Retail Terrorism

The recent arrest of Massachusetts terrorists suspect Tarek Mehanna, 27, has reignited fears over the possibility of attacks in our nation's malls... what some would call, the very life force of our capitalist system.

The FBI warned of shopping center plots in Los Angeles and Chicago as recently as 2007, but little had materialized since.

Mehanna, who wanted to start shooting up a crowded mall, is not the only Western terrorist to think about gunning down or blowing up the Sunday shopping crowd.

Here are some other "retail terrorists" (as I like to call them) who had the same thought...


American born Derrick Shareef, now a U.S. inmate in his mid-twenties, became a more traditional Muslim after a stint with the Nation of Islam. But in 2006, Shareef was arrested in Illinois for plotting to use hand grenades to kill Christmas shoppers at a local mall.


Sulejman Talovic, 18 at the time of his death, was a Bosnian refugee who had escaped the horrors of war when he was relocated to the United States by the United Nations in the 1990s with his family.

A loner who had numerous run-ins with the cops, he was shot and killed by responding law enforcement in February 2007 after he opened fire in crowded Salt Lake City shopping mall.


British school teacher Saeed Ghafoor, now a 35 year old inmate in the U.K., was charged with terrorism related offenses when it was discovered he was planning an attack on Europe's second largest shopping center using a limousine as an improvised explosive device from his jail cell where he was being held on charges of assault against family member.


Although no definitive plans were made, members of the Chechen network - a European terror network broken up in 2004 - had discussed releasing the deadly toxin Ricin into a crowded shopping mall.

At the heart of the network was the first family of French Muslim terrorism, the Benchellalis who recruited young European Muslims and smuggled them to and from training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan (one of the sons, Mourad [pictured] even wound up in Guantanamo Bay as a detainee!)