London bomb suspect linked to Ore. terror camp (terrorists on the left coast)

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Investigators probing the London terror bombings are focusing on an elusive British Muslim suspect who is connected to a previous plot to set up a terrorist training camp in rural southern Oregon, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials.

Officials told both NBC News and CNN Wednesday that Haroon Rashid Aswat, believed to be a mastermind of the London bombings, is the same British-born Muslim of Indian descent who scouted a Bly, Oregon ranch to set up a terror camp.

These officials said Aswat, a Pakistani national being sought for questioning as a person of interest by British authorities, was among three unindicted co-conspirators in the Oregon incident.

U.S. officials said a 2002 indictment in the Bly case links Aswat directly to Abu Hamza al-Masri, a fiery, one-eyed radical cleric from a London mosque who is now on trial in Britain for possessing al-Qaida literature and inciting the killing of Jews and other non-Muslims.

"I think this just gives us a glimpse into what might be happening inside the United States," said retired Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Francona, an NBC News terrorism expert. "We were able to uncover one operation — how many others are out there?"

"What's very scary is not only can they travel very easily through Europe, they could travel very easily to the United States because of their British citizenship," added retired Portland State University professer Gary Perlstein, a KGW terrorism expert.

The documents reveal Aswat worked with a Seattle man, James Ujaama, who pleaded guilty in 2003 to a charge of providing support to the Taliban for his role in trying to set up the "jihad training camp." Ujaama is now cooperating with federal prosecutors.

The southern Oregon ranch that may have been scouted as a potential terrorist training camp. (KGW Photo)

Court documents in the Ujaama case said a conspirator, whom U.S. officials identified as Aswat, arrived in New York City in November 1999 on Abu Hamza's orders. He made his way to Oregon, according to the documents, "for the purpose of evaluating the Bly property as a jihad training camp."

In the indictment, prosecutors also alleged the conspirators "met potential candidates for jihad training ... established security for the Bly property ... and they and others participated in firearms training and viewed a video recording on the subject of improvised poisons."

The documents also said Aswat, along with another conspirator, lived in Seattle in early 2000 and "expounded on the teachings" of Abu Hamza.

Aswat, in his early 30s, has family that lives in Leeds in northern England, where three of the four suspected London suicide bombers resided. At his family's house, neighbors said they haven't seen Aswat in nearly 10 years.

Aswat's believed to be hiding out in Pakistan, where government officials said he wasn't in custody and remained at large as of Wednesday night.

Here it is. This idiot has got to be tied in to this as well.

Investigators have linked Portland, Ore., lawyer Brandon Mayfield to the Madrid terrorist bombings through a fingerprint lifted from a bag containing detonators discovered near the train station where three of the four bombed trains originated, according to sources in Spain and the United States familiar with the probe.

The bag, which contained cell phone detonators similar to those used in the attack that killed 191 people, was found in a stolen van left in the town of Alcala de Henares. It was parked near a house where police say the bombs were assembled.

Tracing another set of fingerprints found in both the van and the house, as well as the origin of the cell phones, police found a cell phone shop in Madrid owned by Moroccan Jamal Zougam, whom Spanish police describe as the plot's mastermind.

When Spanish investigators were unable to identify one of the fingerprints on the bag in the van, they distributed it to other countries, including the United States, where authorities linked it to Mayfield, said the sources, who asked for anonymity because a judge has imposed a gag order on government officials in the case. Mayfield would have been fingerprinted when he served in the military.

Mayfield, 37, a Kansas native and Army veteran, was detained on a material witness warrant Thursday, the first American linked to the simultaneous bombings of four commuter trains in Madrid. More than 2,000 people were injured in the attack, which helped topple the Spanish government in an election held three days later.

Eighteen Spanish and Moroccan suspects have been arrested.

Mayfield's attorney and relatives say they are baffled by the alleged connection between the mild-mannered Muslim convert and the Madrid plot, noting that Mayfield has not been out of the country in more than 10 years.

Mayfield told Thomas Nelson, the Portland lawyer who is acting as his spokesman, that he had never been to Spain, his passport had expired in October of last year, and he had never met anyone from Morocco.

"Brandon is flabbergasted," Nelson said. "He has no explanation for these charges. He thinks this is crazy." Nelson said he believed that Mayfield's only travel abroad had occurred when he was in the Army and serving in Germany.

Nelson complained about a "calculated leak" from the Justice Department to the news media Thursday about Mayfield, telling KATU-TV in Portland that the information had "led to the frenzy that we see out here that is destroying and disparaging his family, his relationships, his children and his law practice. That leak is devastating. It was unnecessary, unethical and inappropriate."

But federal officials were clearly upset that their investigation was rushed to a premature close. "The plan was to sit on him longer, but it started to get out in a big way, so they had to move," said a law enforcement official who declined to be named, citing the gag order.

Acquaintances in Portland said they did not know of any involvement by Mayfield with militant Islam, though he became tangentially involved with one of six members of a Portland terror cell who pleaded guilty to charges last year. Mayfield defended Jeffrey Leon Battle, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison for conspiring to fight against U.S. troops in Afghanistan, in an unsuccessful bid to retain custody of his son.

"I don't think they knew each other before Mayfield volunteered to represent him in the custody matter," said one defense lawyer involved in the case. The lawyer described Mayfield as "a very, very low-key guy, very quiet."

Mayfield's younger sister, Amy Sikes, said her brother had served about four years in an Army signals unit out of Fort Lewis, Wash., in the late 1980s and had been stationed for about a year in Germany. He met his Egyptian-born wife, Mona, while at Fort Lewis and converted to Islam in 1989, his sister said. The couple have two sons, ages 15 and 10, and a 12-year-old daughter, Sikes said.

"She's the love of his life, and I'm sure that's what got him interested in the Islamic culture," Sikes said of Mayfield's wife. "He's very family oriented and always has been."

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Ujaama will testify in New York about al-Qaida links
Seattle Times ^ | June 1, 2003 | Mike Carter

Posted on 06/01/2003 12:24:12 AM PDT by sarcasm

Ujaama will testify in New York about al-Qaida links
Seattle Times ^ | June 1, 2003 | Mike Carter

Posted on 06/01/2003 12:24:12 AM PDT by 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."

Excerpted

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