Posted on 01/13/2004 6:58:13 PM PST by Calpernia
U.S. authorities filed criminal charges yesterday against a Saudi student who ran a Montreal-based Internet site that was allegedly used to recruit and raise money for Islamic terrorists.
Charges of providing material support to terrorism were filed in U.S. District Court in Boise against Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, 34, a computer student at the University of Idaho.
The indictment alleges he ''knew and intended that his computer services and expertise would be used to recruit and to raise funds for violent holy war, or jihad, in Israel, Chechnya and elsewhere.''
Aside from soliciting money for Hamas, Mr. Al-Hussayen operated an e-mail group ''for people who wanted to participate in violent jihad'' and led discussions on potential U.S. targets, it alleges.
Mr. Al-Hussayen ran the Internet site Islamway.com, previously registered in Montreal. Web site visitors were directed to Mr. Al-Hussayen's e-mail group, which authorities say advocated and supported terrorism. The National Post reported in August, 2001, an ''invitation to jihad'' that provided instructions on how to train at Osama bin Laden's terror camps in Afghanistan had appeared on the Islamway site. The RCMP launched an investigation after a complaint by B'nai Brith Canada, but the Web site moved to Ann Arbor, Mich. No charges were laid. After publishing articles about the site, the Post began receiving death threats that referred to Islamway.
Mr. Al-Hussayen's brothers are medical doctors in Calgary and Toronto. His uncle, Saleh Abdel Rahman Al-Hussayen, visiting from Saudi Arabia, travelled from Canada to the United States shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks, staying in the same Virginia hotel as three of the men who hijacked American Airlines Flight #77, the plane that was crashed into the Pentagon. The uncle was interviewed by the FBI then, but ''feigned a seizure, prompting the agents to take him to a hospital, where the attending physicians found nothing wrong with him,'' the U.S. has alleged in court documents. He has returned to Saudi Arabia.
The indictment claims that on the same day that Mr. Al-Hussayen's e-mail group posted the message on training camps, it also sent out an ''urgent appeal'' to Muslims serving in the U.S. military.
''The posting called upon such individuals to provide information about valuable targets for attacks, particularly in the Middle East,'' the indictment said. ''The long list of requested targets included American military bases, the logistical support [including drinking water] for such bases, the residences of civilian workers supporting the bases, storage facilities for weaponry and ammunition, facilities of American oil companies, and the routes followed by oil tankers.
''The posting specifically urged an attack upon a specifically identified high-ranking American military official.''
One of Mr. Al-Hussayen's sites posted a message by a radical Saudi sheik in June, 2001, that called for a Sept. 11-style attack: ''Bombing or bringing down an airplane on an important location that will cause the enemy great loses.''
The e-mail group, which had 2,400 registered members, ''served as a platform for Al-Hussayen's fundraising appeals,'' the U.S. Department of Justice alleged. ''In February, 2000 ... Al-Hussayen sent a message to all members of the Internet e-mail group urging them to donate money to support those who were participating in violent jihad in order to provide 'them with weapons and physical strength to carry on with the war against those who kill them.' This message was thereafter sent as a 'monthly reminder' to donate money in support of violent jihad.''
Mr. Al-Hussayen solicited money for the Palestinian Hamas and ran Web sites, for the Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA), the Saudi-based Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, the Saudi company Dar Al-Asr, two sheiks and ''entities through which he provided material support and resources to terrorists.'' He faces a possible 15-year sentence if convicted.
Al-Haramain has "branches" in Ashland, OR and Springfield, MO.
America's Fifth Column ... watch PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
http://12thman.us/media/jihad.rm (Requires RealPlayer)
... The indictment alleges he ''knew and intended that his computer services and expertise would be used to recruit and to raise funds for violent holy war, or jihad..
Check this....
Undercover Look at Radical Islamic Groups Operating in America
Lest there be any doubt about the tacit Wahhabi-al Qaeda alliance in the U.S., a new book "Terrorist Hunter" is the extraordinary story of a woman who went undercover to infiltrate radical Islamic groups operating in America. Authored by "Anonymous," her real identity is now known. She is an Iraqi Jew who speaks perfect Arabic and uncovered a billion-dollar scheme wealthy Saudis set up to filter money to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. It's later than we think.
Rita Katz is a young Iraqi-born woman who escaped to Israel from Iraq and eventually moved to the United States, where she became a counter-terrorism expert. Because much of her work is done undercover and she has penetrated numerous gatherings of Muslim radicals, her existence has been kept a secret until now. Through her work she has helped government agencies to collaborate with one another. Her investigations have resulted in the deportation of terrorists who lived and prospered in the United States and prevented the U.S. government from unwittingly funding front groups of terror.
Listen to the authors presentation: http://www.townhall.com/audio/CONTENT/vanandel-011504.ram
Terrorist Hunter is her story as an anonymous counter-terrorism expert, who penetrated front groups of anti-American terrorist organizations operating in this country. In this memoir, she chronicles her escape from Iraq via Iran to Israel and details how she became involved in intelligence gathering for the United States, her adoptive country, while working for an antiterrorism group. With her unique insights into how terrorist groups veil their true operations by various means, she has been able to identify dangerous terrorist organizations and entities working undetected in the United States.
Since 1979, the Wahhabi establishment has spent an estimated $70 billion on Islamist missionary work, ranging from the funding of some 10,000 madrassas in Pakistan to the construction of thousands of mosques and seminaries and community centers all over the Muslim and Western worlds. Jihad, or holy war, against Western heathens was the fundamentalist creed.
.......The country's standard of living has dropped precipitously from a gross domestic product per capita of $15,000 in 1980 to $9,000 today.
Internal security in Saudi Arabia is entirely in the hands of members of the House of Saud. Some 7,000 princes control all the kingdom's critical nerve centers, from air force squadrons to governors' palaces. So the horrifying conclusion is that the royal family is not only divided but certain princes sympathize with Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist organization. The bin Laden family runs one of the country's principal construction conglomerates and Osama himself was a Saudi national hero in the 1980s when he recruited thousands of Saudis to fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. .....
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