Raid, arrests the talk of the town

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KINSMAN — Customers at the Kinsman Bar & Grill talk about the slaughterhouse incident every morning, says bartender-custodian “Peanut” Austino.

“They say it’s probably a good thing the FBI caught them,” he noted today of First World Management meat packing plant owner Tahawwur Hus-sain Rana, 48, and his associate, David Coleman Headley (formerly Daood Gilani), 49, both of Chicago.

“They say they could have blown up the nuclear plant and then there’d be nobody around here.”
Rana, also known as Tahawar Rana, and Headley are incarcerated in federal prison in downtown Chicago on terrorism-related charges following their arrests in early October. Rana is to appear in U.S. Northern District Court today for setting of bond. Headley is scheduled in court on Dec. 5.

Details of the arrests were released Tuesday by the FBI, which had raided the Kinsman slaughterhouse on Sunday, Oct. 18. The two are accused of conspiracies to provide material support and/or commit terrorist acts against overseas targets, including a Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005.

Austino said he had never seen Rana, who purchased the packing plant about four years ago. However, one employee, came into the tavern after the Oct. 18 raid, he said.

“He had a wife and two kids, and he didn’t know what to say. I could see in his eyes he was about ready to cry. He was here trying to make a living for his family back in Africa,” Austino recalled.

The apparent closure of the meat packing plant – which slaughtered and processed goats to provide halal meat for Muslim customers and a grocery store in Chicago – had little effect on the local economy.

“It did not hurt,” Austino said. “They did goats – no beef or pork – and always took the meat to Chicago. No residents of Kinsman worked there. When (former owner William) Rodosky owned it, a lot of us worked there.”

Another local, former part-time employee of the plant reminded that Rana is innocent until proven guilty, adding she did not think “he was that type of man.”

“He seemed to be a fair man, like every other boss,” she said today. “No, he didn’t know what he was doing – they were learning as they went, and it took them awhile to get off the ground.”

In her estimation, Rana ran a legitimate operation in Kinsman, and she was surprised at his arrest.
Resident Norman Foster said the packing plant raid was upsetting in that no one was aware of what was going on until the FBI announcement on Tuesday.

“There are terrorists all over,” he said. “It bothers me, but I don’t know what I’m going to do about it. You let them into this country, you don’t know what they’re going to do.”

Foster said he did not know how to detect a terrorist, or supposed terrorist, beforehand.

For this kind of incident to happen in a community of about 100 people is a little scary, said resident Paula Sheedy.
“I’m sure glad they’re being watched and that our government’s all over it,” she noted. “People thought it was overkill, but I think it was great that they’re on top of it.”

Sheedy was unaware if anyone still lived in the home and house trailer at the slaughterhouse.

“There were people living in the house – I believe Pakistanis – but I don’t know who was living in the trailer in back.”

She, too, made mention of the nearness of three nuclear plants to Kinsman.

La Salle Generating Station is about 10 miles west in Brookfield Township, Dresden Station is about 15 miles east at Morris, and Braidwood Station is about 20 miles east at Braceville.

“I don’t know if the nuclear plants would be targets,” she said. “You just don’t know. When they are so close, it’s even scarier.”

Sheedy lives 1 1/2 blocks from the packing plant where religious rites were held about twice yearly.

Participants were dressed in traditional garb, she said, and the scene resembled a large family picnic.

“I got a phone call today from some friends. I said, ‘They’re looking for (Osama) bin Laden in Afghanistan, but we’ve got him right down here in Kinsman,’” she said.

“A small little town that nobody gives two squats about, and then to have this happen.”

Other residents were willing to comment when contacted for a reaction, saying the raid and arrests bothered them, but they did not want their names used in a story.

FBI spokesman Frank Bochte of the Chicago office said the agency is still trying to nail down the question of the Kinsman involvement in the terrorism plot.

“It’s part of our ongoing investigation,” he said Tuesday. “We really haven’t anything additional on how the packing plant is linked in with the investigation.”

Bochte could not say what agents were looking for in the raid on the slaughterhouse. Nor could he comment on whether the packing plant was operated to raise money for terrorist activities.

“It’s something we’re still looking into,” he said.
 

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