Tribes (NCIS)

Infobox Television episode
Title = Tribes
Colour =
Series = NCIS
Season = 5
Episode = 11


Caption =
Airdate = January 15, 2008
Production = 105
Writer =
Director =
Guests =
Episode list = Episode chronology
Prev = Corporal Punishment
Next = Stakeout

Tribes is the 105^th episode of the television series NCIS.

ummary

Tribes opens with a scene in a mosque, where a prayer is being said. Later on, a man from the mosque walks down the street. He is being followed. After taking a turn down an alley he collapses and pulls out his weapon and attempts to defend himself. It is taken away from him by a gloved hand and he is shot with his own gun.

The dead man is a marine and his tags say he is Muslim. Gibbs and Ziva go to the mosque with a photo, to see whether he had been there and was known. The cleric identifies him as his son. NCIS take his body to Ducky. Ducky is about to start the autopsy when Ziva intervenes and asks Ducky to see the father of the dead man. The cleric asks Ducky not to perform an autopsy because of his religious views. Ducky agrees with the cleric and told Gibbs that he would not do the autopsy because Ducky volunteered in the Bosnian war and had to do too many autopsies in too few days on people whose religion does not readily embrace the cutting of the body. Ducky comes up with a cunning plan for a non-invasive autopsy, using CAT scans and MRIs, that is effective but not strictly adhering to NCIS protocol.

When Ducky puts the body in the magnetic imaging machine, the magnet pulls an antique syringe from the body: Abby tells Gibbs it is antique because modern syringes use non-magnetic material. The needle contained a trace of a poison (which would metabolise in a human but not in a metal needle, hence it was locatable and traceable). The poison is that of the blue-ringed octopus (native to Australia and 10 times more deadly than Cobra venom). This explains how the marine managed to walk so far away from the mosque before collapsing - he did not get the entire dose of venom that was injected into his body.

When NCIS go to put listening devices into the mosque, they find that it is already under surveillance by the FBI. It turns out that the FBI agent had worked with Gibbs before transferring to the FBI.Gibbs and the FBI agent meet up at Gibbs' place unofficially, where the FBI agent tells Gibbs about why the FBI have the mosque under surveillance. They are on the trail of a terrorist recruiter from Germany who had entered the US illegally.

The team finds that before Abdul Bakr collapsed, he had typed a code into his cell phone and then threw his phone away. The code gave the name of the terrorist recruiter that the FBI were looking for.

The team go to a company that supply blue-ring octopus venom and come across an employee who claims that he killed Abdul Bakr. They find that he couldn't possibly have been in the alley when Abdul was shot as he is wearing a surveillance anklet.

The team find another Marine who had died suspiciously and discover that he had the same personnel officer as Abdul Bakr. They questioned the personnel officer and threaten him with being transferred to Guantanamo Bay, before he admits who the real killer was. The team go to the recruiter's hotel and find that he has committed suicide.

There is evidence at the scene that would suggest a connection with the father of the dead marine. Gibbs insists that he sees no connection and the rest of the team agreed.