London cleric arrested; Seattle man to be key witness

By Mike Carter and David Heath
Seattle Times staff reporters

SCOTT BARBOUR / GETTY IMAGES Abu Hamza al-Masri, whose real name is Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, was arrested at his London home, authorities said.

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The cleric's former associate, one-time Seattle entrepreneur, James Ujaama, 38, is the key witness in the case, officials said. Ujaama was sentenced here in February for providing illegal aid to the former Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Abu Hamza, 47, also is charged in the 11-count indictment with hostage-taking and conspiracy in connection with a December 1998 incident that killed four tourists in Yemen.

"Those who support our terrorist enemies anywhere in the world must know that we will not rest until the threat they pose is eradicated," U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said in announcing the arrest today.

U.S. authorities had been trying to get Abu Hamza arrested and extradited here for nearly two years. Abu Hamza arrested at his London-area home, British authorities said. He was the imam at the Finsbury Park mosque, which has been linked to Sept. 11 suspect Moussaoui and Reid and was shut down in January 2003 after a police anti-terrorism raid. Authorities have described the mosque as a recruiting haven for al-Qaida.

According to the indictment, Abu Hamza tried to establish the terrorist camp in Bly, Ore., between October 1999 and early 2000. He was also charged with specifically providing material support to al-Qaida and the Taliban to foment jihad, or holy war, in Afghanistan.

In an interview with a Seattle Times reporter in 2002, he mocked the idea of a camp for terrorists in Oregon, asking why go there when you could have easily gone to Afghanistan. "To tell you the truth," he said, "I don't know where Oregon is on the map."

Abu Hamza, a reputed al-Qaida recruiter, had been designated a terrorist by the world's largest industrial nations.

The indictment said Abu Hamza acted as an intermediary with the terrorists who took 16 tourists hostage in Yemen six years ago, and spoke with the terrorists before and after the incident.

Three British tourists and an Australian visitor were killed when Yemen rescuers were involved in a shootout with the Islamic extremist captors.

If convicted on the charges, he could face the death penalty or life in prison. The indictment, returned last month, was unsealed today.

The arrest came a day after top U.S. law enforcement officials warned that a stream of credible intelligence indicates a major terrorist attack could happen in the summer, and the FBI posted a list of seven wanted al-Qaida operatives.

The Egyptian-born Abu Hamza is not among the seven wanted figures, but has been the focus of terrorism suspicions for years in Britain.

The suspect's lawyer, Maddrassar Arani, told British Broadcasting Corp. radio that she had spoken to her client, who was being held in a central London police station.

"He was quite calm about it," Arani said. "He said take your time and come down whenever you can."

Anti-terrorist officers also conducted a search of his west London home, police said.

Abu Hamza grew up in Egypt as Mustafa Kamel, and moved in 1979 to Great Britain, where he worked as a karate instructor and a nightclub bouncer.

Later, he earned a degree in civil engineering and worked for the British Army.

In 1984, he married an English woman and became a British citizen. They later divorced.

He went to Afghanistan in 1990, after the Soviet invaders had withdrawn. It was there that he changed his name.

He denies any involvement in violence and says he is only a spokesman for political causes.

Abu Hamza has sparked outrage in United Kingdom with sermons calling the invasion of Iraq a "war against Islam," claiming the Sept. 11 attacks were a Jewish plot and calling the space shuttle Columbia disaster a "punishment from Allah" because Christian, Jewish and Hindu astronauts were aboard.

Ujaama, formerly James Earnest Thompson is a Muslim convert who became associated with when he moved to London in the late 1990s. Ujaama was arrested in July 2002 and was indicted on two charges: conspiring to set up a terrorist training camp in Bly, a southern Oregon town of 700, and using a firearm to further the conspiracy. He was accused of visiting a ranch in Bly in or around October 1999 and proposing the establishment of a jihad training camp on the property

In April 2003, the government dropped those charges and filed a superseding complaint alleging that Ujaama brought money, computer equipment and a recruit to Taliban officials in Afghanistan.

Prosecutors let him plead guilty in exchange for his cooperation in terrorism investigations. In particular, they wanted to hear what he knew about Abu Hamza, whose Web site Ujaama once ran.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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