Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Fuqra Compound: Baladullah, CA

So far, I've posted some background information on Jemaat ul-Fuqra and have detailed known compounds that they have occupied, namely Red House, VA and Buena Vista, CO; this post will have some info about a compound in Baladullah, CA.

A thread on FreeRepublic follows a news story that was done by KFSN ABC30 in Fresno back in Nov. 2001. I contacted the news director of the station, but was unable to get a transcript of the story and the video is no longer available, but the above thread had some additional information. Here's a number of other "Freeper" threads that discuss Fuqra along with their connections to the Beltway snipers.

Another local station, ABC7 Los Angeles did a story in Jan. 2002 and I was able to find it through the Internet Archive. See that story - here. There may have been a follow-up to this, but I only located Part 1.

According to the ABC7 story, the 440-acre compound housed 300 residents, mobile homes, and a community center - oh yeah, and also a firing range, an airstrip, and get this...wait for it...a U-Haul dealership. How convenient. Need a vehicle to drive your explosives around in? Why not just own the rental place? Geez.

The story quotes Jilani and he mentions other locations of their organization including Connecticut, which I've not seen mentioned elsewhere.

Apparently, there were some legal troubles for the Baladullah group involving state money and the Islamic charter schools they were setting up. I'm sure there's lots more on that, but I haven't gotten into those details. The ABC7 story also discusses their links to individuals involved in criminal activities.

UPDATE: Here is Part 2 of the ABC7 investigation that talks about the group receiving state money for charter schools.

Supposedly the compound is all but abandoned, but that can't be confirmed. Since I've not been able to find an exact location for this place, I couldn't do any reverse address searches.

Following this post, using the list of suspected locations of JF I posted previously, I will attempt to identify those additional compounds that may now be active, but which may be relatively unknown to the general public.

UPDATE: Per the Connecticut mention - Could this be related?

UPDATE: This is very new news and I wonder if these men have any link to the Fuqra group. Four men, one Pakistani national and three African-Americans, all Muslim converts are awaiting trial for plotting terror in California. At least one of them converted to Islam in prison, a known recruitment tactic of JF. Also, one of them, is allegedly the founder of a radical group known as Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh. "Jamiyyat Ul-Islam" is very similar to "Jemaat ul-Fuqra". Maybe we will learn something from this trial. Read the story - here. (I fixed the link)

2 comments:

Jesse Clark said...

I can't tell you how much I appreciate your research on all this. Keep the posts coming.

Mojoski said...

That last link you provided is bad now. Have another link?