Posted on 07/24/2002 12:41:19 AM PDT by sarcasm
The FBI investigation into a group of Seattle-based militant Muslims has a bigger target, federal sources say: Abu Hamza al-Masri, the firebrand Islamic cleric in London who supports Osama bin Laden and whose mosque is considered a recruiting ground for the al-Qaida terrorist network.
The investigation accelerated late Monday when federal agents in Denver arrested James Ujaama, 36, a central figure in the Seattle group. He is being held on a material-witness warrant issued by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, the Justice Department's hub for international terrorist investigations.
Ujaama and others connected with a now-defunct Seattle mosque are suspected of working with Abu Hamza in support of al-Qaida, including scouting an Oregon ranch as a potential terrorist training camp. Prosecutors believe Ujaama, a U.S. citizen raised in Seattle, is a key link with the London imam.
Ujaama, formerly known as James Earnest Thompson, surrendered outside his aunt's home as federal agents and police swarmed it, guns drawn. His younger brother Mustafa was briefly detained outside the home before being released. Both men deny any connection with terrorist activity.
"I've never even heard of al-Qaida," Mustafa Ujaama said. "My brother is not a terrorist, and neither am I."
In Seattle, the only man charged so far in connection with the case, Semi Osman, appeared in federal court yesterday to plead guilty in a deal that would secure his cooperation with authorities. The plea, however, was postponed suddenly by Osman's lawyer, Robert Leen, who later declined to comment.
Osman, a Tacoma auto mechanic who was a former leader of the Dar-us-Salaam mosque in the Central Area, was arrested last month on charges of fraudulently attempting to obtain U.S. citizenship with the intent of supporting international terrorism and possession of a handgun with its serial number obliterated.
Neither Ujaama nor Abu Hamza has been indicted.
Ujaama was brought before a federal judge in Denver in a swift and secret hearing yesterday.
Two federal sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Ujaama had been under surveillance and that the intent had been to arrest him later in the week. The material-witness warrant was executed Monday night because investigators feared he was about to leave the country. Ujaama has lived in London on and off for the past several years.
In an interview yesterday with The Seattle Times, Abu Hamza said Ujaama — whom he knew as Bilal Ahmed — ran the North London Central Mosque's Web site until about a year and a half ago, "when he disappeared." The militant cleric, who lost both hands and an eye fighting in Afghanistan and who has applauded the Sept. 11 attacks, shrugged off Ujaama's arrest.
"What can he say against me? A person who had articles on a site," he said.
Abu Hamza fully expects he will be charged in the United States, insisting that witnesses are being blackmailed to testify against him.
"They have been trying to make witnesses against me for years," he said.
If the Justice Department does indict Abu Hamza, it would move to extradite him from Great Britain.
Sources say Ujaama has been a follower of Abu Hamza since 1997 and had traveled to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan at least once before the Sept. 11 attacks in the company of a man later captured by U.S. troops and in custody in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Ujaama, who once ran a small computer store on University Way Northeast in Seattle, allegedly provided laptop computers to the Taliban before Sept. 11 and is suspected of being involved in setting up a Web site for Sakina Security Services in London, which operated a site called the "Ultimate Jihad Challenge."
The site, which was shut down by British authorities after Sept. 11, offered paramilitary training in the United States to British Muslims who, because of the laws in England, could not own or use firearms. The head of Sakina Security is on trial in London for allegedly offering the training in support of terrorism.
Reda Hassaine, an Algerian who infiltrated the mosque for British and French intelligence agencies, said yesterday that Sakina had a full-time representative in the London mosque — not Ujaama — to recruit individuals for the paramilitary training.
Federal investigators suspect the Oregon property was being considered by Sakina, and that Abu Hamza sent emissaries to assess it.
In November 1999, two men traveled from London to New York to Seattle. From there, they went to the remote Oregon town of Bly, where Semi Osman was living with his family. The men, along with about a dozen others from Seattle, spent more than two weeks on the property.
The two men from London were identified after a Klamath Falls police officer stopped a car being driven by Osman.
Federal sources said the two men have been identified walking and laughing with Abu Hamza on a videotape shot in London and recently broadcast in a documentary about Abu Hamza by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Hassaine, the Algerian, recognized the men as two of Abu Hamza's hard-core followers who advocate violent jihad against the West.
Abu Hamza, however, yesterday denied knowing the men by name.
Last year, the U.S. Treasury Department designated Abu Hamza a global terrorist and froze his assets. The department alleges that Abu Hamza was an officer in the Islamic Army of Aden, the terrorist organization that claimed responsibility for the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, which killed 17 American sailors.
Yemen accuses Abu Hamza of sending 10 men from Britain, including his son and a stepson, to attack British and American targets in Aden. The group kidnapped 16 Western tourists, including two Americans, in December 1998. Four of the hostages died during a rescue.
Abu Hamza has been charged in Yemen for that crime, but Britain does not have an extradition agreement with the Middle Eastern nation.
The cleric has long been suspected of recruiting for al-Qaida. He denies that but openly supports bin Laden and publishes incendiary speeches on the Web site set up by Ujaama.
In an interview with Canadian television, he said, "Everybody was happy when the planes hit the World Trade Center. Anybody who tells you that they are not happy, they are hypocrites on the Muslim nation, I am telling you, everybody."
Abu Hamza was arrested in Britain more than two years ago, but no charges were filed. U.S. authorities are frustrated that he hasn't been charged there.
Abu Hamza was nonchalant about the U.S. investigation.
"They are playing, and they are going to charge me anyway," he said, "so basically, why should I worry?"
Yesterday in Denver, family members said Ujaama is a devout Muslim who is harshly critical of the United States, but they doubted he was involved in terrorism.
An aunt, Diedre Badu, believes her nephew was just a businessman plying his trade when he gave the Taliban the computers.
"My nephew is an entrepreneur," she told the Denver Post. "If that means selling computers to people where he was (in Afghanistan), that's what it means."
"There is no way he could funnel computers to Osama," said another aunt, Robin Sherrod. "He can barely funnel computers to himself."
Meanwhile, the effort to connect people in the United States with international terrorist networks is fomenting concern among civil libertarians.
"The government has swept extremely broadly in the detention of people in connection with the investigations of Sept. 11," said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor. "They sometimes have relied on a very thin basis of suspicion."
Other critics have accused the government of racial and religious profiling.
But Charles Mandigo, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Seattle, said his agents "do not investigate religious institutions or base their investigation on an individual's religion or race.
"We investigate individuals suspected of crimes."
Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, before converting to Islam was known as H. Rap Brown, one of the founders of the Black Panther movement. Al-Amin was convicted earlier this year of killing a Georgia sheriff's deputy trying to serve him with a summons. Serving life in prison. Many of the men at one of the two mosques involved swore allegiance - called "byaat" in Arabic to al-Amin.
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