Terror suspect's Longwood years forgotten in history
Bryant Neal Vinas kept a low profile, school officials say
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Bryant Neal Vinas kept a low profile in his time in the Longwood School district.
The 26-year-old Longwood High School graduate, accused of providing information to al-Qaida for a potential terror attack on the Long Island Rail Road, appears to have flown under the radar during his years attending classes in the district. Few administrators and former classmates could recall him this week after news of his guilty plea in federal court was first reported. There isn't even a single photo of him in any high school yearbooks, according to administrators, to prove beyond school records and long-forgotten memories, that he was actually there.
Mr. Vinas told federal authorities last week that he provided information to al-Qaida leaders about the Long Island Rail Road for a bomb attack, according to court records provided Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn. The admission was the result of Mr. Vinas' pleading guilty Jan. 28 in federal court to launching a rocket attack on a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, according to a transcript of a plea hearing that was unsealed in federal court last week. The former North Patchogue resident pleaded guilty to conspiring to murder U.S. nationals abroad, providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and receiving military-type training from a foreign terrorist organization. When he is sentenced, he faces a maximum of life imprisonment for the top charge of conspiring to murder U.S. nationals abroad.
And while federal prosecutors were able to build up a large file in the case against Mr. Vinas, Longwood officials say their file is thin.
Longwood superintendent Allan Gerstenlauer said many teachers and administrators in the district could not recall in conversation Mr. Vinas as a student.
"He was not a high-profile student when he was here," Dr. Gerstenlauer said.
"It's just a sad path he took," Ms. Blackwood said.
At some point after high school, Mr. Vinas converted from Roman Catholicism to Islam and, eventually, prosecutors said, to extremism.
Known to his associates as "Ibrahim," "Bashir al-Ameriki" and "Ben Yameen al-Kanadee," Mr. Vinas told prosecutors he left his home on Long Island in the fall of 2007 to travel to Pakistan with the intention of meeting and joining a "jihadist" group to fight with.
"When I arrived in Pakistan, I made contact with and was accepted into al-Qaida, a jihadist group that I knew to be responsible for attacks against the United States, including suicide bombings targeting civilians," Mr. Vinas states in the transcript.
He went on to tell federal prosecutors that once he joined al-Qaida he was trained in general combat and explosives and that he took part in two missions. The first was in September 2008, when he planned and then participated in an aborted attack on a United States military base near the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Mr. Vinas stated. According to the transcript, a few days later he took part in firing rockets at an American military base.
"Although we intended to hit the military base and kill American soldiers, I was informed that the rockets missed and the attack failed," he states in the transcript.
"Finally, during my time with al-Qaida, I consulted with a senior al-Qaida leader and provided detailed information about the operation of the Long Island Rail Road system which I knew because I had ridden the railroad on many occasions. The purpose of providing this information was to help plan a bottom attack of the Long Island Rail Road system," the transcript states.
Experts agree that the psychology of what turns a person against their own country is hard to understand. Roz Muraskin, a Middle Island resident and noted criminal justice professor at LIU/C.W. Post, said it's something that should be studied.
"What makes them sick?" Dr. Muraskin asked. "What makes the bomb go off? But he is not the only one. I'm sure there are more out there who want to do the same thing."
peggy@northshoresun.com
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