the rix mix

Conflicting Portrait of Terrorist Suspect

RALEIGH, N.C. — AP - Daniel Boyd may have spent the past three years traveling to the Middle East, secretly buying guns and training for jihad with a group of aspiring terrorists as federal authorities claim, but people on his cul-de-sac said Tuesday he also made plenty of time to be a good neighbor.

The 39-year-old drywall contractor and his wife were family oriented, always quick to help with gardens and treehouses and raised well-mannered kids, neighbors said a day after the FBI arrested Boyd and six others, accusing the men of planning to kidnap, kill and maim people abroad.

"If he's a terrorist, he's the nicest terrorist I ever met in my life. I don't think he is," said Charles Casale, 46, a neighbor in Willow Spring who recently got pointers on planting vegetables from the Boyds.
***
Boyd's wife, Sabrina, vowed that he was part of an "ordinary family" and urged the public not to rush to judgment. Boyd's sons Zakariya, 20, and Dylan, 22, were also named in the indictment.

"We have the right to justice, and we believe that justice will prevail," she said in a statement. "We are decent people who care about other human beings."

I'm not rushing to judgment. The Feds have have paraded - even railroaded - some tragicomic "terrorist" groups through the courts. We don't know how strong a case they have that these people were engaged in a "conspiracy to murder, kidnap, maim and injure persons abroad." But I doubt the Feds will have a problem establishing the Boyds are not an "ordinary family." If Sabrina Boyd is smart, she'll drop that public defense right now, because she can't redefine "ordinary." Oh, if the Boyds were fundamentalist Christian, borderline militia types, she could claim a sort of ordinariness within a particular American cultural milieu where it's no big deal to teach your kids to shoot semiautomatic weapons & give them survivalist training in case the New World Order happens before The Rapture. Even Sara & Todd Palin have played with the folks in that sandbox. But Mrs. Boyd could never sell a fundamentalist Muslim family version of it as "ordinary," no matter how similiar it might be or how nice they were to their neighbors.

Labels: in the news