http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/93
Scroll down the page to learn more about WA, OR and the links to London.
Why do we get all the nuts? It's not fair!!! I really wish some FReepers would move here - we could use some sanity!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/921132/posts
Ujaama will testify in New York about al-Qaida links
Seattle Times ^ | June 1, 2003 | Mike Carter
Posted on 06/01/2003 12:24:12 AM PDT by sarcasm
Ujaama will testify in New York about al-Qaida links
Seattle Times ^ | June 1, 2003 | Mike Carter
Posted on 06/01/2003 12:24:12 AM PDT by sarcasm
Federal inmate James Ujaama, the former Seattle man who pleaded guilty to aiding the Taliban, has been moved to New York to testify before a grand jury investigating a militant London cleric believed to be a top al-Qaida recruiter.
Ujaama, 37, is the key witness in a criminal case federal prosecutors are building against Abu Hamza al-Masri, a former imam at the Finsbury Park Mosque in London, said federal law-enforcement sources who agreed to speak only if they were not identified.
A federal grand jury in Manhattan is investigating Abu Hamza's alleged efforts to help Ujaama and others set up a terrorist-training camp on a small ranch in Bly, Ore., in 1999, two Department of Justice sources have confirmed.
Abu Hamza recently has been the focus of a political firestorm in Great Britain, where Prime Minister Tony Blair and Home Secretary David Blunkett have announced plans to deport the cleric. Authorities have pulled his license to preach inside the three-story mosque, although he continues to advocate violence against the West in soapbox sermons just outside.
Abu Hamza has been designated a terrorist by the U.S. State Department and is wanted in Yemen for his alleged role in the 1998 kidnappings of 16 Western tourists by the Islamic Army of Aden. Four of the hostages died during a shootout.
Ujaama became friends with Abu Hamza after moving to London in the mid-1990s. There Ujaama designed and ran the cleric's Web site, Supporters of Shariah, which supported holy war against Israel and the United States.
Ujaama, a graduate of Ingraham High School and a local entrepreneur formerly known as James Earnest Thompson, was also one of several Seattle-area militant Muslims affiliated with the now-defunct Dar-us-Salam Mosque in the Central Area.
Last year, as a result of his 1999 activities in Bly, Ujaama was charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and kill U.S. citizens abroad. He faced up to 25 years in prison.
In exchange for his cooperation, Ujaama will serve two years of a possible 10-year sentence for providing computers, money and fighters to the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which sheltered al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden for years.
U.S. troops toppled the Taliban after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
As part of his plea agreement, Ujaama promised to help the FBI and other intelligence agencies in investigations of Abu Hamza and others.
Since April, FBI agents and federal prosecutors have debriefed him at length. Ujaama's statements "have confirmed that he is everything we thought him to be, and more," one Department of Justice source said.
Robert Mahler, one of Ujaama's lawyers, declined to comment.
Documents recently unsealed by a federal judge in Seattle reveal new details about the activities and investigations of Ujaama and Abu Hamza.
The documents show that the FBI had an informant within the Seattle militant group who was aware that Ujaama had sent a fax from a Kinko's Copy Center in Washington to Abu Hamza in London.
"The facsimile proposed the establishment of a Jihad training camp in the state of Oregon," a document says.
According to court documents and government sources, that fax prompted Abu Hamza to send two of his lieutenants — Oussama Kassir and Haroon Rashid Aswat — from London to Bly, Ore., via New York City. That transit point has allowed the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan to take jurisdiction over the investigation.
"According to an individual who was present, Ujaama personally drove (Kassir and Aswat) to the Bly, Ore., training camp" in November 1999, the documents say."
Excerpted
ping
Actually the defunct camp and many of the players today are old news to many of us. Here is data going back 3 years ago.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1143148/posts?page=11#11
TexKat; Pikamax; FL_engineer; piasa; SAMWolf; dixiechick2000; B Knotts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/715524/posts
Oregon sheriff: 'We had our suspicions' (al-Qaida in Oregon)
Seattle Times ^ | July 13, 2002 | Hal Bernton, Mike Carter and David Heath
Posted on 07/13/2002 1:59:56 AM PDT by sarcasm
BLY, Ore. — This hard-knocks hamlet seems an unlikely place to search for clues to the al-Qaida terrorist network.
It sits on an arid plateau in Southern Oregon, about 50 miles east of Klamath Falls. With a population of about 250, it has a couple of cafes and small stores, an antique shop, and the razed foundation of an abandoned lumber mill.
But in late 1999, federal authorities and other sources say, the area had something far more unusual: militant Muslims scouting a ranch outside of town as a possible training camp for jihad fighters.
That aborted effort has now thrust Bly into the thick of a Seattle-based FBI and federal grand-jury investigation into al-Qaida's activities in the United States. Authorities suspect that a group of Seattle-based Muslims, mostly U.S. citizens, were operating as a "cell" in support of al-Qaida, and that opening a terrorist-training camp was part of their plans.
For about six months beginning in September 1999, Semi Osman — a cleric at a small Seattle mosque named Dar-us-Salaam — lived on the ranch, a few miles outside town. Osman is now in federal custody in Seattle, charged with immigration and weapons violations and under investigation for terror-related activities.
Sources say Osman's visitors on the Bly ranch included two members of a London mosque led by Sheik Abu Hamza al-Masri, a radical cleric believed to be an al-Qaida recruiter, and militant members of Osman's Central Area mosque. Some of the visitors rode horses and fired automatic weapons, according to people in the area.
Police began to watch the ranch closely, said Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger.
THE SEATTLE TIMES
"There were reports of gunfire and of a large group of suspicious, or unusual, people there," Evinger said.
Gunfire is common in rural Southern Oregon, where many residents carry arms and engage in target practice or hunting.
But this information concerned the sheriff enough that he turned it over to the FBI. He heard nothing again until after the Sept. 11 attacks, when the information gained new importance. His detectives were briefed about the federal investigation late last year, Evinger said.
"I think even before then, we had our suspicions about what this might be," he said. "You expect terrorist activity in the big cities. I think people need to realize this sort of stuff can happen anywhere."
Neighbors say Osman, now 32, kept a low profile, tooling around in a beat-up 1984 Toyota sedan and at one point commuting to Klamath Falls to work as a mechanic, according to neighbors and a former employer.
Still, he and his family got plenty of notice. In this community of bluejeans and boots, the balding, bearded Osman dressed in a tunic and skullcap. His wife, an American who converted to Islam, dressed in a long robe and headscarf in traditional Islamic fashion. A young daughter attended the local school.
Some Bly residents who knew Osman say that he was friendly and polite, and often spoke of his hopes to join the U.S. Army after he left the ranch. Osman, a naturalized British citizen with permanent U.S. residency status, was a member of the U.S. Naval Reserve.
But at least one neighbor, retired carpet layer Perry Thompson, clashed with Osman.
Thompson said Osman was a high-strung man who didn't like unexpected visitors. On two occasions, Thompson said, an armed Osman confronted him. In one of the incidents, Thompson said, Osman forced him to stop his truck by driving up from behind and parking in front of him, then he jumped out of his car, ran to his window and pointed a semiautomatic handgun at his head.
"He had all kinds of guns," Thompson said. "And he was belligerent."
HAL BERNTON / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Later residents of the Bly ranch have found spent and live ammunition from semiautomatic weapons.
A Bly tow-truck driver, Billie Livingston, also reports an unsettling visit to the ranch. Coming to jump-start a dead battery, she was surprised to find a half-dozen men, some of whom appeared foreign-born, intently watching her.
Among the men at the ranch in December 1999 were two men who federal investigators believe were sent by al-Qaida leaders to check out the ranch as a potential training camp.
The men's presence in Southern Oregon was documented in a speeding ticket issued that December in Klamath Falls. According to a source, the police officer became suspicious of the occupants of the car and checked their identification.
Later, federal agents would determine the men had arrived from Great Britain two weeks earlier.
"Those men," the source said, "were there for a bad purpose."
The two men were followers of Abu Hamza, leader of the North London Central Mosque in Finsbury Park, the heart of militant Islam in Europe.
Abu Hamza applauded the Sept. 11 attacks. His mosque had been attended by Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, and by Richard Reid, the man accused of trying to blow up an American Airlines jetliner with explosives in his shoes.
Osman's attorney, Robert Leen, denies his client has any involvement with terrorism. Others who know Osman say that he was uncomfortable with the militancy of his visitors and that he sought to distance himself from them.
The Bly ranch had been owned by Esther Fisher Schneider, who died in August 1999 at age 82. She had moved from Washington state to Bly in the 1990s with a sheep rancher named Ivan Rule, known among Bly residents for espousing extreme right-wing political views.
The property is now listed as owned by the late Schneider and the Barraka Communal Corp., a nonprofit corporation created by Rule and an American Muslim woman who lived with him in 1999.
In February 2000, Osman and his family left the ranch. The daughter and son-in-law of neighbor Perry Thompson, Lona and Paul Azevedo, moved in. In walks on the property, the Azevedos have collected ammunition from semiautomatic and other weapons.
Rule, who no longer lives in Bly, was not available for comment. The IRS has a tax lien against him in Fremont County, Colo., in the amount of $10,041, dating from May 1994.
Lona Azevedo says she continues to pay rent to Rule through a Bly post office box, but she is not sure where he lives.
Meanwhile, yesterday in London, Abu Hamza denied any knowledge of a plot to set up a terrorist camp in Bly, or of a cell of al-Qaida supporters in Seattle.
"We have quite a good following in America, but we don't keep a structure because we are talking about principles," he told NBC.
"I have friends everywhere," he said. "When you are arresting people in America under suspicion, you might as well arrest the rest of the planet."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1438409/posts
"Terror Strike- London!"
various FR links & stories | 07-07-05 | t
Posted on 07/07/2005 10:21:18 AM PDT by backhoe
ON THE NET...
http://www.johnathangaltfilms.com
bttt
I don't have the time to research this at the moment, but there was a mention of the name 'Bilal' involved with the London bombings. IIRC, 'Bilal' was also a surname and/or possibly the name of a mosque associated with those arrested for shooting guns at a rock quarry in Oregon shortly after 9/11. So much has transpired between now and then that the details are foggy in my mind, but 'Bilal' was an "aha!" moment for me.
Portland, Oregon- hub of terror? Some Surprising Connections-
various FR links | 05-09-04 | The Heavy Equipment Guy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1132469/posts
I trust that this countries law enforcement agencies have a clue. We need to kick these thugs asses now!
FYI for your ping list
If memory serves the Bly (OR) Advanced Training and Buttrocking Phacility just didn't work out. Oregon actually only has about two blue counties and where Bly is is deep red. Picture this: An Arab guy who talks somewhat cockney goes shopping for a "ranch" deep in the heart of serious cowboy/lumberjack country. He's not gonna stand out (snicker)! As soon as he tries to order in sacrificial goat word was soon to get around. While we have a cosmopolitan crowd in downtown Portland the rest of the state is all but solid white----I expect profiling is not out of fashion in the red zone so that middle east dirtbagz will have short careers here.
"What's very scary is not only can they travel very easily through Europe, they could travel very easily to the United States because of their British citizenship," added retired Portland State University professer Gary Perlstein, a KGW terrorism expert.
This situation would be a lot less scary if our two governments were not so hell bent on being PR instead of profiling and random searches on middle eastern men between 18-40.
PORTLAND, Oregon, (CNN) -- Six U.S. residents charged with
conspiring to assist al Qaeda and the Taliban in
waging war against the United States...Click the pic:
Top row, left to right: Patrice Lumumba
Ford, October Martinique Lewis and
Jeffrey Leon Battle. Bottom row, left to
right: Muhammad Ibrahim Bilal, Ahmed
Ibrahim Bilal, and Habis Abdulla Al-Saoub.
"Investigators probing the London terror bombings are focusing on an elusive British Muslim suspect who is connected to a previous plot to set up a terrorist training camp in rural southern Oregon, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials."
Everyone from that Oregon camp needs to be checked out to see which ones ought to be tailed. If we don't have the resources to tail them, round them up.
Of course they are on the west coast. They go to areas they know they have easier ways of escaping detection. That is thru liberal areas that refuse to profile, overact on civil liberties, and are anarchist. They are our nations achilles heal.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1448551/posts
"The Britain-Bly connection"
The Oregonian ^ | July 22, 2005 | shocked editor
Posted on 07/22/2005 12:05:50 PM PDT by crazyhorse691
ARTICLE SNIPPET: "The hunt for a suspect with links to both Oregon and the London bombings shows why Portland is way off base
Maybe international police suspicions about Haroon Rashid Aswat will turn out to be unfounded. Maybe he had nothing to do with the July 7 London bomb attacks or the attempts to establish a terrorist training camp halfway around the world in a remote corner of Southern Oregon.
Either way, Portland's mayor and City Council majority should be paying close attention to the Aswat case. It magnifies everything that's wrong about the city's decision to pull Portland police off the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force."
Note: The following post is an exact quote:
---
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1452432/posts
Bomb suspect reportedly held in Africa ( key suspect in July 7 London bombings)
seattletimes.nwsource.com ^ | July 28 2005 | By Richard Serrano, Sebastian Rotella and Greg Miller
Posted on 07/28/2005 9:13:32 AM PDT by Dog
NEW YORK — Zambian authorities have detained a man sought for questioning in this month's deadly London bombing plot, as well as for his alleged role in setting up a terrorist training camp in Oregon, U.S. officials said yesterday.
Haroon Rashid Aswat, 30, a British citizen of Indian descent, piqued the interest of investigators when they discovered that about 20 calls had been placed from his cellphone to some of the men who set off bombs on London's
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
