Ujaama will testify in New York about al-Qaida links

Seattle Times ^ | June 1, 2003 | Mike Carter

[sarcasm]

Federal inmate James Ujaama, the former Seattle man who pleaded guilty to aiding the Taliban, has been moved to New York to testify before a grand jury investigating a militant London cleric believed to be a top al-Qaida recruiter.

Ujaama, 37, is the key witness in a criminal case federal prosecutors are building against Abu Hamza al-Masri, a former imam at the Finsbury Park Mosque in London, said federal law-enforcement sources who agreed to speak only if they were not identified.

A federal grand jury in Manhattan is investigating Abu Hamza's alleged efforts to help Ujaama and others set up a terrorist-training camp on a small ranch in Bly, Ore., in 1999, two Department of Justice sources have confirmed.

Abu Hamza recently has been the focus of a political firestorm in Great Britain, where Prime Minister Tony Blair and Home Secretary David Blunkett have announced plans to deport the cleric. Authorities have pulled his license to preach inside the three-story mosque, although he continues to advocate violence against the West in soapbox sermons just outside.

Abu Hamza has been designated a terrorist by the U.S. State Department and is wanted in Yemen for his alleged role in the 1998 kidnappings of 16 Western tourists by the Islamic Army of Aden. Four of the hostages died during a shootout.

Ujaama became friends with Abu Hamza after moving to London in the mid-1990s. There Ujaama designed and ran the cleric's Web site, Supporters of Shariah, which supported holy war against Israel and the United States.

Ujaama, a graduate of Ingraham High School and a local entrepreneur formerly known as James Earnest Thompson, was also one of several Seattle-area militant Muslims affiliated with the now-defunct Dar-us-Salam Mosque in the Central Area.

Last year, as a result of his 1999 activities in Bly, Ujaama was charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and kill U.S. citizens abroad. He faced up to 25 years in prison.

In exchange for his cooperation, Ujaama will serve two years of a possible 10-year sentence for providing computers, money and fighters to the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which sheltered al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden for years.

U.S. troops toppled the Taliban after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

As part of his plea agreement, Ujaama promised to help the FBI and other intelligence agencies in investigations of Abu Hamza and others.

Since April, FBI agents and federal prosecutors have debriefed him at length. Ujaama's statements "have confirmed that he is everything we thought him to be, and more," one Department of Justice source said.

Robert Mahler, one of Ujaama's lawyers, declined to comment.

Documents recently unsealed by a federal judge in Seattle reveal new details about the activities and investigations of Ujaama and Abu Hamza.

The documents show that the FBI had an informant within the Seattle militant group who was aware that Ujaama had sent a fax from a Kinko's Copy Center in Washington to Abu Hamza in London.

"The facsimile proposed the establishment of a Jihad training camp in the state of Oregon," a document says.

According to court documents and government sources, that fax prompted Abu Hamza to send two of his lieutenants — Oussama Kassir and Haroon Rashid Aswat — from London to Bly, Ore., via New York City. That transit point has allowed the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan to take jurisdiction over the investigation.

"According to an individual who was present, Ujaama personally drove (Kassir and Aswat) to the Bly, Ore., training camp" in November 1999, the documents say.

Kassir was upset with Ujaama because the ranch had no barracks for troops or other facilities for jihad training, according to the documents. Still, one witness said the group brought as many as 15 automatic weapons to the ranch and fired at various targets.

Federal sources say Kassir, who now lives in Sweden, is also a target of the U.S. investigation. Aswat is believed to have died fighting with al-Qaida forces in Afghanistan.

According to the documents, Ahmed Ressam — the Algerian terrorist convicted of attempting to bring a bomb into the United States from Canada in 1999 — told Seattle FBI Agent Frederick Humphries that Abu Hamza was a London contact for Abu Zubaydah, bin Laden's former chief of operations.

Zubaydah, who briefly housed Ressam in Pakistan and arranged his terrorist training, was in charge of the al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and was the No. 3 man in bin Laden's terrorist network at the time of the September 2001 attacks.

Zubaydah, a Palestinian, was captured in Pakistan after a shootout in March 2002.