Trump: Alleged Paris terror ringleader ‘garbage’
Donald Trump said Thursday that the alleged ringleader of last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris is no master strategist.
“This so-called leader of ISIS – he’s not a mastermind, he’s a punk,” the GOP presidential front-runner said of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was killed in a police raid on Wednesday.
“They ought to call him what he is,” Trump said on Breitbart News’s “Breitbart News Daily” Sirius XM broadcast. “He’s garbage.
{mosads}“The press should not be referring to these guys as masterminds,” he added. “Then they wonder how all these kids are going and joining ISIS.
“They’re building these people up so much [and] we have to tear them down. These are not masterminds. These people are animals.”
French officials confirmed early Thursday that police had killed Abaaoud during a predawn raid.
He allegedly spearheaded a series of bombings and shootings that killed 129 people and wounded more than 300 others in Paris last Friday.
Trump said Thursday that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which claimed credit for the attacks, is an unprecedented extremist threat, capable of using anything for its goal of religious jihad.
“As far as weapons, these people will use anything they can get,” he said. “They’re not worried about, ‘oh gee, this isn’t ethical.’ These people are not politically correct.’ ”
The outspoken billionaire then called for increased vigilance toward America’s Muslim population.
“There’s hatred like nobody has seen,” Trump said. “It’s obviously emanating from and coming out of — among other places — the mosques. There is something going on in these mosques that is not lovely.”
Trump, a Manhattan business mogul, additionally bemoaned the end of the New York City Police Department’s controversial surveillance program targeting the city’s Muslims.
“It’s a lot of nonsense that we ended that,” he said of the program. “I think that’s a terrible mistake.
“Frankly, good information came out of it,” Trump added. “I think we ought to start it up again. We ought to start it up this morning.”
The Associated Press reported in November 2011 that the NYPD built extensive databases detailing life in Muslim communities.
The department monitored grocery sales, social life and even worship among New York’s Islamic community, the AP added.
Defenders say the program helped prevent radical Islamic terrorism, while critics argued it promoted racial profiling.
The NYPD ended the controversial initiative in April 2014, according to The New York Times.
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