SEATTLE -- A convicted Taliban collaborator who was arrested in Belize - despite orders that he not leave the U.S. - could face a new trial on charges of offering support to terrorists if he's found guilty of violating his probation, a federal prosecutor said.
James Ujaama, a Muslim convert, was in federal custody without bail after a court hearing Tuesday. Authorities say he fled to Belize, where he was arrested in mid-December with a fake Mexican passport.
Ujaama served two years in prison after pleading guilty in 2003 to conspiring to provide cash, computers and fighters to the Taliban. During three years of probation, he was to surrender his passport and needed written permission from the U.S. attorney's office in Seattle to travel internationally. "I don't know what he was thinking," Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd Greenberg said after the hearing.
Ujaama denied the accusations in his brief court appearance. He faces as many as two years in prison if a judge agrees he violated his probation, and more serious consequences if the government backs out of its plea agreement. In that event, the government could file new charges that he offered support to terrorists, and any statements Ujaama has made to U.S. authorities could be used against him in the new case, Greenberg said.
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Iranian Arrested In Erbil Is Wanted In Austria
Tehran, 17 Jan. 2007 - One of the five Iranians arrested last week by the US army in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil is wanted in Austria in connection with the assassination of Kurdish leader Andol Rahman Ghassemlu in 1989. Mahommad Jaafari Sharoudi was one of five Iranian officials detained last week in the Kurdish-controlled city on charges of being connected to a faction of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the Pasdaran, that funds and arms insurgents in Iraq.
Abdol Rahman Ghassemlu, the historic leader of Iranian Kurds, was killed in an apartment in the outskirts of the Austrian capital Vienna where he was scheduled to meet a delegation sent by then Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
However, shortly after the start of the meeting between a delegation of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) and Tehran's delegation, a special unit of the Pasdaran is believed to have stormed the apartment and killed Ghassmlu and his aides. According to the Austrian police, the killers escaped arrest by hiding in Iran's embassy in Vienna.
Austrian sources claim that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was at the time a Pasdaran official, was the logistics' head of the commando group responsible for the Kurdish leader's death while Jaafari Sharoudi was one of the killers.
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Terrorism&loid=8.0.377268905&par=0
A Yemeni immigrant caught with a knife hidden in a book at Detroit Metropolitan Airport was sentenced Tuesday to a year in jail and faces possible deportation.
Wayne County Circuit Judge James Callahan agreed the small blade posed little threat as a weapon, but was troubled about why Mohammed S. Ghanem of Hamtramck would bring it. "It didn't really have any sharp edges to it," Callahan said of the 2 1/2 -inch blade. "Why would someone do it? One of the possible reasons to do that was to see if the security system could be breached. Thank God, it was not."
Ghanem, 22, insisted he had no idea the blade was embedded in his address book before a one-way flight to Yemen on Sept. 7. He said he was returning to his country to find a bride. Callahan ordered Ghanem to complete two years of probation after a year in jail.
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http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070117/METRO01/701170348/1006
Use children as troops, says cleric
January 18, 2007
SYDNEY'S most influential radical Muslim cleric has been caught on film calling Jews pigs and urging children to die for Allah.
Firebrand Sheik Feiz Mohammed, head of the Global Islamic Youth Centre in Liverpool, delivered the hateful rants on a collection of DVDs called the Death Series being sold in Australia and overseas.
"Today many parents, they prevent their children from attending lessons. Why? They fear that they might create a place in the their hearts, the love, just a bit of the love, of sacrificing their lives for Allah," Sheik Feiz says in the video.
"We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam. Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid (holy warrior). Put in their soft, tender hearts the zeal of jihad and a love of martyrdom."
An Australian citizen born in Sydney who has spent the past year living in Lebanon, Sheik Feiz was exposed this week in a British documentary Undercover Mosque. Investigators found Sheik Feiz's DVDs being sold by children in the carpark of the Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham and other Islamic bookshops. The entire set can be bought online for $150.
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http://mensnewsdaily.com/2007/01/17/un-undersecretary-general-indicted-in-oil-for-food-case/
"UN Undersecretary General Indicted in Oil-for-Food Case"
January 17, 2007
NewsLog
By Jim Kouri, CPP
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "United Nations Undersecretary General Benon Sevan of Cyprus and Ephraim Nadler, a/k/a “Fred Nadler,” of New York City were indicted on charges of bribery and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, in connection with the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program.
From mid-2000 until March 2003, the Iraqi government’s regime conditioned the right to purchase oil under the Oil-for-Food Program on a purchaser’s willingness to pay a secret surcharge to Iraq. These secret payments were illegal kickbacks, made in violation of United Nations sanctions and United States criminal law.
Nadler allegedly participated in a scheme to make unlawful payments to the former government of Iraq in connection with the purchase of oil under the Oil-for-Food Program. Sevan, who at the time was the Executive Director of the United Nations Office of Iraq Program (the Office that operated the Oil-for-Food Program), as well as being the UN’s Undersecretary General, allegedly received almost $160,000 — money generated from the sale of Iraqi oil under the Program — from Nadler on behalf of Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq.
Nadler is alleged to have helped a co-conspirator to obtain the right to buy Iraqi oil under the Oil-for-Food Program in exchange for commissions from the oil sales, and then allegedly funneled approximately $160,000 of these oil commissions to Sevan, according to the New York District Attorney’s Office, which will be prosecuting the case along with the US Attorney’s Office in New York.
Nadler and Sevan are charged with wire fraud, based on their depriving the United Nations of its right to Sevan’s honest services; bribery concerning an organization (the United Nations) that receives more than $10,000 annually from the federal government; and conspiracy to commit these offenses.
Nadler is also charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud by engaging in prohibited financial transactions with Iraq and violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 112 years’ imprisonment. If convicted, Sevan faces a maximum sentence of 50 years imprisonment.
The DA’s office reports that the United States government has issued warrants for the arrest of Nadler and Sevan with Interpol, and will seek their arrest and extradition to the United States."