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Suspected Militant Arrested By British; Allegedly Involved in Oregon Jihad Camp

Posted on: Monday, 8 August 2005, 15:00 CDT

LONDON - A suspected Islamic militant deported to Britain was arrested Sunday on a U.S. warrant accusing him of taking steps to organize a training camp in Oregon to prepare jihad fighters in Afghanistan, police said.

The arrest of Haroon Rashid Aswat, a British citizen of Indian descent, comes as British prosecutors said they would consider treason charges against any Islamic extremists who express support for terrorism.

The U.S. warrant accuses Aswat of conspiring with others between October 1999 and April 2000 to set up a camp in Bly, Ore., aimed at training and equipping individuals to "fight jihad in Afghanistan," police said in a statement.

Aswat, 30, had been detained since July 20 in Zambia, where he was questioned about 20 phone calls reportedly made on his South African cellphone with some of the bombers responsible for the July 7 transit attacks in London that killed 52 people and the four bombers. He was deported Sunday to Britain, said Zambian Home Affairs Secretary Peter Mumba.

Aswat is one of two associates of the Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al- Masri who are referred to but not named or charged in a 2002 indictment issued by a federal grand jury in Seattle against a Muslim convert from the area, officials have said. The other is Oussama Kassir, a Lebanese-born Swede convicted of weapons violations in Sweden in 2003.

Aswat and Kassir "inspected the proposed jihad training camp at the Bly property ... and they and others participated in firearms training and viewed a video recording on the subject of improvised poisons" in November and December 1999, the indictment said.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Lord Goldsmith's office said the Crown Prosecution Service's head of anti-terrorism would meet with senior Metropolitan Police officers to discuss possible charges against three prominent clerics as part of a crackdown on those the government believes are inciting terrorism.

Clerics Omar Bakri Mohammed, Abu Izzaden and Abu Uzair have appeared on British television in recent days and a spokeswoman for Lord Goldsmith's office said prosecutors and police would look at remarks made by the three and consider whether they could face charges of treason, incitement to treason, solicitation of murder or incitement to withhold information known to be of use to police.

Mohammed has reportedly said since the July 7 attacks that he would not inform police if he knew Muslims were planning another attack and he supports insurgents who attack troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"No decision on charges has been made yet," the attorney general's office spokeswoman said.

The spokeswoman said prosecutors also might seek access to taped recordings made by an undercover Sunday Times reporter who reportedly recorded members of a radical group praising the suicide bombers as "The Fantastic Four."

The newspaper's story said its reporter spent two months as a "recruit" of the group, the Savior Sect, and described the organization as inciting young British Muslims to become terrorists.

Also Sunday, British police charged two additional suspects in the failed July 21 attacks. Ibrahim Muktar Said, 27, who is accused of trying to detonate a bomb on a bus in east London, and Ramzi Mohammed, suspected of attempting the Oval underground train bombing, were arrested in raids in west London on July 29, police said.

Source: Record, The; Bergen County, N.J.

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