Marcus
Dwayne Robertson, 46, a former U.S. Marine known to his supporters at
his Orlando-based Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary as “Abu
Taubah,” is suspected of sending young proteges abroad for terror
training.
A former U.S. Marine who became a Muslim radical, gang leader
and bodyguard to the blind sheik behind the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing is so adept at turning fellow prisoners into potential extreme
jihadists that Florida prison officials have kept him in shackled and in
solitary confinement for the last three years, and federal authorities
want a judge to tack on another three decades.
Marcus Dwayne
Robertson, a Muslim extremist also known as Imam Abu Taubah who once led
a murderous New York gang dubbed “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”
before resurfacing decades later as a radical imam at a Florida mosque,
has been held at the John E. Polk Correctional Facility in Seminole
County, Fla. Currently imprisoned on a weapons conviction, he faces
sentencing on June 26 for a tax fraud conviction. Federal authorities
want him locked up and kept away from other inmates out of fear he will
turn them into dangerous jihadists, as he converted a number of fellow
inmates including a white supremacist.
“He is good at selling the dream.”
- Former associated of Marcus Dwayne Robertson
“The United States believes that the defendant is still an extremist,
just as he was in the early 1990s,” prosecutors said in recent court
filings in which they alleged Robertson continues to be a terrorism
threat. “The only differences are that the defendant is now focused on
training others to commit violent acts as opposed to committing them
himself, and the violent acts are to occur overseas instead of inside
the United States.”
Robertson, 46, who served time in the 1990s
for crimes related to his days as a Brooklyn gang leader, has been
imprisoned in Florida in 2011 on a gun charge. In just one year behind
bars and among the general population, he allegedly radicalized 36
fellow inmates. Prison officials moved the persuasive imam into solitary
confinement in 2012, where he has remained since. He faces sentencing
later this month on a tax fraud conviction that prosecutors hope will
keep him in prison for more than three decades. The U.S. attorney is
using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to seek an enhanced
sentence for Robertson.
Robertson’s attorney wants his client,
who has been held for four years, released immediately with time served,
but federal authorities are believed to fear that, if freed, Robertson
could use his Orlando-area mosque to convince more young Muslims to go
overseas and take up arms against the west.
“He is good at selling the dream,” said one of Robertson’s former colleagues.
Robertson has been held in a windowless cell in an otherwise empty
wing of the prison facility and kept shackled to the floor with an armed
guard assigned exclusively to him around the clock, according to a
federal civil rights lawsuit he filed against the government pro se in
2012 that was ultimately dismissed. A person familiar with Robertson's
case confirmed the conditions and told FoxNews.com prison officials fear
Robertson’s military skills, which include special operations training,
make him a threat to escape.
A prison spokeswoman told
FoxNews.com that Robertson was put in solitary confinement “for his own
protection” and is now held there by his own choice. But the tight
security around Robertson extends outside the prison, with at least a
7-car armed caravan of federal marshals escorting him to his court
appearances. Robertson’s attorney said his client believes he was put in
solitary confinement in retaliation for filing a federal lawsuit
against the government.
“Marcus Robertson has never tried to
radicalize anyone,” said Robertson’s attorney Daniel Brodersen, who
believes his client should be released immediately. “He’s tried to
practice his religion in prison to the best of his ability.”
Over the last 30 years, Robertson has traveled a bizarre path that has
seen him serve in the U.S. military, lead a murderous New York gang,
consort with top Al Qaeda associates, go undercover for the FBI in
Egypt, Africa and the U.S., and ultimately end up in a federal lockup
facing more than 30 years in prison. Those who know him say Robertson
became disenchanted while in the military, where he claims to have
served in the elite counter-terrorism unit Joint Special Operations
Command before leaving the service as a conscientious objector.
National Archives records confirm Robertson’s service from May 16, 1986
to May 1994, in the U.S. Marine Corps 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company
as a field radio operator, but records indicate he was released from
active duty in March 1990, discharged in the rank of corporal with
training in radiotelegraph, scuba diving, marksmanship, parachuting,
terrorism counteraction, surveillance, infantry patrolling and finance.
In early 1991, Robertson joined with other former Muslim security
guards to form a robbery gang they called the ‘Forty Thieves’ with
Robertson as the leader known as "Ali Baba."
They robbed more
than 10 banks, private homes and post offices at gunpoint, shot three
police officers, and attacked one cop after he was injured by a homemade
pipe bomb.
Robertson also served as a bodyguard to Omar Abdel
Rahman, nicknamed the “Blind Sheik,” who was part of the extremist
Islamic group accused of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
Government records claim Robertson donated more than $300,000 in stolen
funds to mosques he attended.
After he was arrested in 1991
along with most of the other members of the Forty Thieves gang,
Robertson cut a deal with prosecutors, serving just four years in prison
while others remain behind bars.
Part of the pact involved
Robertson going undercover for the FBI to document terrorists’ plans and
networks in Africa, Egypt and the United States.
According to a
source familiar with Robertson’s history, Robertson was thrown out of
the program in Feb. 8, 2007 after he attacked his CIA handler in Africa.
Robertson quickly reinvented himself, founding the Orlando-based
Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary in 2008 and taking his Muslim
name. He traveled the world, teaching at universities, including some in
the United States. Videos of his lectures show him preaching against
gays, “devil worshipers,” non-Muslims and such American pop culture
icons as cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants, who he says is “gay.”
Under Islamic law, the Brooklyn-born Robertson married two women,
Zulaika and Itisha Wills. Between them, and children he fathered outside
these marriages, Robertson has 15 children. Through his teachings,
videos and social media, he recruited an extensive network of followers
in Florida and New York, an estimated 150 who reportedly are a concern
for federal law enforcement.
Robertson was arrested on a
firearms charge in 2011 and pleaded guilty in January, 2012. Just two
months later, federal authorities charged him in with conspiring to
defraud the IRS. Through wiretaps, the federal government documented
interactions between Robertson and one of his student, Jonathan Paul
Jimenez, who Robertson allegedly instructed to file false tax returns to
obtain a tax refund to pay for travel to Mauritania, Northwest Africa,
for study and violent jihadist training.
Jimenez, who
reportedly knew Robertson for 11 years and, by his own admission,
trained with the imam for a year in preparation for his travel to
Mauritania, where he would study and further his training in killing,
suicide bombing, and identifying and murdering U.S. military personnel,
pleaded guilty Aug. 28, 2012, to making a false statement to a federal
agency in a matter involving international terrorism and conspiring to
defraud the IRS, and was sentenced April 18, 2013, to 10 years in
federal prison.
While Robertson has been awaiting sentencing in
the tax fraud charge, prosecutors have built a case against him for
enhanced sentencing, alleging he’s involved with terrorism activities.
Robertson denies sending Jimenez overseas "to commit violent jihad.”
“The prosecution is attempting to characterize me as a ‘Teacher of
Terrorists.’ … They are attempting to twist my statements to fit into a
terrorist plot," he said in a statement that appeared on his website. In
reality, they know I am not a terrorist teacher.”
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