There was considerable connection between the Falls Church and London Salafists.
In Northern Virginia, Ali Asad Chandia was the “personal assistant” of Ali Al-Timimi and was the chauffer of London terorrist operative Mohammed Ajmal Khan who visited Falls Church.
The USG charged Chandia with arranging for the purchase of an electronic autopilot system and video equipment for use on model airplanes in connection with requests made by Mohammed Ajmal Khan to purchase the equipment .
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/16/AR2005091601744.html
The Times [UK] notes that prosecutors described how Chandia had worked as a chauffeur for a London-based terrorism organiser, Mohammed Ajmal Khan, who was jailed for nine years in March in Britain after admitting shipping weapons to Pakistan.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1652360/posts
Mohammed Ajmal Khan was a teaching assistant in Leeds.
Chandia met Khan, a senior official and procurement officer for LET, at an office of that organization in Pakistan in late-2001. Khan traveled to the United States in 2002 and 2003 to acquire equipment for Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Chandia assisted him in these efforts both times.
Khan is serving a nine-year sentence in the UK on terrorism charges.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/coventry_warwickshire/4817432.stm
(The U.S. will seek his extradition at the conclusion of that sentence.)
Al-Timimi would tend to speak at annual conferences held in London.
Marvin Miller, a lawyer for Chandia, says documents produced at trial evidenced he was under electronic surveillance. Ajmal Khan’s communications across the Atlantic were intercepted by the US National Security Agency and while in the US he was under surveillance pursuant to FISA.
Mohammed Ajmal Khan also was linked during a terrorist trial to Timimi’s acquaintance, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 24-year-old who grew up in Falls Church, who was found guilty of terrorist offences in Virginia. The charges against Ahmed Omar Abu Ali also include providing material support to al Qaeda, contributing services to al Qaeda and receiving funds from al Qaeda. Abu Ali was a resident of Falls Church who received training in weapons, explosives, and document forgery from al Qaeda while in Saudi Arabia. When police searched Abu Ali’s home, they found tapes in Arabic promoting jihad and the killing of Jews, materials praising the 9/11 attacks and condemning U.S. military action in Afghanistan, and a book written by al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri advocating the violent destruction of democracy. The operations planned by Abu Ali and his co-conspirators included a plot to assassinate President Bush using either multiple snipers or a suicide bomb, as well as a plot to conduct 9/11-style attacks with planes flying from other countries to the United States. Abu Ali faces up to life in prison for his crimes.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43940-2005Feb22.html?nav=rss_politics
http://useu.usmission.gov/Article.asp?ID=4E315E3C-9635-4515-A171-7B72FB665AD0
Given the Falls Church [USA]-Leeds [UK] connection, the question arises:
did the fellow working near Ken Alibek and the former USAMRIID head [Ali Timimi], who had a high security clearance for his mathematics support work for the Navy in bioinformatics, know the Leeds biochemist who was expert in functionalized polymers, an assistant professor at Leeds, who provided the 7/7 bombers with the keys to the flat?
Al-Nashar was at UNC at Raleigh in the Spring of 2000.
The biochemist who provided the keys to the bombmaking flat was represented by an attorney who has been arrested in late March and is being held incommunicado. By the name Mamdouh Ismail. Egyptian authorities allege he has served as Ayman Zawahiri’s chief conduit to jihadists in Egypt, Yemen, and Iraq. The intermediary was AQ’s spymaster who wrote a treatise on intelligence that included a fairly lengthy discussion of the Amerithrax investigation.