Alleged jihadist known as friendly store owner

updated 8:49 a.m. ET July 29, 2009

RALEIGH, N.C. - When someone in the Raleigh area needed a sheep or goat slaughtered according to Islamic law, Daniel Boyd was the man to see.

"You find everything from halal meat and snacks to soft back prints of the Holy Quran in both English and Arabic," read a notice on the Web for Boyd's Blackstone Market in nearby Garner. There was even a place to worship in the back.

Bosnian native Jasmin Smajic said he was drawn to the store by the halal goods. Instead he found a friend.

"He would always ask people, his friends, if he can do a service for you," says Smajic, 23, a student at North Carolina State University. "He would basically ask people if they needed any kind of help with anything ... whether that be advice, whether you're struggling with money, need your faucet fixed — whatever it is. He was always very helpful."

So, like many hereabouts, Smajic was shocked this week when federal officials accused Boyd of wanting to go abroad and slaughter in the name of Islam.

‘Sword of God’ nickname
A federal indictment unsealed this week says Boyd, 39, is a radicalized Muslim convert who went by the nickname Saifullah — "Sword of God" — and was putting together a team of extremists to wage "violent jihad" overseas. He was arrested Monday along with two of his sons — Zakariya, 20, and Dylan, 22 — and four other men.

The indictment charges that Boyd and his sons traveled to Israel in July 2007 to meet with two of the other defendants but returned home "having failed in their attempt at violent jihad."

But the man described in the 14-page indictment is not the Daniel Patrick Boyd whom friends and neighbors in and around the Raleigh suburb of Willow Spring knew: the devoted Muslim who fasted during the holy month of Ramadan and prayed toward Mecca five times a day; the son of a Marine whose pickup was emblazoned with a "Support our Troops" bumper sticker; the friendly drywall contractor who waved at neighbors, and chatted about gardening and fishing.

"If he's a terrorist, he's the nicest terrorist I ever met in my life," said Willow Spring land surveyor Charles Casale, who helped his neighbor plant a vegetable garden. "I don't think he is."

Certainly, the white, fair-haired, American-born father does not fit the comic book stereotype of an Islamist terrorist bent on holy war. And that, authorities say, is what makes people like Boyd so dangerous. When federal officials went to arrest him and the others Monday, they deployed more than 100 agents, including four SWAT teams and a hostage-rescue team.

"Each of the men were considered armed and dangerous," Amy Thoreson, a spokeswoman with the FBI in Charlotte, said Wednesday.

Concerns about a trend
Hours after the arrests, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security sent an internal bulletin to law enforcement officials around the country saying the case marks a worrisome trend of would-be terrorists who go overseas for training or indoctrination, come back to the United States, and may spend years quietly waiting to put their skills to use.

Boyd's wife, Sabrina, has said the trip was innocent and denies that her husband or sons were involved in any terrorist activity. But it would not be the first time Boyd had gone overseas to wage war in the name of Islam.

His journey toward becoming a Muslim, which would lead to a Pakistan jail cell, started years earlier.

He grew up in poverty, the youngest of five children born to Thornton and Patricia Boyd. The father was a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps, and the family moved almost every year. The parents separated in 1974, and the mother later said in an interview with People Magazine that she and the children were sometimes reduced to gathering leaves to make into soup in the living room fireplace because the electricity had been shut off.

Thornton and Patricia divorced in 1977, when Daniel was 7, and Thornton Boyd died in 2005.

Patricia Boyd married William Saddler, a Washington, D.C.-area lawyer and American Muslim whom she once described as "intellectual and deep and decent."

It was from there that Daniel Boyd developed his interest in becoming a Muslim. Raised Episcopalian, he converted to Islam at age 17. After graduating from T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., where he was once a defensive lineman in football, he married his girlfriend, Sabrina, who converted to Islam just hours before their wedding, according to a 1991 Washington Post story at the time of his arrest in Pakistan.

Daniel worked construction to support his family, but Islam's requirement to do "good works" led him overseas, his mother told People.

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