Gotta say, folks, I don’t call the UNC SUV attack terrorism any more than I call the “attack” on the Church of the Annunciation terrorism.
Mind you, that’s not to say that I don’t think he tried to kill people. It’s just that I think he’s nuts — not a terrorist.
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) – A University of North Carolina graduate accused of running down nine people on campus told an emergency dispatcher he wanted to “punish the government of the United States for their actions around the world,” according to a 911 recording released Monday.
Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, a 22-year-old native of Iran, called 911 to surrender Friday a few minutes after a sport utility vehicle sent students scurrying to escape. No one was seriously hurt.
Taheri-azar was later charged with nine counts of attempted murder and nine counts of assault, and his bail was set at $5.5 million.
University Police Chief Derek Poarch said Taheri-azar told investigators he intentionally hit people to “avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world.”
Why do I think he’s nuts? Well, this gave me a clue:
At his first appearance Monday in Orange County court in Hillsborough, Taheri-azar told the judge he planned to represent himself and was “thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah.” He was assigned a public defender, but ignored the lawyer’s advice to stop talking.
Is he a religious nut? Maybe. Is he a terrorist? I don’t think so. I think this is a man with a problem, and thankfully, he didn’t kill anyone when he drove his car into the group of students at UNC. Yes, it was a deliberate act. But that doesn’t make it a terrorist act. Nutcases act deliberately, too.
No matter what he is, a few (say 20 to 30) years in the nick will do him a lot of good.
Help him to chill out.
Oh, I’m agreeing with you on that. Nine counts of attempted murder ought to buy him quite a long stay.
He ought to get extra time just for having that silly “hey look I’m on TV” grin during his perp walk…
The similarities between Taheri-azar and Zacharias Moussaoui are evident, including the fact that Moussaoui attempted to represent himself in court. Also think back to the July 4, 2002 shooting at LAX, which the FBI finally and reluctantly labeled as an act of terror.
At any rate, terrorism is the deliberate use of force or violence by a person or group against a civilian population for a political or idealogical purpose.
Clearly the UNC incident is an act of terrorism.
How much you want to bet that CAIR pays his bail and he flees the country?
In any case, the alleged perp should be facing hate crime enhancements, as the crime committed along with his statements to police fit within the definition of a hate crime against someone for their national origin, according to the NC hate crime statutes. Doubtful he will be though, for fear it might “anger” some Islamist extremists, resulting in another cartoon riot/arson/crime spree.
Nuts? Perhaps but it seems to be a brand of unhingedness common to Islamist imams. He will now go to jail for a few decades at least …. where he will no doubt become a prison imam. A position from which he can convince criminal mental midgets to go out and kill for allah. He will have complete freedom inside to practice his religion of peace.
Well, being dumber’n’dogshit and crazy are not disqualifiers for being terrorists. Forgetting, for a moment, the Darwin Award winners who blew themselves up over “Zionist time” — http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1999-38.html — remember that the first WTC bombers were caught because one of the nimrods went back to get the deposit on the rented van. And in terms of being stupid enough to represent himself and being a terrorist, too, we do have Moussawi. Duh Moose has now pretty much talked himself into a needle in the arm, and his lawyers — to the extent that they are his lawyers — are using the “even the other terrorists knew he was dumber’n’dogshit” defense.