Well, the chancellor of UNC won’t call Mohammed Taheri-azar what he is. But terrorism experts will. The News-Observer reports today:

Only luck and lack of training kept Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar from committing a deadly act in the name of Allah, three terrorism experts said Monday.

Even so, the former high school honor student, who drove a rented sport utility vehicle into a crowded campus gathering spot at UNC-Chapel Hill on March 3, matches the modern profile of the unaffiliated, lone-wolf terrorist.

Such hard-to-track suspects present a burgeoning security challenge to law enforcement and counterterrorism agents, said Solomon Bradman, chief executive officer of Security Solutions International, a Miami company that will present a one-day suicide terror prevention course for local law enforcement officials today at Wake Technical Community College.

“Well, he’s a terrorist,” Bradman said of Taheri-azar. “In this world of global terrorism, you don’t have ties back to any particular group. In this new world, terror comes from incitement — it doesn’t come from an organization. The only thing that makes this not look like a terrorist act is that he did a lousy job of it.”

Taheri-azar’s open-court statement that he plowed a Jeep Cherokee through The Pit, injuring nine people, to avenge the killing of Muslims by the U.S. government echoes the motivations of Middle East suicide bombers and the suicide hijackers of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said Bradman, whose lead lecturer will be Omer Cohen, a former officer with the Israeli internal security and counterintelligence agency Shin Bet…

…Cohen said terrorist cells are already operating in America and could aid would-be suicide bombers with money and explosives. He points to the wave of suicide bombings that struck Israel in 2001 and 2002 at a rate of one a week. Those bombings crippled the Israeli economy and caused people to fear leaving their homes.

“It’s out there and things are going on right under our noses in the U.S.,” Cohen said. “It took us a lot of time to understand this and find ways to prevent it.”

Today’s training session is expected to draw more than 200 law enforcement officials, including officers from the Raleigh Police Department and the Wake County Sheriff’s Office. It will focus on the recruiting and intelligence-gathering tactics of groups that sponsor suicide bombers, Bradman said. Case studies of past attacks, including the Sept. 11 jetliner strikes, video interviews with failed suicide bombers and how to harden potential targets will also be presented.

“We’re trying to get them to know the enemy better,” said Bradman, whose company has a sister organization in Israel. “If you think like a terrorist, it’s going to help you.”

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Teaching the Three T’s
Tar Heel Terrorist: “Eye for an eye”
Tar Heel Terrorist: Allah’s will
Question of the morning
Terrorism at UNC-Chapel Hill
A jihadist in North Carolina
Violence at UNC-Chapel Hill

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