Recruits reveal al Qaeda’s sprawling web

When Bryant Neal Vinas spoke at length with Belgian prosecutors last March, he provided a fascinating and sometimes frightening insight into al Qaeda’s training — and its agenda. Vinas is a young American who was arrested in Pakistan late in 2008 after allegedly training with al Qaeda in the Afghan/Pakistan border area. He was repatriated to the United States and in January pled guilty to charges of conspiracy to murder U.S.

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American’s odyssey to al Qaeda’s heart

On September 10, 2007, almost exactly six years after al Qaeda attacked the United States, Bryant Neal Vinas, a 24-year-old American citizen born in Queens, New York, boarded a flight from the city en route to Lahore, in eastern Pakistan, determined to fight jihad in neighboring Afghanistan. Brought up a Catholic by his Latin American immigrant parents, who divorced when he was young, Vinas tried to join the U.S. army in 2002 but dropped out after just a few weeks

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Bryant Neal Vinas: An American in Al Qaeda

Bryant Neal Vinas, a 26-year-old from Long Island, N.Y., has been charged with attacking a U.S. military base and providing information to the Al-Qaeda terror network. Although Vinas pled guilty to the charges in January, court documents remained classified because their publication could have compromised other ongoing investigations.

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