Really old news, but they finally got the guy...A Swedish-Lebanese national was charged in New York on Tuesday with helping to set up a terrorist training camp in rural Oregon and Web sites showing how to assemble bombs and prepare poisons.
The suspect, Oussama Abdullah Kassir, 41, was extradited earlier Tuesday from the Czech Republic to New York, where he faces federal charges of multiple counts of conspiring to provide material support and resources to al Qaeda.
If convicted, he faces a life sentence, prosecutors said.
A handcuffed Kassir pleaded innocent and yelled out defiantly at his arraignment in U.S. District Court. He was remanded to custody.
"I am just a Muslim person. I have nothing to do with al Qaeda," he said through a translator. "This is unjust and unfair."
Prosecutors said the "jihad" training camp, set up in Bly, Oregon, was intended to offer military preparation for would-be fighters in Afghanistan, prosecutors said.
U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said in late 1999, Kassir and a co-conspirator, Haroon Rashid Aswat, flew from London to New York and then traveled to Oregon.
Kassir then set up security patrols, helped distribute CD-ROMs with instructions on how to make bombs and poison, and offered instructions in hand-to-hand combat, including how to slit a person's throat with a knife, the indictment said.
In Oregon, Kassir told people he supported al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, and had attended training camps in Afghanistan, Kashmir and Lebanon, according to the complaint.
From December 2001 until 2005, Kassir operated at least three Web sites, where visitors could view manuals such as "The Mujahideen Explosives Handbook" and "The Mujahideen Poisons Handbook," the indictment said.
Kassir has been detained in the Czech Republic since his arrest in December 2005.
Aswat and another defendant named in the indictment, Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, are in British custody, awaiting extradition to the United States.
Another alleged co-conspirator, Abu Hamza, was convicted in the United Kingdom on Feb. 7, 2006, on terrorism charges. The United States is attempting to extradite him as well.
A fourth man, Earnest James Ujaama, pleaded guilty in New York in August to conspiracy to provide and conceal material support or resources to terrorists.
The Czech Justice Ministry said it had found no reason to reject the extradition request after the United States pledged Kassir would be tried by a federal court and that he would have the possibility of consular assistance from Sweden and Lebanon.
Hmm--setting up a terrorist training camp, in rednecksville, USA. Great idea there, buddy.
