Adding to post #232
It appears Newsweek was aware of this.
Terror Watch: More Questions on Missing Imam
http://www.newsweek.com/id/49936/output/print
“The court summary identifies Abu Omar—describing him as an “Egyptian
extremist”—as one of a number of suspected terror operatives who were involved
in recruiting fighters for the camps in Iraq, as well as procuring and
distributing false travel documents and the raising of funds. It also quotes
from a June 15, 2002, wiretap of a conversation between Abu Omar and an
unidentified visitor from Germany in which the two talk about a “secret meeting
in Poland with the sheiks” that would help build a new jihadi organization to be
financed by sympathizers in Saudi Arabia. At one point, the visitor says, “We
are also waiting [for] the sheikh from Iraq”—an apparent reference, the
document asserts, to Mullah Krekar, the radical cleric believed to have been a
founder of Ansar Al-Islam. The document states that the conversation “clearly
demonstrated the intention to organize a new subversive international terrorist
structure ... that obeyed the decisions of Al Tawhid [Zarqawi’s organization
] for the commissioning of attacks.”
This transcripts and other records in the case show that Abu Omar was “directly
in contact with the representatives of the Zarqawi group and Ansar Al-Islam,”
says Jean-Charles Brisard, a Paris-based terror researcher who works closely
with lawyers representing families of September 11 victims.”
Also add in this evidence at Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,128193,00.html
Iraq Evidence Led Feds to Albany
Saturday, August 07, 2004
ALBANY, N.Y. — Information found in Iraq led federal investigators to become suspicious of an Albany, N.Y., mosque leader, FOX News has learned.
Last summer, U.S. troops discovered Yassin Muhhiddin Aref’s (search) name, telephone number and address in a book left behind in a vacated terrorist training camp, a U.S. official told FOX News. The book also revealed that Ansar al-Islam, the group running the camp, had given Aref a title: “the commander.”
Aref also made several telephone calls to individuals in Iraq within the past year, the official said.
Aref, 34, is the Imam of the Masjid As-Salam mosque in Albany, N.Y. He and one other mosque leader were arrested Thursday and charged with helping an undercover informant posing as a weapons dealer who was plotting to buy a shoulder-launched missile that would be used to kill the Pakistani ambassador in New York City.
Aref and Mohammed Mosharref Hossain (search), the 49-year-old founder of the mosque and owner of the local Little Italy Pizzeria, were allegedly collaborating with someone who was not a terrorist but an informant participating in a sting operation; no missile ever was exchanged.
Click to read the charges (FindLaw pdf).
Earlier on Thursday, law enforcement officials said the men had possible ties to Ansar al-Islam, which has been linked to Usama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda (search) terror network. However, that link was not noted in court documents.
Ansar al-Islam (search) has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings, kidnappings and killings in Iraq, and has ties to the U.S.-led coalition’s most-wanted terrorist there, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (search).