Home-grown terrorist hopes for cell close to his kids

Londonderry

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June 27, 2007

Margo Sullivan

Daniel Maldonado traveled almost 10,000 miles to train as a terrorist in Somalia. Now he wants to be close to his former home and his three small children in New Hampshire as he serves time behind bars.

Maldonado, who was raised in Pelham and once lived and worshiped as a Muslim in Methuen, will be sentenced this week.

He faces a maximum 10 years in federal prison. Assistant U.S. Attorney Abe Martinez said it's likely he will get it. There is no minimum sentence.

"This was as serious as any other case of terrorism," said Martinez. "A group of insurgents went into Somalia from all parts of the world and tried to overthrow the government and establish an independent Islamic state they could run | and an independent base of operation from which to run al-Qaida."

Maldonado, 28, has been held since February in a federal detention center in Houston, the city where he was living when he left the United States for Africa and where he was tried.

He pleaded guilty March 30 to training to make bombs at an al-Qaida camp in Mogadishu. Had he not struck a plea deal, Maldonado could have been convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison.

Maldonado has not replied to letters requesting an interview, and his lawyer declined comment.

But he has stayed in touch with contacts at the Islamic Network, where he once worked, according to recent postings on a blog on the group's Web site.

Although Maldonado is not allowed to use the Internet himself, his friends have gone online to chronicle his state of mind and his daily routine in solitary confinement, based on letters they said he sent from prison.

They report he is being held in solitary confinement and is accompanied by three guards every time he leaves his cell. He is isolated from other prisoners, except for one Muslim with whom he shares an hour of daily exercise and with whom he prays five times a day, although at opposite ends of a prison corridor.

The blog posters said they have sent Maldonado books and money, which he uses to buy Reese's candy, Snickers bars, Saltines and radio batteries. He listens to the BBC news and talk radio programs, including Rush Limbaugh, they reported.

In the letters, Maldonado also said he hopes to receive a five-year sentence, as well as an assignment close to New Hampshire.

His children, ages 9, 4 and 10 months, are living in Londonderry with Maldonado's parents, Jose and Rena Maldonado. Maldonado's wife and the mother of the children, Tamika Cunningham, died of malaria while the family was in Africa.

Prison options

The closest federal facility to New Hampshire is the federal Medical Center Devens in Ayer, Mass., a minimum-security camp.

But the New Hampshire state prison in Concord occasionally takes in federal prisoners at the request of federal authorities. The prison, which is paid $48 per day for each U.S. prisoner, now has one inmate serving a federal sentence, Correction Department spokesman Jeff Lyons said.

Some federal prisoners are also housed in two New Hampshire county jails | Strafford County Jail in Dover and Merrimack County Jail in Boscawen, both low-security facilities.

Prosecutor Gary Cobe, who will push for the maximum sentence for Maldonado, said the U.S. Bureau of Prisons will decide where to send Maldonado based on his security risk.

If he is found to be high risk, a minimum security camp like Devens would be eliminated as an option.

Maldonado could be sent instead to a high-security facility like the "Supermax" prison in Colorado, known as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies," whose inmates include Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and British shoe bomber Richard Reid.

After Devens, the next closest federal facilities are in Brooklyn and Otisville, N.Y., low- and medium-security facilities respectively, according to Mike Truman, spokesman for the federal Bureau of Prisons.

Little sympathy

Despite the guilty plea, some friends maintain Maldonado is a victim of religious persecution.

Yousef al-Khattab, a New York City bicycle-taxi driver, said in a telephone interview he believes the government trumped up the charges against Maldonado.

Al-Khattab said he never met Maldonado but has known him for four or five years through the Internet and considers him a friend. Al-Khattab described Maldonado as a mainstream Muslim who was going through the typical stages of a convert.

"Every new Muslim starts out like a zealot," al-Khattab said. "Nobody sticks with it too long. Slowly, slowly, they just become mainstream Muslim."

But local residents showed little sympathy for Maldonado.

"I'm not sitting in judgment of anybody, but he's an enemy of the state," said Jack Martin, chaplain for the Londonderry American Legion. "Maybe if he did have 10 years to sit and think about this for a while, there'd be a change of heart."

Stephen Costa of Londonderry said unless Maldonado confessed under torture, 10 years might not be enough punishment for a U.S. citizen linked to al-Qaida.

But he wouldn't object to Maldonado being assigned to a prison near his children. "I can have some compassion for him to serve his sentence here," Costa said.

Local roots

Maldonado attended Pelham High from 1995 to February 1997, when he dropped out, according to Principal Dorothy Mohr. Classmates remember his sense of style: hip-hop clothes and dreadlocks, unusual at Pelham High.

Mohr said he was "certainly memorable," but not for his schoolwork. "He was disengaged, not engaged," Mohr said. "He was here in body but not in spirit."

Maldonado and Cunningham married in Salem in 1999, the year after their first child was born. The two converted from Christianity to Islam.

Neighbor Karen Purnell at Laraway Court apartments in Derry, where the couple moved around 2000, described Maldonado as a bossy husband who forced his wife to wear traditional Islamic garb.

After his conversion, Maldonado also dressed modestly, according to Matthew Trombly, a friend and fellow convert at the Selimiye mosque in Methuen.

"When I knew him, he was always dressed in a galabeya," he said. The galabeya is a long tunic that identifies the wearer as a Muslim.

Maldonado also wore long sleeves and dark "fingerless-type" gloves to cover up the tattoos on his arms and hands, Trombly said. "It almost looked fashionable," he said.

The couple moved to Houston in 2005, before Maldonado moved his family to Cairo, Egypt. After a year in Egypt, he connected with al-Qaida and again moved his family, this time to Somalia, intending to wage jihad to establish a true Islamic state, he said in a written statement to the FBI.

But he contracted malaria in the training camp there, and when Ethiopian fighters attacked, he and his comrades fled Somalia. He was captured in January by Kenyan soldiers and turned over to U.S. authorities.