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18 Feb 2016
The New York Times
By FERNANDA SANTOS

Trial Starts in Attack at Exhibit of Anti-Islam Cartoons

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PHOENIX Federal prosecutors opened their case here on Wednesday

against a man accused of being the mastermind behind a thwarted attack
last year at an anti-Islam cartoon exhibit in Texas that left two gunmen dead
in a shootout.
In her opening statement, an assistant United States attorney, Kristen
Brook, accused the man, Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, of being the bankroller,
the trainer and the motivator in a plot to travel to Garland, Tex., and open
fire on an event that showcased artwork and cartoons depicting the Prophet
Muhammad. The gunmen, Elton Simpson, 30, and Nadir Soofi, 34, were shot
and killed.
Ms. Brook described Mr. Kareem as the third man on a team set on
mass murder with a desire to kill disbelieving Americans. The trial is the
first by the federal government linked to a terrorist act inspired by the
Islamic extremists.
The defense lawyer, Daniel D. Maynard, rejected the governments
characterization of Mr. Kareem as being the instigator of the attack, labeling
the accusations as a case of overactive imagination by the government.
Mr. Kareem, 44, has denied having any knowledge of the plot or of the
cartoon contest until after the attack. Trying to link Mr. Kareem to Islamic
extremists, Mr. Maynard said, was an attempt to make him guilty by
association.
Mr. Maynard introduced jurors to an entirely different man an AfricanAmerican Muslim convert, the son of a Philadelphia police officer, who owned
a moving company and often took in workers who had no place to live. He
asked Mr. Kareem to stand up, which Mr. Kareem did, cracking a faint smile
to jurors. This is the man that the government has accused of all of these
heinous crimes, Mr. Maynard told them.
Mr. Kareem is facing two counts of conspiracy and one each of
transporting firearms and ammunition over state lines, being a felon in
possession of firearms and lying to investigators about his role in and
knowledge of the Garland attack.
On May 3, 2015, Mr. Simpson, 30, and Mr. Soofi, 34, dressed in body
armor, stepped into the parking lot of the Curtis Culwell Center and opened
fire with semiautomatic rifles, hitting an unarmed security guard. Mr.
Simpson and Mr. Soofi, who lived together in Phoenix, were killed by a
Garland traffic officer.
Mr. Maynard said his client was having dinner with a nephew at a Red
Lobster in Phoenix at the time and was unaware that the attack was taking
place.

Ms. Brook argued that Mr. Kareem urged the two men to commit violence
in the name of the Islamic State. Together, they watched videos of
beheadings and executions, she said, researched travel to the Middle East to
join the terrorist group and considered blowing up the stadium outside
Phoenix during last years Super Bowl, but could not get the explosives in
time.
On April 21, Ms. Brooks said, Mr. Kareem downloaded a 55minute
English-language video titled Flames of War, used by Islamic extremists as
a tool of recruitment and of glorification of the fighters in its ranks. Two days
later, Mr. Simpson wrote about the cartoon contest on Twitter Will they
ever learn. In May, moments before the Garland attack, he posted, May
Allah accept us as Mujahideen.
Mr. Kareem slouched at the defendants table Wednesday, his lips parted
as he listened to the prosecutions first witness, Bruce Joiner, the security
guard injured in Garland. Gone were the shaggy beard he sported in
previous hearings and the chains that bound his wrists and ankles.
Mr. Joiner painstakingly described his encounter with Mr. Simpson and Mr.
Soofi at the centers parking lot; he recalled one of the mens surreal smile.
Mr. Joiner said he ducked behind a tree, not realizing he had been hit in his
left leg, just above the bootline.

The trial is expected to last five weeks and include testimony from
dozens of witnesses, including Mr. Soofis 9-year-old son and younger
brother, who prosecutors said watched the videos with Mr. Simpson and Mr.
Soofi.