New Prosecution Over Non-Existent Oregon Training Camp
Posted on Tue Oct 21, 2014 at 10:22:48 PM EST
Tags: Haroon Aswat, James Ujaama, Bly Terror Camp (all tags)
The U.S. just can't let the terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon die, even though it never existed.
Since 2002, the U.S. has been charging and imprisoning people for acts related to the Bly camp that were committed in 1999. (New York Times article from 2002 here.) Its last conquest was Abu Hamza al Masri, the one eyed Sheikh with no hands but a hook (photo here), also extradited from the U.K.
Today, yet another suspect, mentally ill Haroon Aswat, arrived in the U.S. . He pleaded not guilty to terror charges concerning the camp. He has been in a mental hospital in the U.K. since 2008. The U.S. assured the U.K. it would provide treatment for him, and although in 2013, the European Court of Human Rights blocked his extradition, the U.K. courts approved it after receiving the U.S. assurances. [More...]
This all began with former Denver resident James Ujaama, who TalkLeft has followed since 2002. I've been writing about this case so long most of the source links in my early posts are now dead, but you can find them all here.
He was big news here because he was arrested on a material witness warrant at grandmother's house in Denver and his aunt was married to the son of former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb. After his arrest, his family couldn't find him at any jail (he was secretly moved to Virginia.) Over the years Ujaama has gone from being a material witness who the Government considered immunizing, to an indictee, cooperator (more here), convicted defendant, escapee while on supervised release (later captured and re-charged with offenses pertaining to the Bly camp, that had been dismissed), and finally, a testifying co-defendant.
The main object of the Government throughout all this has been getting Abu Hamza al-Masri. Ujaama helped the U.S. indict him and testified against him.
A few years before testifying against Abu Hamza, he testified and brought home a conviction for the Government in the case of Oussama Kassir, also charged with the Bly terror camp. Kassir was sentenced to life in prison.
In between all this, Ujaama was taken to London for questioning over the July 2005 bomb plot in London.
So the Government's latest conquest is Haroon Aswat. Brought to the U.S. from a mental institution in the UK to face terror charges over the Bly terror camp and now detained without bond in New York.
The Bly terror camp never existed. It's the training camp that never was. Instead, there was the Dog Cry Ranch, where Ujaama says he envisioned setting up a religious retreat. When that failed, he made a pitch to Abu Hamza, who sent Kassir and Aswat to check it out as a potential training camp. They arrived by bus, after traveling two days on a Greyhound bus to save money. There was nothing there except two mobile homes and some outbuildings.
There were no weapons to speak of, no recruits, not even a place for recruits to stay.
What emerges from the trial record [of Kassir] is an almost comic account of passwords, night patrols and target practice. Jihad, it seems, couldn't take root alongside the sagebrush and weeds that greeted Kassir.
The whole set up was in fact