Steve Quayle News Alerts

July 29, 2002
By Yvonne Ridley and Gordon Thomas

        Britain's best known and most controversial Muslim cleric was last night at the centre of international attention following the arrests of more Al-Qaeda suspects in two foreign FBI stings.

        American Federal agents in Denver claim they have found documents which they say can be traced back to Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri, detailing instructions on how to poison water courses.
        Meanwhile FBI agents in Dublin, where several Al-Qaeda suspects are being detained, also accuse the North London-based cleric of supplying travel documents to the Osama bin Laden terror group accused of masterminding the September 11 atrocities.

        Last night the one-eyed cleric, a familiar figure at the Finsbury Park Mosque in north London was keeping a low profile and could not be contacted for a comment.

        He has previously vehemently denied any accusations linking him to Arab terror groups. Hamza, who is already wanted in the Yemen on terrorist charges, may now face extradition to the United States after Federal agents in Denver arrested a Seattle man, say British intelligence sources.

        James Ujaama, an author and activist well-known in Denver’s black community, surrendered to police and federal agents who had surrounded his aunt's red-brick home last week.

        An FBI official said he was regarded as a material witness after a federal warrant was issued by the Eastern District of Virginia. Mustafa Ujaama said: "This had to happen. It's just part of the process. My brother had to get arrested. He's a martyr. A hero. The fall guy.”

        Earlier this month, James Ujaama and Mustafa Ujaama have been linked in the media to a federal investigation of terrorism centered on a Seattle mosque. Both Ujaama brothers have denied any links to terrorism.

        FBI officials say their investigations have focussed on the brothers and the now-defunct Dar-us-Salaam Mosque which Mustafa helped to found.

        Among those who attended the mosque was British citizen Semi Osman, who is in federal custody. Osman is accused of filing false immigration papers and owning a gun whose serial number had been rubbed off, but doesn't face any terrorism charges.

        According to an American intelligence report Osman was found to have instructions on poisoning water sources and other papers sent by Hamza, and "various other items associated with Islamic radicalism."

        The report describes Hamza as an al-Qaida recruiter who is wanted in Yemen on terrorist charges.

        Federal authorities also say they believe Osman and several Seattle Muslim radicals wanted to set up a terrorist-training camp on a ranch near Bly, Oregon.

        Mustafa Ujaama has acknowledged that he and others from the Seattle mosque visited the ranch. Published reports attributed to unnamed federal agents have said James Ujaama delivered laptop computers to the Taliban before Sept. 11, associated with Hamza and helped set up a Web site for him in England.

        Closer to home, an FBI operation focussing on a suspected Al-Qaeda cell in Dublin, has also brought the London cleric into the spotlight. The FBI agents, assisted by officers from Irish and British intelligence, have spent the last few weeks running a surveillance on a mosque in the Irish capital’s suburbs.

        The Irish Special Branch team, working closely with MI5 and the FBI, say documents they seized last week in an apartment near the mosque link Hamza with two other key members of Osama bin-Laden’s organisation.

        One is Zacarias Moussaoui, now under arrest in the US awaiting trial on terrorist-linked conspiracy charges. The other is Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi, the Saudi financier named by the FBI earlier this year as one of the bagmen for Al-Quaeda.

        The agents hope the seized documents will show links to Hamza al-Masri to include “providing travel documents and even false passports out of Ireland to facilitate the movement of al-Quaeda members”, an MI5 source told Globe-Intel.

        Confirmation will only come when the documents, written in some of the several languages of Afghanistan, are translated. This could take weeks. Both the FBI and MI5 still have a shortage of translators.

        Irish Garda sources confirmed they have been given a list by the FBI and MI5 of 27 men who worship at the Dublin mosque who are now under constant surveillance.

        One, in his early 30s, was a close contact of Hamid Aich – who fled from Ireland shortly before the September 11th attacks. The FBI have now identified Aich as a key figure in financing Al-Quaeda’s European operations prior to last September.   Shortly before he left Ireland a year ago this week, Aich travelled to Madrid to deposit a substantial sum of money in one of the city’s banks.

        The seized documents were taken from an apartment in Airfield Court, in Dublin’s fashionable Donnybrook suburb. It also acted as the office of a bin-Laden sponsored charity, the Mercy International Relief Agency. The charity was dissolved before September 11th.

        The seized documents not only show links with al-Hisawi and Hamza, but also with already convicted terrorists.

        One is Abu Kerada, an Algerian, convicted for bomb attacks in Jordan. He fled to the London suburb of Acton.

         There he received income support and housing benefits. “He received top up money from Dublin”, an MI5 source told Globe-Intel.   Kerada is no longer in Britain.

        An FBI agent in Dublin said the documents are “just the tip of the role the Dublin mosque has played in providing support for Al-Quaeda”.

        Garda sources admit that one of the problems their investigation faces is that some members of the group now under surveillance have lived in Dublin for several years and are now naturalised citizens.

        “It will be difficult under Irish law to extradite a person who has become a citizen – especially on suspicion alone”, said a Garda source.

        “The common thread in all of this is Sheikh Abu Hamza, a British citizen. Extradition laws would have to be reviewed if we were to comply with American requests to send him to the States. His presence over here is becoming increasingly embarrassing for the British government. Sooner or later someone in the US is going to accuse us of protecting him and harbouring a suspected terrorist,’’ added a member of British intelligence.

http://www.globe-intel.net/