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Sunday, April 04, 2004 - Page updated at 12:54 A.M. Trials may hear from Ujaama and Ressam By Mike Carter
Convicted millennium terrorist Ahmed Ressam and former Taliban supporter James Ujaama may be called to testify against enemy combatants being held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. A prosecutor in the Office of Military Commissions, set up by the Department of Defense to build cases against the detainees, has asked the U.S. District Court in Seattle for documents from the Ressam and Ujaama prosecutions. The commission could call one or both of them as witnesses. The prosecutor, Capt. Teresa Davenport, a judge advocate general in the Naval Reserve and a federal prosecutor in Miami, declined to comment. Air Force Maj. John Smith, a spokesman for the office, said Davenport's request was one of several seeking information on terrorism-related prosecutions in the U.S. courts. "We are looking for evidence in a lot of different places," Smith said, declining to name specific cases.
Smith also said it is premature to say whether information from those cases would be relevant to bringing charges against any of the 600 detainees in Guantánamo Bay or against other suspected terrorists in U.S. custody. However, federal law-enforcement officials have said that both Ressam and Ujaama possess significant information that could be used to prosecute other suspected terrorists in U.S. custody. Ressam, a 36-year-old Algerian, was arrested in December 1999 trying to cross the U.S. border from Canada with the makings of a large bomb in his car. He was convicted in June 2001 of conspiring to commit an act of international terrorism and has since cooperated extensively with prosecutors. He is being held at the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac. Ressam was associated with Abu Zubaydah, one of Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenants and the man who oversaw recruiting for the al-Qaida terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Ressam stayed with Zubaydah in Pakistan before traveling to Afghanistan to train at the Khalden terrorist camp in 1998. When he was arrested, Ressam was carrying a telephone number to one of Zubaydah's safe houses. Zubaydah was captured by U.S. and Pakistani troops in a shootout in March 2002 and is in U.S. custody at an undisclosed location. Ressam is expected to testify in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the suspected al-Qaida operative who took flight lessons in Minnesota but was arrested before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Ressam has said he recognized Moussaoui from the Khalden camp. Ujaama, 38, a former Seattle entrepreneur, pleaded guilty last year to providing illegal aid to the former Taliban government in Afghanistan when it was sheltering bin Laden. Ujaama was arrested in 2002 after federal agents uncovered a plan by a small group of radical Muslims in Seattle to train for jihad at a ranch in Bly, Ore. Last year he entered a plea agreement with federal authorities that requires him to give "truthful testimony at any proceeding ... including grand juries, hearings, trials and military commissions." He is expected to be released this month after serving 20 months in federal prison. According to federal sources and court documents, Ujaama was linked to at least one detainee in Cuba, Feroz Abassi, a British citizen. Ujaama delivered the man to the training camps in Afghanistan in late 2000 at the behest of a radical Muslim cleric in Britain, Abu Hamza al Masri, records and sources say. Abassi was captured in Afghanistan fighting against U.S. troops. Under the rules of the Office for Military Commissions, the president must approve those cases to be tried. So far, President Bush has identified six people held at Guantánamo Bay to be tried. Two have been charged; no trial dates have been set. |
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