More news is leaking out about Usaama Rahim, the 26-year-old would-be terrorist who was shot by police in Boston. CNN reports that Rahim’s original plan was to behead Pamela Geller:
Usaamah Rahim, who was fatally shot after waving a military knife at law enforcement officers in Boston, was originally plotting to behead Pamela Geller, an activist and conservative blogger, law enforcement sources told CNN on Wednesday.
But he and his accomplice apparently decided that policemen were closer at hand and easier targets. Rahim was under surveillance by the U.S. Joint Terrorism Task Force, and several FBI agents and police officers approached him, intending to arrest him. They did not have their weapons drawn. Rather than submitting to arrest, Rahim pulled this knife and lunged at the policemen with it. They had no alternative but to pull their guns and shoot him:
In some ways, this was another “police-involved shooting.” The “victim” was black, and I assume that at least some of the officers were white. Fortunately, the incident was captured on tape. Rahim’s relatives immediately began spreading lies about what happened. This is a tweet by his brother, an imam at the Lighthouse Mosque in Oakland:
Not a word of that was true. Rahim wasn’t at a bus stop, he wasn’t shot in the back, he wasn’t on his cell phone, and–needless to say–his last words weren’t “I can’t breathe.” The imam obviously wanted to piggyback on the politically-motivated hysteria over the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. Despite the unpromising facts, this case might develop its own mythology, too.
Authorities say that Rahim had at least two confederates, one of whom is still at large.
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