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May 17, 2011
Read the full report here: Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee: An Extensive Online Footprint (PDF).
Zachary Chesser (a.k.a. Abu Talhah al-Amrikee) was an emerging leader of RM before he was arrested and charged in July 2010 for attempting to travel to Somalia to fight with the terrorist group Al Shabaab. Chesser, who reportedly joined RM in January 2010, admitted to FBI agents that he took over the primary role of running RM's Web site before his arrest.
In April 2010, Chesser posted entries to the RM Web site targeting the creators of South Park for satirizing issues surrounding the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad. One posting included a picture of the assassination of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by a Muslim extremist in 2004 with the caption: "Theo Van Gogh – Have Matt Stone And Trey Parker Forgotten This?" The post, which also included the address to Stone and Parker's offices, asks readers to "contact them" or "pay Comedy Central…a visit."
While RM is mostly active in New York, Chesser led a March 20, 2010, protest in front of the White House, which coincided with an antiwar rally. During the protest, Chesser called Obama "an enemy of our religion and a tyrant." At the rally, Younes Abdullah Muhammad, the acting leader of RM, said that if President Obama was to be "judged…according to his deeds, then under international law he would hang from a noose in this very square today."