WASHINGTON, July 14 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - U.S. authorities are investigating whether a U.S. Navy reservist hosted a “terrorist training camp” three years ago at a remote ranch in the northwestern U.S. state of Oregon for a sleeper cell of U.S.-based Islamic radicals, daily newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, reported Saturday, July 13. 

The investigation by the Puget Sound Joint Terrorist Task Force produced a document suggesting that the cell members, among them a representative of Egyptian-born Sheikh Abu Hamza Al-Masri, an alleged Al-Qaeda recruiter in Europe who runs a London mosque and is wanted in Yemen on terrorism charges, could be trying to “identify targets for a terrorist attack,” the daily reported. 

The northwestern part of the United States has long been cited by federal authorities as an “easy target” for a possible terror attack, due to its remote and rural open spaces, easy access to ports and proximity to Canada along a largely open border. 

The FBI director for Seattle, Washington, Charles Mandingo, acknowledged in a statement in June that the area received “a disproportionate high number of terrorism threats.” 

More than 100 people who worshipped at a Seattle mosque are under investigation by a federal grand jury, including a half-dozen “core” members investigators have identified, of the suspected terror group the Seattle Times reported Friday, July 12. 

The investigation resulted in the arrest of Navy reservist Semi Osman, 32, believed to be a national of Lebanon who was applying for U.S. citizenship. He is currently being charged with trying to fraudulently obtain U.S. citizenship and owning a handgun with the serial number removed. 

Osman was born in Sierra Leone, holds a British passport and has lived in the United States since the late 1980s, the attorney said, according to news agencies. 

It was Osman, the Seattle Times reported, who owned the 65-hectare (160-acre) ranch where the camp was allegedly held. He and his former wife, a U.S.-born convert to Islam, raised sheep and goats in rural Bly, Oregon, a secluded town just north of the border with California, the daily reported. 

Osman, arrested in May, was a leader at the abandoned Seattle mosque, and according to authorities met with a top aide of Abu Hamza during the training period, the daily reported. 

A federal grand jury is investigating two defunct Seattle mosques to see whether they are connected to Al-Qaeda, an attorney for a former mosque member said. 

Osman formerly attended the Dar-u-Salaam mosque, which was closed after being damaged in an earthquake in February 2001. 

Attorney Robert Leen said Friday, “The grand jury is looking into a lot of things,” declining to be more specific. 

Another man, a U.S.-born convert to Islam who gave computers to the Taliban before September 11, is also under investigation, and has been detained on the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he is in a cell alongside many of the people he may have supplied with computers in Afghanistan. 

That man, according to the federal document, “worked for and provided services to Abu Hamza... to include taking computers to the Taliban prior to U.S. action in Afghanistan,” the daily reported. 

Some U.S. intelligence officials allege there may be as many as 5,000 people in the United States with some sort of connection to Al-Qaeda, including those in the “realm of suspicion” and those who may know of terrorist activities but not participate in them, an official said Thursday on condition of anonymity to news agencies.