Author: David Leppard and Nick
Fielding
Publication: The Times of India
Date: August 2, 2002
A group of Briton-based Islamic
militants has been linked to two secret training camps in America where
suspected Al Qaida terrorists were taught to poison water supplies and
given weapons training.
A team of MI5 officers will fly
to America in the next few weeks to investigate links between British supporters
of Osama bin Laden and ranches in Oregon and Alabama.
At least three men arrested in Oregon
earlier this month are followers of Abu Hamza, the Muslim cleric whose
radical preachings at a north London mosque have attracted several British
men to the Al Qaida cause. These include Richard Reid, the so-called shoe
bomber, who tried to blow up a passenger jet last Christmas.
Hamza has already been accused by
the British and American governments of being a "terrorist financier".
He is also wanted for a string of terrorist- related kidnappings in the
Middle East.
During a search at one ranch in
Bly, Oregon, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officers acting on information
from Scotland Yard uncovered what investigators call "instructions in poisoning
water sources".
At a second camp near Marion, Alabama,
police found bullet-riddled police cars, school buses and dummies. They
were thought to have been used as targets in mock raids.
The discoveries reinforced concerns
that the remnants of Bin Laden's terrorist group may be planning a chemical
or biological attack on the water supplies of America, Britain or another
western country. Al Qaida units have recently been caught while planning
to poison water supplies in Italy and Algeria.
One of those held by the FBI is
James Ujaama, a 36-year-old American convert to Islam who worshipped with
Hamza at the Finsbury Park mosque in London. Ujaama has lived on and off
in London for the past three years. At the Finsbury Park mosque, where
he helped to build and run Hamza's website, he was known as Bilal Ahmed.
He lived in Forest Gate, east London,
with his wife Faria and her family. Chas Singh, the family's landlord,
said he first met Ujaama two years ago. "He was a fanatical Muslim. I just
used to ignore him ... But there were loads of people coming in and out
of there. The ones who knew Ujaama were dressed differently to the family.
They would wear white outfits". He said Ujaama lived in America and used
to travel in and out of Britain frequently.
Ujaama's name surfaced earlier this
year after he was identified as an Al Qaida suspect by one of seven Britons
held in Camp X-Ray, the US high-security prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Feroz Abbassi, from Croydon, south
London, was captured in Afghanistan while fighting for the Taliban. He
is said to have told MI5 that he was escorted to an Al Qaida camp in Afghanistan
by Ujaama in 2000.
Last week Hamza, who lost an eye
and both arms while supporting the Islamic "holy war" against the Russians
in Afghanistan, said Ujaama had worked with him for six months at the Finsbury
Park mosque. He denied involvement in terrorism and said attempts by the
FBI to link him to the Oregon camp were absurd.
