The Shape Of Jihad To Come

Apparently he planned to teach them Coltrane:

A jazz bassist and martial arts expert charged two years ago in an elaborate undercover terrorism investigation pleaded guilty yesterday to plotting to teach would-be Qaeda operatives how to wage jihad with hand-to-hand combat.

The man, Tarik Shah, 44, entered his guilty plea in Federal District Court in Manhattan. In exchange, he will receive a reduced maximum sentence of no more than 15 years.

The plea by Mr. Shah, who is from the Bronx, brings to a close his involvement in a wide-ranging federal sting operation that reached its height in May 2005 when an undercover F.B.I. agent posing as a recruiter for Al Qaeda met him in a ground-floor apartment near the Grand Concourse. There, the government says, Mr. Shah discussed a failed attempt to attend a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and then, in words that were secretly recorded, pledged “bayat,” or allegiance, to Al Qaeda.

. . .

Mr. Shah’s conversations with the informer drew the interest of investigators, which intensified in December 2003 when he was arrested in Yonkers on charges unrelated to terror. The police discovered in checking his car phone the numbers of two men whom the F.B.I. had already identified as suspects in terrorism investigations.

Shortly after that search, Mr. Shah met again with the informer, who told him of a warehouse on Long Island that Mr. Shah could use for his martial arts training. Mr. Shah, the government says, was intrigued and offered the informer details of his own secret militant ambitions, claiming that his life as a jazz musician was his “greatest cover.”

Even while imprisoned and awaiting trial, Mr. Shah, who grew up listening to Cannonball Adderley records, continued to practice his music. He and his brother, Antoine Dowdell, a jazz pianist, would sometimes sing and scat in an isolated visiting area of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan.