Attorneys defending sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo contend dozens of
drawings he sketched while in jail last spring that spew Islamic
fundamentalism are evidence of his insanity.
The chilling drawings entered into evidence fill most of a 100-page binder,
reports the New York Post, and show a young man obsessed with jihad –
Arabic for “holy war” – and co-conspirator John Allen Muhammad, whom he
idolized as a father figure.
One sketch depicts a smiling Malvo and Muhammad with their arms around each other’s shoulders with
the caption: “Father and son.” Another reads: “A-1 dad” and “You the man.
Brave man.”
Malvo’s attorneys claim the 18-year-old was brainwashed by the older
Muhammad, 42, who was sentenced to
death last month for his role in the sniper spree that terrorized the Beltway
area in the fall of 2002 and resulted in 13 deaths.
reported both men were known to speak sympathetically about the Sept.
11 hijackers. But neither was believed to be directly associated with the
al-Qaida terrorist network.
Neighbors who several years ago lived near Muhammad in Tacoma,
Wash., described him as the head of a devout Muslim family who was prone
to domestic violence. The Gulf War veteran reportedly provided security for
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March in Washington,
D.C.
reported Malvo appeared to be a reluctant Muslim, slowly “pulled into the
evil” that Muhammad planned, according to the chaplain of the homeless
shelter where the two men stayed in the fall of 2001 near the Canadian border.
Ron Todd, who leads daily chapel services at the evangelical Lighthouse Mission, recalled a conversation he had with Malvo at the time.
“You know, when I first joined the Muslim faith, my cleric said, ‘We’re going
to take over the United States,'” Todd quoted Malvo as telling him before
adding, “I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be a Muslim.”
Despite his initial hesitance, Malvo’s hate-filled drawings demonstrate he
latched onto the mindset.
The most ominous sketch shows the White House in the cross hairs of a sniper’s rifle.
“You will weep and moan & MORN. You will bleed to death, little by little,”
Malvo wrote underneath the picture.
Other drawings depict police officers in cross hairs, assault rifles, tanks,
and the faces of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
 Malvo jailhouse sketch of Osama bin Laden. (Courtesy: New York Post.) |
“Sept. 11, we will ensure, will look like a picnic to you,” Malvo exhorts in his
notebook. “You can count on the above statement with every drop of my blood,
being and soul. … Welcome to the new war. You are not safe anywhere at any
time.”
Malvo declared he was ready to “die for the revolution.” He inscribed a
drawing of a helicopter, tank and soldier: “Islam. We will resist. We will
conquer. We will win.”
“We did not start this flame, we merely picked up the torch,” he wrote on a
sketch of bin Laden near a cop who, again, is in the cross hairs. “Ye shall all
die! Every last one.”
In addition to the hate mongering, the Post points out, Malvo shows no
remorse for the sniper spree.
“They all died and they deserved it,” he wrote. “I don’t need your pity. We
will not stop. This war will not end until you are all destroyed utterly.”
Prosecutor Robert Horan isn’t buying the insanity defense, calling it “like a puff of smoke.”
Citing mental-health reports provided by the defense, Horan described Malvo as “severely impaired in his ability to determine right from wrong.”
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