Seattle man may give U.S. way to nab London cleric

The Seattle Times ^ | Aug. 21, 2002 | David Heath

[JohnathanRGalt]

Seattle man may give U.S. way to nab London cleric

By David Heath
Seattle Times staff reporter

LONDON ? From one of the largest mosques in Great Britain, he preaches hatred, advocates killing and praises terrorist attacks on the United States.

Abu Hamza al-Masri, the reputed al-Qaida recruiter, has been designated a terrorist by the world's largest industrial nations. He is wanted in Yemen on terrorism charges.

So far he has eluded prosecutors overseas.

Now federal authorities in Seattle have set their sights on prosecuting Abu Hamza. He is accused in court pleadings of an immigration violation that was "committed to facilitate an act of international terrorism."

"He is masterful" at staying within an eyelash of breaking Britain's laws against inciting violence, said Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at Scotland's University of St. Andrews.

Andrew Dismore, a member of Parliament, thinks Abu Hamza has broken the law by advocating murder. However, "it's a bit like breaking a big drug ring," said Dismore, who has railed against the cleric in the House of Commons. "You might be able to get Mr. Big on trivial charges, but to get Mr. Big for something serious is a much harder job."

Federal authorities here see a chink in Abu Hamza's armor: His friendship and association with James Ujaama, a charismatic computer expert who grew up in Seattle's Central Area.

Ujaama, 36, is described by some as an idealistic activist and by others as a hustler. At the center of the investigation is Ujaama's alleged efforts to persuade Abu Hamza to support a terrorist training camp in Oregon in late 1999.

Abu Hamza expects the United States to indict him.

"They are playing and they are going to charge me anyway," he said in an interview. "So, basically, why should I worry?"

Nothing seems to slow him down. Great Britain has frozen his assets and banned him from preaching. But AbuHamza continues Friday services at the three-story mosque in the polyglot, working-class neighborhood of Finsbury Park.

Abu Hamza's mosque stands out as a sort of community center for accused terrorists.

Richard Reid, accused of trying to blow up a plane with a shoe bomb, spent time there. Zacharias Moussaoui, charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, prayed at its large Friday gatherings.

AbuHamza wasn't always the center of attention. He grew up in Egypt as Mustafa Kamel, and moved in 1979 to Great Britain, where he worked as a karate instructor and a nightclub bouncer.

Later, he earned a degree in civil engineering and worked for the British Army.

In 1984, he married an English woman and became a British citizen. They divorced a year later.

He went to Afghanistan in 1990, after the Soviet invaders had withdrawn. It was there that he changed his name.

In an interview with an Arabic newspaper, he said he never met Osama bin Laden. He is cagey on other details, such as refusing to discuss whether he knew at the time about al-Qaida's training camps.

Abu Hamza's experience in Afghanistan radicalized him. There, he says, he lost both hands and an eye in a land-mine explosion. He returned to Great Britain to teach radical Islam. In 1994, the large mosque was built in Finsbury Park and within two years AbuHamza became its imam, or prayer leader.

One of his loyal followers was terrorist Christophe Caze, 25, a French medical-school student. Caze died in a gunbattle with French police after he and accomplices planted a car bomb near a March 1996 meeting of Western political leaders in Lille, France.

After the shootout, police found Caze's electronic organizer. It held not only the names and phone numbers of AbuHamza and other accused terrorists, but also the name of Ahmed Ressam, the convicted al-Qaida terrorist caught in Port Angeles on his way to blow up the Los Angeles airport.

Ressam has become an informant against al-Qaida. According to a classified FBI memo, Ressam told agents that AbuHamza helped to develop "leadership-training courses" at an al-Qaida camp.

In 1997, AbuHamza publicly emerged on the international terrorism scene as the London-based spokesman for Algeria's violent GIA (Armed Islamic Group). He edited the outfit's newsletter, al Ansar, "The Supporter," making sure to include GIA communiqués that took credit for terrorist massacres back in Algeria.

Algerians in London who opposed the GIA violence went to the Finsbury Park mosque to confront GIA sympathizers. According to an eyewitness, bloody fights broke out inside the mosque. Afterward AbuHamza decided to publicly disavow the GIA and shut down the newsletter.

Almost immediately, he started "the Supporters of Shariah," a group calling for global jihad against the West, especially the United States.

It was about this time that James Ujaama moved with his wife from Seattle to London and became Abu Hamza's Web site administrator.

Ujaama ? born James Earnest Thompson ? moved in with the family of his Somali wife, Farhiya Kahin, who lived in a modest row house in London.

"He was the type of person who thinks he knows it all," one neighbor said.

Ujaama went by Abdul Qadr in his neighborhood, Bilal Ahmed at the mosque and Abu Sumaya on the Web site.

He used the Supporters of Shariah Web site to display some of his own writings.

On one page, Ujaama presented a flattering account of bin Laden's 1996 "Declaration of War," which warned the United States that it would be attacked if it did not remove its troops from Saudi Arabia.

Ujaama wrote that he "agrees totally" with the bin Laden statement and believes "that bin Laden and those who are called terrorists by the United States are actually victims of terrorism, and that it is the United States, Israel and Britain who are terrorists."

On trips back to Seattle, Ujaama brought Abu Hamza's books and tapes to share with friends at the Dar-us-Salaam mosque on East Union Street.

Ujaama and AbuHamza had a "very tight" though turbulent friendship, said Ali Shahid Abdul-Raheem, an Auburn man who visited the two men in London. "They would have arguments, then hug each other a few days later."

While Ujaama was Abu Hamza's Webmaster, the cleric was making headlines for his ties to a group of terrorists, including his son and stepson, who went to Aden, Yemen, near Christmas 1998. Some of them kidnapped 16 Westerners. Others, including his sons, had explosives but were caught.

An hour after the kidnappings, the group's leader called AbuHamza by satellite telephone for advice.

Yemen police rescued the hostages, but four died in the process.

AbuHamza was charged with terrorists acts and Yemen demanded his extradition.

British police arrested the cleric and searched his West London apartment, but they released him after a few days.

British authorities refused to send him to Yemen. Britain's ambassador to Yemen later said evidence against AbuHamza was lacking.

The experience didn't tame Abu Hamza's rhetoric. He urged his followers to get military training.

At a sermon that was later broadcast on British television, he said: "Get training. What are you training for? So you can get the kufr (the nonbeliever) and crush his head in your arms, so you can wring his throat, so you can rip his intestines out. Forget wasting a bullet on them ? cut them in half."

Later, James Ujaama became fascinated with the idea of setting up a jihad training camp in Bly, Ore., and charging tuition, according to a source who was there.

In late 1999, Ujaama sent a fax to AbuHamza at the mosque, pitching the idea, Abdul-Raheem said.

"Everybody loves James," Abdul-Raheem said. "He's a good guy. He is a good brother of mine."

But Ujaama didn't know when to be quiet, he said, and AbuHamza became upset with Ujaama's indiscretion.

The FBI has been able to establish a paper trail of activity in Bly, federal sources said. As a first step, prosecutors indicted the man who lived on the ranch and paid rent, Semi Osman of Tacoma, charging him with supporting terrorism and illegal weapon possession.

Osman pleaded guilty to the weapon charge and agreed to testify against Ujaama and others.

Likewise, authorities hope to squeeze Ujaama, turning him into a building block in a possible case against AbuHamza.

Ujaama was arrested last month and is being held as a material witness for a federal grand jury in Virginia.

Ujaama denies being a terrorist and has not been charged.

Federal prosecutors also are counting on testimony from Feroz Abbasi, a 22-year-old British citizen caught fighting for the Taliban and now held at Guant?namo Bay.

Abbasi confided to interrogators that he was recruited for terrorist training at the Finsbury Park mosque.

Abbasi also told them Ujaama personally escorted him to an al-Qaida facility in Afghanistan, sources said.

However, tricky legal issues revolve around whether Abbasi, in military custody, will be able to testify in federal court.

Making a case against AbuHamza that will persuade a British judge to extradite him won't be easy.

There's been a string of recent failures in prosecuting terrorist suspects in the United Kingdom. Earlier this month, a London jury acquitted the head of Sakina Security Service, who advertised paramilitary training in the United States, "Ultimate Jihad Challenge."

The acquittal undercuts the investigation of Ujaama because he administered Sakina's Web site and planned for it to promote the Oregon camp, federal sources said.

Attempts to extradite terrorist suspects from Great Britain also have been unsuccessful. Earlier this month, a British judge released Yasser al-Siri of Egypt, accused by U.S. authorities of funding al-Qaida activity.

In February, another judge freed Lofti Raissi, 28, of Algeria, who U.S. authorities accused of helping to train the Sept. 11 hijackers. Both judges cited a lack of evidence.

Standards of evidence are more stringent in Great Britain than in other European countries. Extraditions can involve lengthy appeals.

The man wanted by France for allegedly masterminding subway bombings in Paris has been staving off extradition for seven years.

AbuHamza was blasé about being a FBI target in Seattle. He says he has been the target of other investigations, including the Sakina Security case, and nothing has come of it so far.

He mocked the idea of a camp for terrorists in Oregon: why would you go there when you could have easily gone to Afghanistan? "To tell you the truth," he said, "I don't know where Oregon is on the map."

He apparently is focused on other parts of the globe. Thursday, he and other radical clerics in London made threats against the United States and Great Britain if their armies invade Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein.

"If the U.S. and the U.K. continue to play with fire," Hamza and the others said in a press release, "there can only be one consequence: which is for them to burn their hands and to choke on the smoke ? September the 11th being an example."

Reporters Mike Carter and Hal Bernton contributed to this report. David Heath: 206-464-2136 or dheath@seattletimes.com .

[JohnathanRGalt]

James Ujaama was the webmaster of Abu Hamza's SupportersOfShariah website. The SoS has posted this story on their website .

(Also, it looks like they finally got around to taking down their outdated links page which prominently listed a pointer to 'Jehad is Crap': http://www.islamic-news.co.uk/ ).

[JohnathanRGalt]

Jehadi website ping: (let me know if you want on or off)

[SJackson]

Though I didn't ask to be on, please keep me on. Love Jihad is crap, and the links on your page. Forgive me if I borrow them on occasion, there's one or two there I haven't seen.

[swarthyguy]

Great Post!

>>One of his loyal followers was terrorist Christophe Caze, 25, a French medical-school student. Caze died in a gunbattle with French police after he and accomplices planted a car bomb near a March 1996 meeting of Western political leaders in Lille, France.

Missed this story altogether. Anybody remember this?

>>After the shootout, police found Caze's electronic organizer. It held not only the names and phone numbers of AbuHamza and other accused terrorists, but also the name of Ahmed Ressam, the convicted al-Qaida terrorist caught in Port Angeles on his way to blow up the Los Angeles airport.

Ressam has become an informant against al-Qaida...

So there's more to the Ressam case. More of a success than a chance encounter. A bigger triumph, apparently, than we were led to believe.

[Grampa Dave]

Another great find and post, Johnathan!

To the rest of you, the Jihad in America links never seem to disappear.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Ok!

JIHAD IN AMERICA:

To find all articles tagged or indexed using JIHAD IN AMERICA, click below:
	click here >>>	JIHAD IN AMERICA	<<< click here
(To view all FR Bump Lists, click here)

[Lion's Cub]

FYI

[dennisw]

I love the "brother's" name, James Ujaama. I laugh whenever I read it... How about James XXXXHamboneUjaama? That would be even better.

[thinden]

this is one that I'm following. thanx for the flag.

still catching up from too much weekend.

[skeeter]

At a sermon that was later broadcast on British television, he said: "Get training. What are you training for? So you can get the kufr (the nonbeliever) and crush his head in your arms, so you can wring his throat, so you can rip his intestines out. Forget wasting a bullet on them ? cut them in half."

We-are-not-your en-em-y

We-are-your-com-mu-nit-y.

[Aaron_A]

Somewhat off topic, but didn't these guys preach with a map of the world as they would like to see it - all Islamic. Is there such a map or is it just my imagination?

[Aaron_A]

Sakina Security Services ping.

[JohnathanRGalt]

Somewhat off topic, but didn't these guys preach with a map of the world as they would like to see it - all Islamic. Is there such a map or is it just my imagination?

Not off topic at all and you aren't imagining it.  Muslims believe that the entire world must be subjected to Islam. The reason for this inexorable march towards Islamisation is the quaranic order for all Muslims to establish one and only one nation under the rule of Allah on this earth and eventually the universe.

They believe that in the future there will be no Christians, Jews, Atheists or Buddhists. Once you become a Muslim, you must stay a Muslim or you must die.

This process of Islamisation is very methodical, organized, well funded, persistent, deliberate, determined and widely distributed. The Muslims are carrying out this same plan on every nation on earth including the USA.

Read on this Muslim webpage their plans To Make America an Islamic Nation .

[Aaron_A]

Thanks. I know there is a map somewhere - I'll continue looking. Btw, 'Jehad is Crap': http://www.islamic-news.co.uk/ seems to be down.

[JohnathanRGalt]

Both our sites seem to be off-line.

http://www.islamic-news.co.uk/ and http://www.supportersofshariah.co.uk/

I'm trying to get more information.

[Abar]

I have some pictures of Sakina's site and their public pgp keys if you're interested. Here's a list of that site's external links:

Selection of General Links on Islam   http://www.mathaba.net/www/islam
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen     http://www.ummah.net.pk/harkat
Jihad in Mindanao     http://members.muslimsites.com/morolandsite
Ayoh Jihad!    http://qital.tripod.com
Hezb-e-Mughalstan            http://www.dalitstan.org/mughalstan
The Road to Jihad     http://connect.to/jihad
The Call of Islam Magazine    http://www.islam.org.au
Radio Islam      http://abbc.com/islam/english/english.htm
Find anything on the WWW    http://www.mathaba.net/search
African News and Information    http://www.africa2020.com
Political websites by category    http://www.mathaba.net/www

[The KG9 Kid]

Please add me to the Jihad ping list.

[JohnathanRGalt]

Both our sites seem to be off-line.
http://www.islamic-news.co.uk/ and http://www.supportersofshariah.co.uk/
I'm trying to get more information.

They are back online now. Just a temporary hacker attack.

[Aaron_A]

Thanks for all those links.

This is the picture I was looking for.