They Might Be Gang Members In LA But At Least They're Not Al-Qaeda

[Dino Velvet]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...-syrias-assad/

Two L.A. gang members are apparently fighting for Syria’s Assad

• By Liz Sly
• March 3 at 5:30 am

Two Los Angeles gang members appear to have joined the flow of foreigners flocking to fight in Syria – in this instance, on the side of President Bashar al-Assad. In a video posted online, the two men boast that they are on the front lines and fire their guns in the direction of what they call "the enemigos."
One of the men identifies himself as Creeper from the Sur-13 or Surenos, a loose affiliation of southern California gangs linked to the Mexican mafia. He rolls up his sleeves to show his gang tattoos and greets fellow gang members Capone-E and Crazy Loco.
The other says he is called Wino, and belongs to a gang called Westside Armenian Power. Members of the Armenian Christian minority in Syria are known to be staunch supporters of Assad.
The two men don't reveal much about what they are doing or why they are fighting for Assad.
"It's Syria, homie, we're in Syria, homie. ... Frontline, homie, frontline, homie," says Wino.
"In Middle East, homie, in Syria, still gangbanging," says Creeper, in comments typical of the 2 1/2-minute video.
Warning: the video, posted here, contains strong language. This version is provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute, and contains subtitles.
It was impossible to independently verify the authenticity of the video or determine where or when it was filmed. But the desolate scene in which the two men are firing from a bombed building looks like Syria.
The Middle East Media Research Institute, a pro-Israel group that monitors media in the region, said it had identified Wino as Nerses Kilajyan, whose Facebook page features multiple photographs of the man who calls himself Wino, apparently in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. In some, Wino is seen posing with fighters from the Shiite Hezbollah militia. In others, he is pictured with the man who calls himself Creeper. The dates on the photographs suggest the pair have been in Syria for about a year.
It was also unclear whether they are U.S. citizens. So far, there have been no reported instances in which Americans have volunteered to fight in Syria on behalf of Assad, though at least 50 U.S. citizens are believed to have traveled there to join the rebels, according to congressional testimony by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper last month. Thousands of Arabs, Europeans and Sunni Muslims of other nationalities who have flooded into Syria, most of them joining radical Islamist groups.
Thousands of Iraqi and Lebanese Shiite Muslims are meanwhile reported to be fighting on the side of Assad's government, as well as Iranians, some Russians and smaller numbers of Afghans, Pakistanis and other Arabs, making this a truly international war.

[runningdownthatdream]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...-syrias-assad/

Comedy gold.....................

[Stavros]

Nerses Kilajyan is an Armenian name, and there is -or was- a large Armenian community in Aleppo, part of the Christian communities that have lived there since the earliest days of Christianity. Politically the Armenians tend not to take sides, and if they benefited from life in Syria it was in spite of rather than because of Bashar, or his dad Hafiz al-Asad. Something tells me these are young men in search of adventure and that in reality they are out of their depth. LA must be a boring place to live in these days. Or maybe they should just get their priorities rights and focus on getting laid -in LA. Can't be that hard.

[Dino Velvet]

LA must be a boring place to live in these days.

Their rival neighborhood got gentrified and theirs' wasn't worth the investment. Aleppo might not be a big downgrade.

Hopefully they join up with T-Bone so they get jiggy with their jihad.

[bluesoul]

support our vatos gangbanging in syria homie. love you guys. hope you come home safe

[bigkid69]

[Falling]

Oh man that's pure comedy!

[Dino Velvet]

Now this character might not be a gang member but he is wanting to fight for Al-Qaeda. He wanted to bomb the subway too. Total jerk. Hope he's got a plunger up his ass in lock-up.

http://news.yahoo.com/california-man...193340563.html

California man arrested in plot to fight in Syria

By GENE JOHNSON 24 minutes ago

SEATTLE (AP) — A California man who spoke of wanting to bomb the Los Angeles subway system was arrested near the Canadian border in Washington state and charged with attempting to travel to Syria to fight alongside Islamic extremists, federal prosecutors said Monday.



Nicholas Teausant, 20, of Acampo, California, an unincorporated area near Lodi, was taken off a northbound Amtrak bus overnight just short of the border.
A criminal complaint filed in federal court in Sacramento described him as a student at San Joaquin Delta Community College in Stockton and a member of the National Guard who is being discharged for failing to meet basic academic requirements.
Beginning last spring, Teausant began expressing on his online photography account a desire to see America's downfall, saying "I would love to join Allah's army but I don't even know how to start," the complaint said.
Later, he took to another online forum to say he hoped to fight in Syria, the document states.
It wasn't immediately clear if Teausant had a lawyer in California. He was charged with a single count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and agreed during a hearing at U.S. District Court in Seattle to be returned to Sacramento to face the charge.
Tall and lanky with closely shorn hair and a thin beard, Teausant appeared in court wearing a white T-shirt and tan pants. He sat hunched beside a lawyer appointed for that hearing only, answering "Yes, ma'am" or "No, ma'am," to questions posed by Magistrate Judge Mary Alice Theiler.
The complaint said he had discussed numerous other ideas for terrorist activity that never came to fruition, including a plot supposedly hatched during a camping trip with seven other people to bomb the Los Angeles subway system last New Year's Eve or New Year's Day.
Investigators never corroborated that such a camping trip actually occurred. When an informant questioned Teausant on Jan. 4 about what happened to his plan, Teausant responded that it was canceled because "they" had been "tipped off," the complaint said.
The complaint said he had been planning since October to support the efforts of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a group that has been fighting in Syria's three-year-old civil war and is designated by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization.
Investigators said Teausant discussed his scheme at length with a person who turned out to be a paid FBI informant, repeatedly affirming that he was serious about it.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is a breakaway organization from al-Qaida that is considered one of the most brutal groups fighting in Syria's civil war, made up largely of non-Syrian Islamic militants. It has seized several areas in Syria as it fights the government of President Bashar Assad.
The complaint said Teausant referred to himself as a convert to Islam but did not give details about when or why he may have done so. He met the informant through a mutual acquaintance, the document said.
Among Teausant's plans was to appear in videos for the group, without covering his face — to be "the one white devil that leaves their face wide open to the camera," he was quoted in the complaint as saying.
The informant put Teausant in contact with a "mentor" — in reality, an undercover federal agent — who could purportedly approve his efforts to join the extremists. Early this month, the "mentor" blessed Teausant's travels, and he boarded a train for Seattle on Sunday night, the complaint said.
When the bus arrived in Blaine, just south of Vancouver, British Columbia, U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped it and questioned Teausant about where he was headed. He responded that he was traveling to Vancouver and was arrested, the complaint said.
The complaint said Teausant enlisted in the National Guard in April 2012 but never underwent basic training because he didn't meet academic requirements.
The complaint also states that Teausant told the informant he has an infant daughter, and had arranged for his mother to get custody of the girl if he disappeared.
At one point, the informant questioned him about whether he was serious about his plans, given that he talked a lot but did not seem to follow through.
The maximum penalty for attempting to provide support to a foreign terrorist organization is 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
___
Follow Johnson at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle