Terror suspects arrested at JFK

ELMWOOD PARK, N.J. - They were recorded talking jihad against their fellow Americans. But they hadn't talked the jihadists into accepting them.

When the two New Jersey men tried to fly out of New York's John F. Kennedy Airport in hopes of getting terror training in Somalia, investigators who had been following them for years were waiting for each of them at the gate, officials said Sunday.

Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, 20, and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, 26, were arrested Saturday before they could board separate flights to Egypt and then continue on to Somalia, federal officials in New Jersey and the New York Police Department said.

They are the latest of several U.S. Muslims accused of joining or trying to join terrorist groups, radicalized with help from fellow Americans preaching violent jihad over the Internet.

Authorities say they recorded Alessa and Almonte talking about attacking Americans. Alessa allegedly said he would outdo Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, last year.

"He's not better than me. I'll do twice what he did," Alessa was recorded saying, according to court documents.

They had no known connections to established terrorist groups, however. They had traveled to Jordan three years ago and tried to get into Iraq, only to be rejected by jihadists, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. Their trip to Somalia apparently amounted to a leap of faith that they would be embraced by al-Shabab, a violent extremist group based in Somalia and connected to al-Qaida.

Although Americans are po