Nation Digest

MICHIGAN

Extremist believed in dying to fight U.S.

A leader of a radical U.S.-based Islamic group who was killed in a shootout with federal agents near Detroit repeatedly told followers that the government was the enemy and that they must be willing to take on the FBI -- even if it meant death, authorities said.

"You cannot have a nonviolent revolution," Luqman Ameen Abdullah said, according to a 2008 conversation secretly recorded by a confidential FBI source.

Abdullah, 53, was killed Wednesday at a warehouse in Dearborn, Mich., where agents were attempting to arrest him on charges that included conspiracy to sell stolen goods and illegal possession and sale of firearms. He was one of 11 people named in a criminal complaint after a two-year investigation.

FBI spokeswoman Sandra Berchtold said Abdullah refused to surrender, fired a weapon and was shot by agents.

The 43-page complaint described Abdullah as an extremist who believed the FBI bombed New York's World Trade Center in 1993 and an Oklahoma City federal building two years later. Abdullah beat children with sticks at his Detroit mosque, the complaint alleged, and was trained with his followers in the use of firearms, martial arts and swords.

Neither Abdullah nor his co-defendants were charged with terrorism. But he was "advocating and encouraging his followers to commit violent acts against the United States," FBI agent Gary Leone wrote in an affidavit filed with the complaint.

The FBI said Abdullah, also known as Christopher Thomas, was an imam, or prayer leader, of the radical group Ummah, whose primary mission is to establish an Islamic state within the United States.

Abdullah told followers that it was their "duty to oppose the FBI and the government and it does not matter if they die" and to "simply shoot a cop in the head" if they wanted the officer's bulletproof vest, Leon wrote.

The affidavit also said bombs, guns and even the recipe for TNT were among topics Abdullah regularly discussed with his allies. Group members and former members said they were "willing to do anything Abdullah instructs and/or preaches, even including criminal conduct and acts of violence," the FBI agent wrote.

-- Associated Press