NEW YORK (AP) — A New York man admitted meeting with a high-ranking member of al-Qaida in Pakistan in a scheme to smuggle money, night-vision goggles and other equipment to the terrorist network, according to a court transcript released Tuesday.
Mohammed Junaid Babar also acknowledged aiding a foiled bomb plot in London, according to the transcript, which was made public two months after Babar secretly pleaded guilty to charges of providing material support to a terrorist organization. He agreed to cooperate with authorities as part of a plea deal.
The transcript says Babar told a judge he met with an unidentified al-Qaida official earlier this year in South Waziristan, a tribal area near the border of Afghanistan. He said he and others had provided money, goggles, sleeping bags and other goods to the terrorist group beginning in 2003.
“I understood that the money and supplies that I had given to al-Qaida were supposed to used in Afghanistan against U.S. or international forces,” he said.
Babar, 29, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, also described arranging lodging and transportation for recruits to a “jihad training camp” and providing ammonium nitrate and other materials for the bomb plot in London.
The scheme to blow up pubs, restaurants and train stations was foiled in late March when British authorities arrested eight suspects and seized 1,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, which can be used to make explosives, from a storage locker in London.
Babar, who grew up in Queens, was put on a terror watch list after authorities became aware of inflammatory remarks he made to a television reporter in Pakistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Babar said despite the fact his mother had escaped from the ninth floor of one of the World Trade Center’s towers, his loyalty was “to the Muslims, not the Americans.” He also announced his intention to fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
“I’m willing to kill Americans,” he said in the televised interview, adding that he had no plans to return to New York.
In April, Babar returned to New York, where police and FBI agents put him under surveillance and eventually arrested him.
Babar, who was being held without bail, faces up to 70 years in prison. No sentencing date was set.
August 10, 2004
U.S. to Give Border Patrol New Powers to Deport Illegal Aliens
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 — Citing concerns about terrorists crossing the nation's
land borders, the Department of Homeland Security announced today that it
planned to give border patrol agents sweeping new powers to deport illegal
aliens from the frontiers abutting Mexico and Canada without providing the
aliens the opportunity to make their case before an immigration judge.
The move, which will take effect this month, represents a broad expansion of
the authority of the thousands of law enforcement agents who currently
patrol the nation's borders. Until now, border patrol agents typically
delivered undocumented immigrants to the custody of the immigration courts,
where judges determined whether they should be deported or remain in the
United States.
Homeland Security officials described the immigration courts — which hear
pleas for asylum and other appeals to remain in the country — as sluggish
and cumbersome, saying illegal immigrants often wait more than a year before
being deported, straining the capacity of detention centers and draining
critical resources. Under the new system, immigrants will typically be
deported within eight days of their apprehension, officials said.
Immigration legislation passed in 1996 allows the immigration service to
deport certain groups of illegal aliens without judicial oversight, but
until now the agency only permitted officials at the nation's airports and
seaports to do so. The new rule will apply to illegal aliens caught within
100 miles of the Mexican and Canadian borders who have spent 14 days or less
within the United States. The border agents will focus on deporting
third-country nationals, rather than Mexicans or Canadians, and they are
expected to begin exercising their new powers on Aug. 24 in Tucson and
Laredo, Tex.
"There is a concern that as we tighten the security of our ports of entry
through our biometric checks that there will be more opportunity or more
effort made by terrorists to enter our country through our vast land
borders," Asa Hutchinson, the undersecretary for border security at the
Department of Homeland Security, said at a news conference.
"We recognize that we have to secure those and that's the president's first
principle of immigration reform," Mr. Hutchinson said. "America must secure
its borders and this is a part of that effort."
The decision was hailed by officials who have long complained that the
nation's porous borders represent a serious threat to national security. But
it prompted a flurry of criticism from advocates for immigrants who warned
that the new system lacked adequate safeguards to ensure that people fleeing
persecution, American citizens lacking paperwork or other travelers with
legitimate grounds would not be improperly deported.
Mr. Hutchinson said that border agents would be trained on asylum law and
that immigrants who demonstrated a credible fear of persecution would be
sent to see immigrant judges, not returned to hostile governments. "That
right," he said of the right to apply for asylum, "is very important."
But Homeland Security officials provided little details about the training,
and advocates said that they feared that mistakes would be made when border
agents decide who will be deported and who will not, often in the vast,
inhospitable plains of the southern deserts.
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