Witness: Oregon training camp aimed for militancy

[samanthajane13]

By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer Larry Neumeister, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 12 mins ago

NEW YORK – With a landscape that evoked Afghanistan, a rural town in Oregon seemed in James Ujaama's mind to be the perfect setting for a militant jihad training camp to teach Muslim fighters survival and combat skills.

The terrorist camp Ujaama envisioned to produce fighters against the Taliban's enemies in Afghanistan never came to fruition, and he no longer supports terrorist causes, he told a jury during a terrorism trial Wednesday in Manhattan federal court.

"I sympathized and I have supported terrorists in the past, which was foolish. I was not thinking at that time and I wish I had not done that," said Ujaama, a Muslim convert who lived in Seattle and was convicted of helping the Taliban.

Ujaama (pronounced oo-ZHAH'-ma) was called by prosecutors as a witness in the trial of Oussama Kassir, who has been charged with helping al-Qaida by trying to set up a weapons training post in the small Oregon town of Bly.

Ujaama, 43, was born in Denver as James Ernest Thompson before changing his name in the late 1980s when he gave up Christianity to become Muslim.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Bruce asked if he considered himself a terrorist.

"No, sir," he said.

Ujaama pleaded guilty in 2007 to charges that he provided material support to terrorists by trying to set up the Bly training camp and by loading programs onto Taliban computers during a trip to Afghanistan in 1999. He said he hopes to win leniency from a potential 30-year prison sentence by testifying.

Ujaama testified he tried to create the training camp on 360 acres of land in Oregon in 1999 and created an advertisement for it that he sent to his spiritual guide in London. He said the terrain, with small trees and rocks, and widely varying temperatures were similar to Afghanistan.

The advertisement, which was entered into evidence, said participants would learn about military techniques and be trained with weapons, including rifles, and in hand-to-hand combat and martial arts. It also promised training in archery, hunting and fishing, farming and animal husbandry.

"It is 100 percent legal and so are all of the activities," the advertisement said. "The land is in a state that is pro militia and firearms state, an advantage for self defense training."

Ujaama testified: "It would, in my mind, prepare Muslims, males, to go to the front line and defend the Islamic state."

But the camp never really got off the ground. Ujaama visited the property only three times, the last time with Kassir, who traveled from London expecting to find lots of weapons and young men eager to be trained, he said.

Kassir became angry when he saw nothing had materialized, Ujaama said. They fought and Ujaama left and never returned, he said.

Ujaama testified he went the following year to Pakistan, where he had trained briefly in late 1998 at a camp in Afghanistan that was run by Pakistanis.

During a trip to Afghanistan, he said, he sought treatment from a doctor after falling ill. After leaving Afghanistan, he said he saw a newspaper article that showed the U.S. was seeking Ayman al-Zawahiri — al-Qaida's No. 2 leader and a doctor — on terrorism charges.

Ujaama testified he was in Pakistan on Sept. 11, 2001, but said the attacks left him "a bit happy."

"In the beginning, my personal views was that this was in retribution for all the things that we had done bad in other places around the world to other people," he said.

He said he hoped it would be a wake-up call for the United States, where he returned in 2002, shortly before he was picked up by the FBI on a material witness warrant in Denver in July of that year.

He pleaded guilty the following year in federal court in Seattle to providing material support to terrorists in a plea deal that carried a two-year prison sentence.

When he was freed, he said he found fellow Muslims were suspicious of him, fearing he might be a government spy.

"I was very depressed. I just couldn't fit in," he said. So he violated the terms of his probation by leaving the country to live in Belize, where he was arrested in 2006 by U.S. marshals and returned to the United States.

He said he no longer believes that "violence is the solution to the problems of the Muslims in the world today."


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090430/...rror_camp_plot