The terrorist threat made on April 28 against a shopping mall
near UCLA was likely one of many terrorist threats mentioning Los
Angeles which officials deal with on a frequent basis.
As a center for international media and state political
infrastructure, Los Angeles is as susceptible to terrorist threats
as any other major city in the world. But while Los Angeles law
enforcement officials say they often receive terrorist threats,
very few of them are corroborated or credible.
“Threats are often just that ““ threats,” said
Sgt. John Sullivan of the Los Angeles Sheriff Department’s
Terrorism Early Warning Group.
“We routinely get threats,” said Vickie
Hampton-Franklin, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Los Angeles
office.
Hampton-Franklin declined to speculate on the number of
terrorist threats mentioning Los Angeles that the FBI deals with on
a weekly basis, but she said they occur frequently.
On May 4, law enforcement officials apprehended Zmeer Mohamed,
age 23, for making a terrorist threat to West Los Angeles malls,
which he admitted to fabricating.
The threat, which was released to the public on April 28 in the
late afternoon, detailed that an attack carried out by four
individuals involving explosives would be made on April 29 against
a shopping mall near the Westwood Federal Building and UCLA. No
such attack occurred.
According to the FBI criminal complaint, Mohamed, a Tanzanian
national living in Canada, said he made the threat because he
wanted the four individuals ““ all former co-workers of his
““ to go to prison because he felt they had cheated him out of
a paycheck.
He also said he mentioned the West Los Angeles area specifically
because he had been to the Federal Building and visited UCLA.
Officials decided to release the threat to the public because it
named a specific time the attack was supposed to occur, even though
the threat was uncorroborated. Los Angeles police stepped up
patrols around shopping malls and urged the public to be on
alert.
Though the threat sparked public concern, there are likely
dozens of terrorist threats of varying credibility that are made to
the Los Angeles area.
“To tell you the truth, every day there’s some sort
of threat, some relating to the United States, some relating to a
particular region. Some specifically mention Los Angeles, but
they’re general,” Sullivan said.
The number of terrorist threats the FBI and the Department of
Homeland Security receives depends partly on events happening
around the world. Inflamed tensions in Iraq and Israel, for
example, sometimes lead to increased threats made against the
United States.
Sullivan said some international terrorist organizations,
especially al-Qaeda, have become more active after the terrorist
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but the level of domestic terrorism has
not changed much.
Law enforcement officials have long been aware that several
areas in Los Angeles are potential terrorist targets, including Los
Angeles International Airport, movie studios, ports and
bridges.
On July 4, 2002, Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, an Egyptian immigrant,
shot and killed two people and wounded three at the ticket counter
for Israel’s El Al Airlines at LAX. He was then shot and
killed by a security guard. Officials later determined Hadayet
acted alone but still deemed it an act of terrorism.
Los Angeles has never been the target of a major terrorist
attack though, and the terrorist threats it deals with are likely
part of the inherent risk of living in a large city.
“As far as being of interest to some types of terrorists,
Los Angeles is perhaps more susceptible than a smaller
location,” Sullivan said. “Obviously, all big cities
have a degree of risk.”