LITTLE ROCK — The shooting at a Little Rock recruiting center that killed one soldier and wounded a second was the unplanned finale of a mostly unsuccessful “jihad” against America that involved weeks of planning and failed attacks in two other states, the Muslim convert facing a possible death penalty told a state doctor earlier this month.
The disclosure comes in a report filed Tuesday that provides new information about Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad’s background, the circumstances of his arrest and his account of the attack on the soldiers.
“I was trying to kill them,” Muhammad told Dr. R. Clint Gray with the Arkansas State Hospital, saying the shooting that injured Army Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula of Jacksonville and fatally wounded Pvt. William Long, 23, of Conway, was “not due to mental illness, but due to obligation. It is a religious belief.”
The 18-page filing that describes Gray’s July 12 interview with Muhammad is a summary of a court-ordered mental evaluation of the defendant, a 25-year-old Memphis man born Carlos Leon Bledsoe, who is charged with capital murder, attempted capital murder and 11 other counts over the June 1, 2009, attack outside a west Little Rock recruiting center.
Other developments in the case include 48 motions filed by Muhammad’s defense team, most of them routine procedural and evidentiary requests along with death-penalty challenges. But the filings show that Muhammad’s attorneys are seeking a more detailed description of the allegations against him and are seeking to have the jury and witnesses sequestered during the trial. No trial date has been set, pending the judge's determination of whether Muhammad is competent to stand trial, a ruling that is expected at an Aug. 17 hearing.
Muhammad has also picked up charges while in jail. He’s accused of attacking one jail deputy, threatening a second and wounding a fellow inmate, allegations that could be used against him at his capital-murder trial.
His lawyer, Claiborne Ferguson of Memphis, did not comment Tuesday about the doctor’s report, but he has said he doesn't believe that his client is insane. Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herb Wright ordered the testing after the new charges were filed against Muhammad.
According to the mental report, Muhammad repeated earlier claims that he wants to plead guilty to the shootings, telling the doctor that he is cooperating to keep the court proceedings moving. Muhammad appears ready to accept a death sentence, according to the report, and he denied that he’d been radicalized by a stay in Yemen right before moving to Little Rock.
“I’m not insane. I can stand trial. I’m not crazy,” he said, telling Gray that he has told his attorneys that he wants to plead guilty. “I can prove my beliefs in the Koran. It’s my religion. My family’s Baptist. They don’t understand. I’m saying I’m not brainwashed.”
Prosecutors would have to agree to any plea deal, and state law doesn’t allow defendants who plead guilty to be sentenced to death.
Testing showed that Muhammad has an average intelligence, according to the report, which is based on Gray’s review of the case file, Muhammad’s statements to authorities, his school records, and even Muhammad’s last will and testament dated March 2009. The psychiatrist concluded that Muhammad is not insane and is fit to stand trial.
“Mr. Muhammad prepared for the alleged offenses over an extended period of time. He saved money for gas, bought ammo and guns as his finances allowed, made Molotov cocktails and practiced using the weapons,” Gray, a forensic psychiatrist, wrote. “The defendant’s capacity to develop a plan, prepare in a focused manner for a notable period of time and then attempt to implement the plan according to his preparations demonstrated that he had the capacity to control his actions. Thus, he had the capacity to conform his actions to the requirements of the law at the time of the alleged crimes.”
Since his arrest - in a series of letters and interviews with the police and the media - Muhammad has admitted to the shooting, claiming that the attack was revenge forU.S. military policies in the Middle East.
The report, which contains a synopsis of the police investigation, shows that as officers took him to meet with detectives shortly after his arrest, he told one officer, “it’s a war going on against Muslims, and that is why I did it.”
Muhammad told the officers that “he saw it on the news last night someone was pissing on the Koran,” according to the report. He also reportedly believed that the U.S. military was using the Muslim holy book for target practice and that soldiers were raping Muslim women and children in the Middle East. Muhammad described the shootings as an act of war, the report said, and that he did not consider himself guilty of murder, saying he would have killed more soldiers ifany more had been outside the recruiting center. Ezeagwula and Long were taking a smoke break when they were shot, about 10:20 a.m.
“They caught me redhanded,” he told the doctor. “But I am forced to go to trial. It is the only way.”
Muhammad told the doctor that he had been planning to “carry out jihad on America” since he had been jailed in Yemen where he’d traveled to teach English, the report said. He said he began planning in earnest when he moved to Little Rock, according to the report, targeting different Army recruiting centers and Jewish organizations because of “what they’re doing in Palestine; for years of killing Muslims.” He outlined a path for the doctor that would take him from Little Rock to Nashville, Tenn.; Florence, Ky.; Philadelphia; Baltimore; and Washington, D.C., the report said.
His planning included weeks of buying guns and stockpiling ammunition, he told the doctor, stringing out his purchases because he was “on a budget,” the report said. He said he didn’t use credit cards for supplies because “Muslims don’t believe in interest,” and bought at least two guns, an SKS rifle and a pistol, secondhand to avoid scrutiny from the FBI. He said he expected federal investigators to be watching him because of his time in Yemen and bought guns from individuals to avoid background checks that could alert the FBI, the report said.
As a test of federal scrutiny, Muhammad told Gray, he bought a .22-caliber rifle at a Wal-Mart to see whether he was under surveillance, describing how he realized federal investigators weren’t watching him after he made the purchase. Muhammad said he practiced shooting people at empty construction sites, the report said.
He claimed that his jihad began with some kind of activity in Little Rock shortly before the soldiers were shot, but he wouldn’t tell the doctor what he did, the report said. He said he tried to firebomb the home of a Nashville rabbi, who is unidentified in the report, but the effort apparently failed, with a Molotov cocktail bouncing off a window.
The claim couldn’t be immediately confirmed by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, but Muhammad said he expected some kind of criminal charges to be filed because of the incident. Ferguson, however, said he does not expect his client to face charges in any other incidents.
Leaving Nashville, he told the doctor, he then drove to a Florence Army recruiting center, his next target, saying he’d selected the northern Kentucky town because it provided an “easy” getaway with its proximity to an interstate and neighboring Ohio.
“It was supposed to be my first,” he said of the Florence center.
But he gave up when he arrived to find the recruiting center closed, describing to the doctor his feelings of dejection and frustration, the report said. Noting that gasoline was near $4 per gallon at the time, Muhammad said he’d spent quite a bit of money but couldn’t accomplish his goals.
He said he had just returned to Little Rock when he was driving down North Rodney Parham Road and saw Long and Ezeagwula in their uniform fatigues smoking and shot them, the report said. Questioned by Gray, Muhammad said he used the SKS rifle because it was the most powerful one he had.
He told the doctor: “I went around the corner so they cannot see me. I did not want them to see me coming,” he said, according to the report. “I had the SKS with me and put it out the window. I rolled by and started shooting.”
Muhammad said he tried to get away, intending to flee to Memphis and change vehicles to elude police, the report said, but he took a wrong turn at the Interstate 430 and 630 interchange. Police arrested him within 12 minutes of the shootings.
“Going to jail was not part of the plan,” he said. “I got myself caught.”
The report also describes Muhammad’s account of his time in Yemen in interviews he gave to the police and to the psychiatrist. He told investigators that he originally intended to move to Saudi Arabia to go to the holy city of Mecca but was unable for unspecified reasons. Instead, he moved to Yemen in 2007 to teach English and study at a mosque.
He told detectives that he got married in Yemen but was arrested by local authorities and jailed after he was found with a forged Somali passport. While in a Yemeni prison, he said he met fellow Muslims from several other countries, including Germany, Britain and Somalia. He told police that the FBI visited him in prison and told him he was going to be deported, despite his wishes to stay in Yemen.
He told the psychiatrist that he sold his car to pay a dowry for his marriage to a Yemeni teacher and he’d been married about two months when the authorities found him with the fake passport at a road checkpoint. He said he’d gotten the passport because he wanted to go to Somalia to join like-minded others who wanted to wage jihad against Jews and Americans.
American authorities took an interest in his case, Muhammad told the doctor, because he had “literature, contact, cell, videos and people’s numbers on my phone that were wanted in Saudi Arabia,” the report said.
Muhammad also discussed his other charges with the doctor, saying he had tried to stab a deputy because the man had been “bragging about killing sand niggers and Muslims in front of me.” Muhammad said he tried to kill the deputy with a shank he made out of an earpiece from his glasses.
He said he’d threatened to kill another deputy because the officer had urinated on Muhammad’s clothes, telling the doctor he’d kill the deputy himself or get someone else to do it, then urinate on the officer himself. Muhammad said he’d been kept in segregation because of his attempts to incite other inmates, including arranging for another inmate to throw urine on a jailer.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/28/2010