ABC News
Al Qaeda in America?
FBI Considers Charging American With Aiding Terrorists
July 24, 2002
July 24 — The American Muslim being held by the FBI as a material witness eventually could be charged with aiding terrorists, sources told ABCNEWS.
As part of the federal government's ongoing investigation into possible al Qaeda activity in the United States, the FBI arrested James Ujaama at a family member's home in Denver on Monday. He is being held at an undisclosed location.
Ujaama, 36 of Seattle, is being investigated for suspicion that he helped Osama bin Laden's terror network, sources said. A grand jury is looking into whether members of a controversial Seattle mosque were trying to set up an al Qaeda cell in the United States.
"The FBI came and got him," his mother, Peggi Thompson, told The Associated Press. "It's a federal charge of being a material witness. There's nothing I can do or anything right now. Nobody's saying anything."
Federal law enforcement officials refused to comment publicly on the arrest.
The FBI is investigating whether Ujaama, when he lived in London, associated with a radical Muslim fundamentalist who repeatedly has called for holy war against the West, sources told ABCNEWS.com.
Plus, sources said authorities are probing Ujaama's work on a Web site called
http://stopamerica.org and a British site dubbed the "Ultimate Jihad Challenge." And officials want to know whether Ujaama took laptop computers to the Taliban in Afghanistan when the militant religious regime ran the country.
Sources told ABCNEWS federal prosecutors are considering charging Ujaama with aiding terrorists.
"If this individual indeed turns out to have concrete links to terrorists, to al Qaeda, then he is a big fish," said Matthew Levitt, an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Suspect Denies Terror Activities
Ujaama, an African-American Muslim, has denied ties to terrorists. In an e-mail mailed last week to a columnist with the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Ujaama said he and his brother Mustafa were ready to challenge any criminal charges that may be brought against them.
"My brother and I are not terrorists and we should not have been charged in the media and harassed," James Ujaama said. Mustafa Ujaama was also briefly detained Monday.
Mustafa Ujaama told reporters following his release that he and his brother had been unfairly treated. "My grandparents had this house in the '40s, man. This is not right," he said.
The brothers are well known in Seattle, where some community leaders have applauded their work to fight drugs and prostitution.
"If my brother and I end up being indicted or jailed, we will understand that many great leaders before us suffered the same consequences. We are proud to stick to our Islamic convictions of standing out for truth and justice against all consequences," James Ujaama wrote in the seven-page statement.
James Ujaama emerged as a target in a grand jury investigation focused on whether members of the now defunct Dar-us-Salaam mosque in Seattle were trying to organize a U.S.-based al Qaeda cell.
Sources said members of the group had looked into setting up a training camp at a ranch near Bly, Ore. The intensive investigation is symbolic of the continuing fear in the Bush administration that terrorists who trained in Afghanistan have made their way into the United States.
"Suffice it to say, the threat is real, as you know. Over 10,000 men went through those [foreign al Qaeda] camps," said Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson.
The Viewpoint of
http://www.StopAmerica.org
James Ujaama has strong views on America's foreign policy, specifically its war on terrorism. This conclusion about the Seattle Muslim arrested Monday comes from a review of a Web site he founded.
Ujaama took his criticism of "America's New War" to
http://www.StopAmerica.org - an organization of "Americans united against war," and committed to exposing how "America's policy reigns terror on the weak and oppressed."
Contributors to the site are members of the Global Alliance for U.S. Foreign Policy Change, an officially registered non-governmental organization. They come from "all over the world," and say they "despise war, militaries and America's new world order."
The site hosts a collection of articles "from the other side," calling into question whether U.S. politicians have a hidden agenda in the war against terror, whether Osama bin Laden was truly behind the Sept. 11 attacks, and whether President Bush acted inappropriately in the attacks' aftermath.
There's also a section featuring photographs of "pain, murder and mayhem, scars and death, tears and fears of thousand of innocent lives caught in the net of America's destructive foreign policy."
Ujaama wants to drive home the message of accountability to the decision makers at the top of the U.S. government. "Our campaign will not end until America's foreign policy has ended," he writes in a founder's message. "We the people of the United States charge this government and their coalition with conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes of terrorism against Muslim people in our names."
ABCNEWS' Pierre Thomas contributed to this report.
