Canadian suspect arrested for bombing of local soldier in Iraq

Canadian authorities arrested a 38-year-old man that American investigators believe was involved in the 2009 bombing attack that killed an Elk Grove soldier in Iraq. 

The arrest in Edmonton, Alberta was announced on Jan. 19.

U.S. Army Sgt. 1^st Class Bryan Hall, 32, of Elk Grove was among five American soldiers killed on April 10, 2009 after a Tunisian suicide bomber detonated a truck rigged with explosives outside a U.S. military base in Mosul. The explosion reportedly left a 60-foot crater.

“We were not aware that the incident was being investigated,” Hall’s mother, Betty told the Citizen on behalf of her family on Jan. 21. “We’re pleased with this recent development.”

The U.S. Department of Justice identified the Canadian suspect as Faruq Khalil Muhammad.

The FBI is currently trying to extradite Muhammad to the United States for prosecution by federal attorneys.

He is charged with conspiring to kill Americans abroad and giving material support to said conspiracy.

“There is no safe harbor for terrorists, including those who endeavor to spread violence from halfway across the world,” said U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch of the Eastern District of New York in a press statement.

Investigators in the FBI New York Joint Terrorism Task Force gathered evidence including the suspect’s wiretapped telephone and electronic conversations with identified jihadists.

They allege that he advised and encouraged the group of Tunisian jihadists that killed Hall.

On the day after the April 10 bombing, Muhammad allegedly asked a jihadist based in Iraq if he heard about the attack and then mentioned, “he was one of the Tunisian brothers.”

Muhammad is also accused of calling and advising his sister who was living in Iraq last May to “Go learn about weapons and go attack the police and Americans. Let it be that you die.”

Authorities say the suspect is also connected to the suicide bombing of an Iraqi police station on March 31, 2009 that killed seven Iraqis.

Muhammad’s arrest comes nearly two years after Hall was buried in his hometown. A Cosumnes CSD fire engine carried his U.S. flag-wrapped casket through Old Town Elk Grove to the Pleasant Grove Cemetery where a military funeral was held for him.

“Bryan Hall represented what is best about our country and what is best about our army,” U.S. Army Brigadier Gen. Robert Abrams said at Hall’s funeral.

Hall died a few weeks after his visited his family, including his wife and 2-year-old daughter, before returning to duty in Iraq where he served as a platoon sergeant.  He enlisted in the army after graduating from Elk Grove High School in 1994.

“Bryan was a hero before he died, so it just solidified what he did,” Hall’s sister, Kristi told the Citizen after his funeral. “I am very proud of him and I’m proud of what he stood for.”

Hall is the third soldier from the Elk Grove area to die in Iraq. The others were Sgt. Joseph Nurre and Spc. Ty Johnson.

Investigators began linking Muhammad to the deadly attack on Hall and his fellow soldiers after reviewing recorded conversations between the suspect and jihadists via wiretaps that were authorized by Canadian court.

Military authorities detained a suspected jihadist at the Iraqi border who they claim was in contact with Muhammad, according to an affidavit filed by John Mazzella, a criminal investigator for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

He said the suspect often used the word, “farming” as a code for terrorist assaults in his conversations with members of a Tunisia-Iraq jihadist network.

Muhammad was an alleged advisor for that network that transported suicide bombers from Tunisia to Iraq in an effort to kill American soldiers serving there.

Mazzella reported that the suspect gave tips to one aspiring bomber to never leaving a will behind, telling him, “Don’t leave one character of information in the house. Don’t leave any trace.” Tunisian authorities reportedly arrested that person last April. 

Muhammad also allegedly called and told his mother that his “greatest wish was to die a martyr,” and said that a martyr who fights an “infidel enemy” in a Muslim country “gets to see his own seat in Paradise…Also he gets to have 70 virgins,” according to the affidavit for his arrest.

Federal authorities emphasized that the arrest shows the global reach of terrorism that threatens Americans.

“The five American servicemen who lost their lives in Iraq as a result of the actions of this terrorist network made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation,” Lynch said on Jan. 19. “Today’s arrest demonstrates that we have not forgotten the sacrifice and will continue to use every available means to bring to justice all those who are responsible.”