FBI knew gunman
Court records: Informant taped conversations from 2006-10
Federal agents had been surveilling one of the Dallas shooters for years over terrorism concerns.
WASHINGTON — Since at least 2007, the FBI has been able to recognize the voice of Elton Simpson — one of two gunmen whom police say opened fire outside a contest featuring cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.
Agents recorded the young man from Phoenix talking about fighting nonbelievers on behalf of Allah. About plans to travel to South Africa and link up with “brothers” in Somalia. About using school as a cover story for traveling overseas.
Simpson was arrested in 2010, one day before authorities say he planned to leave for South Africa. But despite more than 1,500 hours of recorded conversations, the government prosecuted him on only one minor charge — lying to a federal agent. Years spent investigating Simpson for terrorism ties resulted in three years of probation and $600 in fines and court fees.
Then, on Sunday, two men whom authorities identified as Simpson and Nadir Soofi opened fire in a Dallas suburb on an unarmed security officer stationed outside the contest. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation by name.
Simpson and Soofi were wearing body armor, and one shot the security officer in the leg. Garland police spokesman Joe Harn said Monday that a single Garland police officer killed the two gunmen, but that after his initial shots, SWAT officers nearby also fired at the two men.
The deliberately provocative contest had been expected to draw outrage from the Muslim community. According to mainstream Islamic tradition, any physical depiction of the Prophet Muhammad is considered blasphemous, and drawings similar to those featured at the Texas event have sparked violence around the world.
The anti-Islam group that organized the art exhibit and contest in Garland is the American Freedom Defense Initiative, whose mission is the preservation “of freedom of speech, freedom of religion and equal rights for all,” according to its Facebook page.
The organization is categorized as an anti-Muslim hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors racist and sectarian organizations in the United States.
The group’s executive director, Pamela Geller, has attracted controversy with outrageous statements, including that President Barack Obama is the “love child” of Malcolm X.
Geller wrote in her blog late Sunday that the shooting proved how much the event was needed.
“The freedom of speech is under violent assault here in our nation,” she wrote. “The question now before (us) is — will we stand and defend it, or bow to violence, thuggery, and savagery?” She added, “This is war.” Geller, 56, won a victory last month when a U.S. district judge ordered New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority to let the AFDI post ads in subways showing a man in a head scarf and the words, “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah. That’s his Jihad. What’s yours?”
Geller says she is not anti-Muslim, only anti-jihad and anti-Shariah law.
Simpson, described as quiet and devout, had been on the radar of law enforcement because of his social media presence, but author- ities did not have an indication that he was plotting an attack, said one federal official familiar with the investigation. Less was known about Soofi who appeared to have never been prosecuted in federal court, according to a search of court records.
Simpson had worshipped at the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix for about a decade, but he quit showing up over the past two or three months, the president of the mosque said.
A convert to Islam, Simpson first attracted the FBI’s attention in 2006 because of his ties to Hassan Abu Jihaad, a former Navy sailor who had been arrested in Phoenix and was ultimately convicted of terrorism-related charges, according to court records. Jihaad was accused of leaking details about his ship’s movements to operators of a website in London that espoused violent jihad against the U.S.
In the fall of that year, the FBI asked one of its informants, Dabla Deng, a Sudanese immigrant, to befriend Simpson. Deng had been working as an FBI informant since 2005 and was told to tell Simpson he was a recent convert to Islam.
Over the next few years, Deng taped his conversations with Simpson, accumulating more than 1,500 hours of conversations, according to court records.
“I’m telling you, man, we can make it to the battlefield,” Simpson is recorded saying on May 29, 2009. “It’s time to roll.”
On Monday, federal agents spent hours at a Phoenix apartment complex where the men apparently lived. Bob Kieckhaver, a resident who was evacuated for about nine hours, said one of them was quiet, but the other man was more open and would greet others at the mailboxes. Both men were seen feeding stray cats, he said.
Simpson was quiet and a regular on the basketball court playing with young members of the mosque, said Usama Shami, president of the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix where Simpson worshipped for years. He asked questions about prayer, Shami said.
“I’ve never seen him angry,” Shami said. “That’s the honest truth. He was always having a grin.”