http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/715524/posts Oregon sheriff: 'We had our suspicions' (al-Qaida in Oregon)
Seattle Times ^ | July 13, 2002 | Hal Bernton, Mike Carter and David Heath
Posted on 07/13/2002 1:59:56 AM PDT by sarcasm
BLY, Ore. — This hard-knocks hamlet seems an unlikely place to search for clues to the al-Qaida terrorist network.
It sits on an arid plateau in Southern Oregon, about 50 miles east of Klamath Falls. With a population of about 250, it has a couple of cafes and small stores, an antique shop, and the razed foundation of an abandoned lumber mill.
But in late 1999, federal authorities and other sources say, the area had something far more unusual: militant Muslims scouting a ranch outside of town as a possible training camp for jihad fighters.
That aborted effort has now thrust Bly into the thick of a Seattle-based FBI and federal grand-jury investigation into al-Qaida's activities in the United States. Authorities suspect that a group of Seattle-based Muslims, mostly U.S. citizens, were operating as a "cell" in support of al-Qaida, and that opening a terrorist-training camp was part of their plans.
For about six months beginning in September 1999, Semi Osman — a cleric at a small Seattle mosque named Dar-us-Salaam — lived on the ranch, a few miles outside town. Osman is now in federal custody in Seattle, charged with immigration and weapons violations and under investigation for terror-related activities.
Sources say Osman's visitors on the Bly ranch included two members of a London mosque led by Sheik Abu Hamza al-Masri, a radical cleric believed to be an al-Qaida recruiter, and militant members of Osman's Central Area mosque. Some of the visitors rode horses and fired automatic weapons, according to people in the area.
Police began to watch the ranch closely, said Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger.
THE SEATTLE TIMES
"There were reports of gunfire and of a large group of suspicious, or unusual, people there," Evinger said.
Gunfire is common in rural Southern Oregon, where many residents carry arms and engage in target practice or hunting.
But this information concerned the sheriff enough that he turned it over to the FBI. He heard nothing again until after the Sept. 11 attacks, when the information gained new importance. His detectives were briefed about the federal investigation late last year, Evinger said.
"I think even before then, we had our suspicions about what this might be," he said. "You expect terrorist activity in the big cities. I think people need to realize this sort of stuff can happen anywhere."
Neighbors say Osman, now 32, kept a low profile, tooling around in a beat-up 1984 Toyota sedan and at one point commuting to Klamath Falls to work as a mechanic, according to neighbors and a former employer.
Still, he and his family got plenty of notice. In this community of bluejeans and boots, the balding, bearded Osman dressed in a tunic and skullcap. His wife, an American who converted to Islam, dressed in a long robe and headscarf in traditional Islamic fashion. A young daughter attended the local school.
Some Bly residents who knew Osman say that he was friendly and polite, and often spoke of his hopes to join the U.S. Army after he left the ranch. Osman, a naturalized British citizen with permanent U.S. residency status, was a member of the U.S. Naval Reserve.
But at least one neighbor, retired carpet layer Perry Thompson, clashed with Osman.
Thompson said Osman was a high-strung man who didn't like unexpected visitors. On two occasions, Thompson said, an armed Osman confronted him. In one of the incidents, Thompson said, Osman forced him to stop his truck by driving up from behind and parking in front of him, then he jumped out of his car, ran to his window and pointed a semiautomatic handgun at his head.
"He had all kinds of guns," Thompson said. "And he was belligerent."
HAL BERNTON / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Later residents of the Bly ranch have found spent and live ammunition from semiautomatic weapons.
A Bly tow-truck driver, Billie Livingston, also reports an unsettling visit to the ranch. Coming to jump-start a dead battery, she was surprised to find a half-dozen men, some of whom appeared foreign-born, intently watching her.
Among the men at the ranch in December 1999 were two men who federal investigators believe were sent by al-Qaida leaders to check out the ranch as a potential training camp.
The men's presence in Southern Oregon was documented in a speeding ticket issued that December in Klamath Falls. According to a source, the police officer became suspicious of the occupants of the car and checked their identification.
Later, federal agents would determine the men had arrived from Great Britain two weeks earlier.
"Those men," the source said, "were there for a bad purpose."
The two men were followers of Abu Hamza, leader of the North London Central Mosque in Finsbury Park, the heart of militant Islam in Europe.
Abu Hamza applauded the Sept. 11 attacks. His mosque had been attended by Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, and by Richard Reid, the man accused of trying to blow up an American Airlines jetliner with explosives in his shoes.
Osman's attorney, Robert Leen, denies his client has any involvement with terrorism. Others who know Osman say that he was uncomfortable with the militancy of his visitors and that he sought to distance himself from them.
The Bly ranch had been owned by Esther Fisher Schneider, who died in August 1999 at age 82. She had moved from Washington state to Bly in the 1990s with a sheep rancher named Ivan Rule, known among Bly residents for espousing extreme right-wing political views.
The property is now listed as owned by the late Schneider and the Barraka Communal Corp., a nonprofit corporation created by Rule and an American Muslim woman who lived with him in 1999.
In February 2000, Osman and his family left the ranch. The daughter and son-in-law of neighbor Perry Thompson, Lona and Paul Azevedo, moved in. In walks on the property, the Azevedos have collected ammunition from semiautomatic and other weapons.
Rule, who no longer lives in Bly, was not available for comment. The IRS has a tax lien against him in Fremont County, Colo., in the amount of $10,041, dating from May 1994.
Lona Azevedo says she continues to pay rent to Rule through a Bly post office box, but she is not sure where he lives.
Meanwhile, yesterday in London, Abu Hamza denied any knowledge of a plot to set up a terrorist camp in Bly, or of a cell of al-Qaida supporters in Seattle.
"We have quite a good following in America, but we don't keep a structure because we are talking about principles," he told NBC.
"I have friends everywhere," he said. "When you are arresting people in America under suspicion, you might as well arrest the rest of the planet."
Or they could have had fire arm training at this al Fuqra compound/site before we helped to close it down.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/566591/posts Why is there an Islamic Village in the foothills near Fresno?
KFSN TV 30 Fresno, CA ^ | 11-07-01 | Kevin Quinn
Posted on 11/08/2001 8:14:41 AM PST by Clovis_Skeptic
.Why is there an Islamic Village in the foothills near Fresno? There's an airstrip and neighbors complain of gunfire. Kevin Quinn takes you inside Baladullah, California.
Sorry, no transcript as of now. Video only. Worth the effort to view.
The video provides a look at this compound in the foothills above Fresno, CA. Pre 9-11, a Fresn County Sheriffs deputy was killed by a member of this peaceful Islamic community. The suspect (in the beginning trial phase still) broke into a empty nearby foothill home, when deputies arrived this guy was lying in the hallway floor with a rifle, and killed one deputy. This video is the first investigative reporting we have had on this Islamic community. The trail leads to FUQRA, a known terrorist group operating all over the world, and have several communities such as this one all over the USA.
Here is an excerpt from an article of the Sacramento Bee...
California links of terrorists probed:
Federal and state investigators try to unearth 'sleeper' agents.
By Sam Stanton and Andy Furillo
Bee Staff Writers
(Published Sept. 30, 2001)
The compound Beyond seeking out ties to bin Laden-linked terrorist networks, officials are keeping tabs on another Islamic group near Fresno because of the recent killing of a sheriff's deputy in an area home, apparently stemming from a botched burglary.(this was no burglary according to all accounts)
There is no evidence that the Fresno group has been involved in any terrorist activities, officials say.
The group, according to a federal source, is part of Fuqra, an organization whose name means "poverty" in Arabic and which has had compounds in several U.S. areas.
Some Fuqra members in other areas have been implicated in past years in domestic terrorist attacks, and the State Department has labeled the group, known formally as Jamaat ul-Fuqra, as "an Islamic sect that seeks to purify Islam through violence."
The group south of Fresno operates an 1,800-acre compound called the International Quranic Open University, which sits on the former site of the drug addiction recovery cult Synanon.
The compound, a series of mobile homes shaded by trees, also serves as a U-Haul rentals location. A resident there last week refused to talk to a reporter, referring inquiries to a Visalia attorney who did not respond to a message seeking information.
Authorities have been studying the compound since the Aug. 21 slaying of Fresno County Sheriff's Deputy Erik Telen. Officials charged 20-year-old Ramadan Abdur-Rauf Abdullah with murder in the killing, apparently stemming from a botched burglary at a rural home.
James Oppliger, Fresno County's chief deputy district attorney, said the suspect claimed he had been living at the compound seeking psychiatric treatment from the Quranic university.
Oppliger said he since has begun studying the group and its possible connections to other organizations.
(Zavia Books) is the bookstore for this Islamic compound. It is called Koranic Open University. Note the books being sold. One of them is prefaced by ( Sheik Mubarik Ali Shah Jilani [Gilani]) a known terrorist. The trail leads from Baladullah (actually Miramonte, CA) to Pakistan, where Sheik Gilani lives. He is the head of Fuqra.