betterly, and Brian Church at the beginning of May.

That surveillance followed an earlier FBI raid in Miami, which resulted in no charges, during which one the alleged conspirators, Jared Chase, was the only person to be detained by the FBI.

During the surveillance operation the FBI says two of their operatives, known only as Mo and Gloves, were able to infiltrate the ring of activists associated with the alleged conspirators and conduct monitoring operations which included wire tapping and recordings of the alleged suspects conversations as law enforcement monitored their activities.

However, several things law enforcement claims don’t make sense.

For starters here is a short list of some of the many items the Chicago Police Department, The FBI and the U.S. Secret Service claim to have recovered during the raid.

1) A Mortar gun.
2) IEDs (improvised explosive devices)
3) 4 Molotov Cocktails
4) Swords (plural)
5) Throwing stars
6) Hunting bow
7) Incendiary devices
Assault vests
9) Gas Mask Equipment
10) Shields
11) Knives
12) Brass Knuckles

It is unknown whether the allegedly recovered IEDs (improvised explosive devices), Incendiary devices, and 4 Molotov Cocktails refer to the same thing.

If the police are referring to same item as three separate explosives it would indicate the police are sensationalizing and over-trumping their allegations.

By the police’s own admission the defendant’s were under surveillance as they came into Chicago from out of state.

Are we supposed to believe that the 3 alleged conspirators were able to transport such a massive amount of battle gear into the state and into the house going undetected?

And they were able to do this in a city that has a complete surveillance dragnet that can track people across the entire city using a combination of artificial intelligence systems and facial recognition equipment and is very similar to New York City’s state of the art secret Wall Street spy center?

And they did this while a martial law red-zone was literally declared to be in effect around the entire Chicago loop?under on of the highest levels of surveillance in modern history?

And they did it while under a high-level of covert surveillance by several law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and The Secret Service which had planted two operatives among their ranks and tracked them as they traveled into Chicago from New Hampshire and Florida?

And they managed to sneak all of these items into a house were many more activists who came in from out of state were temporarily staying so they could attend the NATO protests.

Perhaps more oddly is while the police claimed to have recovered all of these weapons the media debate seems to be centered around the Molotov cocktails and whether they were actually beer making equipment which the police are trying to claim were cocktails.

Wouldn’t the bigger story be the fact that alleged terrorist planning to conduct attacks were raided and found to have a military grade mortar gun capable of firing artillery shells?

This clearly all makes little sense.

What makes more sense is what the alleged conspirators claims to have happened.

They assert law enforcement tried tricking them into going along with the FBI’s terror plot, which was my initial intuition when the story first started to break.

They claim that when they refused to go along with the FBI’s attempt to entrap them the police planted the devices to frame them.

Listen to this audio interview – done by ABC News conservative investigative reporter Aaron Klein – with the person whose apartment was raided.

She says that there is no way that the activists snuck Molotov cocktails into her apartment without her having known about it, let alone all of the other items the police say they found in the apartment.

Aaron does raise the questions about her assertions, but waits until the interview is over so she can’t respond, saying we just spoke with the apartment owner who swears up and down there is no way the activists had Cocktails in her apartment but she admits she was not home when the police raided her apartment.

While that may be a valid point when it comes to the cocktails it is almost certain that there is no way she could have missed that massive list of weapons the police claim to have retrieved from her apartment.

Especially since the activists had already been staying in her apartment for several days by the time the police conducted the raid.

In fact, several days before the arrests he Chicago police department was filmed pulling over the activists, harassing them and threatening to smash the skulls with billy clubs.

This video shows Chicago police questioning occupiers about Occupy Chicago, the NATO protests, and threatening violence after arbitrarily pulling over their car in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago earlier this week. The video went viral after the activists posted it to social media. Now, three of them are being charged with terrorism in the wake of a warrantless preemptive raid on activists’ homes in Chicago.

An attorney from the National Lawyers Guild describes the video:

They were driving in a car and were pulled over without any kind of justification or reason by the Chicago police department. They were surrounded by police and they were questioned for a very long period of time about what they were doing in Chicago, why they were here to protest, what their political affiliations were, how they identified politically—All kinds of absolutely outrageous questions that certainly do not indicate any kind of illegal behavior because it is not constitutional simply to accuse them of a crime because of a political belief.

One officer can be heard in the video saying, “We’ll come look for you, each and every one of you.” Police also made references to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where protesters were violently beaten back by National Guardsmen:

CPD Officer 1: “You like that, he knows these guys know, ’68. You guys know all about ’68. What did they say back in ’68?”

CPD Officer 2: “Billy club to the fucking skull.”

Further discrepancies in law enforcement’s alleged version of events are revealed in the State Attorney’s press release.

Official Illinois State Attorney’s Press Release

Note the headline of this press release is a lie. It reads partially ‘investigation into violence during the NATO summit’. There a) was no violence and b) the arrests took place before the NATO summit not during. Why would they release a press release that says during the NATO summit before the NATO summit? Also this claims that the activists had a mortar gun. That is suspicious because it isn’t repeated anywhere in the media or by the police yet would be more damning than Molotov cocktails.

The headline reads – THREE FACE STATE TERRORISM CHARGES IN INVESTIGATION INTO VIOLENCE DURING THE NATO SUMMIT.

The first problems is it reads INVESTIGATION INTO VIOLENCE because at the point of the arrests there was no violence, only an alleged plot to commit violence.

The second problem is the statement reads DURING when the alleged plotters were arrested as part of preemptive raids that took place BEFORE the NATO summit.

Was this a pre-written press release based on a series of events that law enforcement officials expected to happen but never did? How could they have such facts wrong?

The inaccurate press release certainly lends credibility to the defendants claims that the police were trying to trick them into commuting acts of violence and terrorist attacks during the NATO summit.

The third problem is that on Wednesday, May 16th the police conducted the raids arresting the defendants nd had the allegedly foiled the plot to conduct terrorists yest on Thursday, May 17th – before it was revealed to the public a ‘terror plot had been foiled’ the FBI said their NATO fusion center – which coordinates with 43 agencies to share information about terrorism threats - “absolutely no indication” of any terror attacks being planned or that any group or organization has a plan afoot to disrupt the summit.

‘No indication’ of terror threat to Chicago NATO summit-FBI

hu May 17, 2012 6:45pm EDT

* FBI on watch for terror threats ahead of NATO summit
* Chicago was already a potential terror target
* 43 agencies to share information at nerve center

CHICAGO, May 17 (Reuters) – The FBI said on Thursday there was “absolutely no indication” of a terror attack threat in Chicago, although the city was considered a potential target even before President Barack Obama and other leaders meet for this weekend’s NATO summit.

FBI agent Ross Rice said the agency will be on heightened alert in Chicago, with extra agents brought in to react if its intelligence network sniffs out a plot. The FBI has agents in 70 countries, gathering intelligence.

“Several international terrorist groups have elevated Chicago in their mind to their No. 1 target for terrorist attack,” Rice said in an interview at the U.S. government’s nerve center inside a non-descript suburban Chicago office complex. Reporters were asked to keep the location secret.

“But there’s absolutely no indication that we’ve developed that any group or organization has a plan afoot to disrupt the summit this week,” Rice said.

[...]

n army of police, FBI and Secret Service agents will blanket the center of America’s third-largest city for the two-day summit. Any incident including a terror plot, a protest run amok or a traffic accident will be communicated to the Multi-Agency Communications Center, or MACC, officials said.

[...]

“There are 43 agencies represented. Some of them I’ve never heard of myself. But they can pick up the phone and take care of the problem,” said Chicago Police Captain Hootan Bahmandeji.

[...]

The nerve center is designed to allow the sharing of information in person, rather than via telephone. The Secret Service will supervise and coordinate the flow of information.

[...]

Planning began in July 2011, when Chicago was designated by the Secret Service for the city’s first-ever “National Special Security Event.”

[...]

Much of the public focus – whether from Chicago commuters or business people – has been on planned and unplanned protests and how the city’s police department will handle things if provocateurs start trouble.

[...]

Source: Reuter’s

Why would the FBI terrorism fusion center, which the article clearly states charge of monitoring possible terror threats across dozens of organizations and is monitoring the planned protests, give such a statement when they were in the middle of conducting a month-long operation into a terrorist plot?

Why would the FBI give such a statement over 24 hours after they had foiled an alleged terror plot and they already had the alleged terrorists in custody?

Perhaps it would make sense if they didn’t want to tip-off the conspirators to the fact that they were under investigation watched.

But by this point it had already made nationwide headlines that these activists were raided and were being detained without charge and the suspects already knew it was for alleged terrorism conspiracy.

But while the FBI is telling the media they haven’t learned of any terror plots, these are the court documents filed against the alleged terror plotters.

NATO Summit Terrorist Charges Against Black Bloc Members Jared Chase, Brent Betterly, Brian Church

In every instance of the FBI busting a terror plot it is eventually learned that the FBI came up with the plot to begin with and then foiled it before it occurred.

This has happened repeatedly with the most recent example being the May Day terror plot which coincidentally targeted anarchist activists and gives further credibility to the defendants claims the FBI was trying to trick them into going along with their plot.

The more the police reveal the less their story makes sense.

Source: Claims Police Planted NATO Terror Plot Evidence Raises Questions ©
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