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Suspected U.S. Al-Qaeda Supporters Charged
DETROIT,
Michigan, August 29 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Amid growing
pressure to show results in the September 11 terror attacks
investigation, U.S. authorities Wednesday, August 28, charged five
Arab men here and a Muslim activist in the western city of Seattle,
Washington, with conspiring to support Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda
network.
A
grand jury in Detroit accused Karim Koubriti, Ahmed Hannan, Youssef
Hmimssa, Farouk Ali-Haimoud and a fifth man known only as Abdella of
conspiring to support Al-Qaeda and documents fraud in a four-count
indictment, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
The
men are suspected of being members of a covert “sleeper” cell of
“Islamist militants” who planned and scouted targets for possible
terror attacks.
All
but Abdella are in custody.
The
indictment claims Koubriti, 24, Hannan, 34, Ali-Haimoud,, 22, and
Abdella, whose age is unknown, operated as a “covert underground
support unit for terrorist attacks within and outside the United
States, as well as a sleeper operational combat cell.”
The
group’s goal was allegedly to inflict economic damage on the United
States by recruiting, indoctrinating and training other “brothers”
in their cause, setting up safe houses and mail drops; collecting
intelligence information about potential targets for terror attacks
and obtaining weapons and false documents to aid terror attacks in
Jordan, Turkey and the United States.
The
indictment gives no details of why Hmimssa, 37, is named along with
the others. Ali-Hamoud’s lawyer, Kevin Ernst, told the Detroit Free
Press newspaper said he thinks Hmimssa is cooperating with government
prosecutors.
“As
far as I can tell, it’s based on this uncorroborated debriefing of
this snitch, Hmimssa,” Ernst said. “What’s kind of scary about
this is that basically every Arab person in the country is one snitch
away from being on the business end of a terrorism indictment.”
Meanwhile,
another grand jury in Seattle charged James Ujaama of conspiring to
support Al-Qaeda and of discharging a firearm during a crime.
Ujaama,
36, was arrested July 22 in Denver, Colorado. He is accused of leading
a conspiracy to set up an Al-Qaeda training camp in the western U.S.
state of Oregon -just south of Washington state - and of traveling to
Afghanistan to supply computer equipment to the group.
In
a written statement Tuesday, Ujaama - well-known in Seattle’s black
community –
“Should
it be the policy of this government to convict innocent people before
any hearing or before any trial? If so, then we are betraying the
constitution that we claim to hold dear,” Ujaama said.
The
indictments come as pressure grows for investigators to show results.
U.S.
authorities have rounded up hundreds of people, the overwhelming
majority of them Arabs and Muslims, since the attacks.
Some
of those detained are still being held in secrecy without having been
charged, and the U.S. has consistently resisted attempts by the
nation’s court’s to force the release of information about those
detained.
Before
Wednesday, some 129 people had been charged with federal crimes in
relation to the investigation, and only one - Zacarias Moussaoui,
charged for conspiring in the September 11 attacks - had been named.
A
federal appeals court in Cincinnati, Ohio, ruled Monday that the
Justice Department violated the U.S. Constitution by holding
closed-door immigration hearings for an Arab national arrested in the
investigation.
The
department is currently fighting a federal judge’s order earlier
this month requiring it to publish the names of most people being held
in the probe.
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