Posted: 7/15/2002 9:36:13 AM EDT
[#14]
The plot thickens Seattle, London radicals linked, Taliban fighter says
Associated Press July 15, 2002
SEATTLE - A federal investigation into whether a now-defunct Seattle mosque had ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network was prompted by information from a British Taliban fighter in custody at Guantanamo Bay, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Feroz Abbassi, 22, told CIA investigators earlier this year that he had traveled to Afghanistan from London in 2000 with a Muslim believed to have ties to a Seattle group suspected of supporting al-Qaida, the Seattle Times reported, citing federal sources it did not identify.
The two men reportedly met at Finsbury Park's North London Central Mosque, operated by Egyptian-born Abu Hamza al-Masri, a suspected al-Qaida recruiter wanted in Yemen on terrorism charges, the Times said.
Masri told the Associated Press on Sunday that he did not know Abbassi and that "this is the first I've heard" of the prisoner's allegations.
"They don't ring a bell as far as our mosque is concerned," Masri said.
The same London mosque had been visited by Zacarias Moussaoui, the only individual charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, and Richard Reid, who is accused of attempting to blow up an American Airlines flight with bombs hidden in his shoes.
The man Abbassi met with - the Times did not identify him - has been described by intelligence sources as a close associate of Masri and helped set up a Web site that encourages jihad against the West.
Abbassi also told investigators that, while in Afghanistan, he met a Swedish citizen who reportedly had been scouting sites for possible al-Qaida training camps in the United States in November 1999. About the same time, two men from the London mosque arrived at a ranch in Bly, Ore., occupied by several members of the Seattle group, the paper said.
A Klamath Falls, Ore., police officer who had questioned the men during a traffic stop on Dec. 14, 1999, gave investigators their names, and Abbassi later identified one as the Swedish man who had told him about the training camp plan, the sources said.
Abbassi was captured by U.S. troops last December in fighting near Khandahar. His information, combined with intelligence information from detectives in Klamath County, Ore., prompted the investigation of the Seattle mosque, Dar-us-Salaam, the Times said.
Former mosque members are being investigated by the FBI and a federal grand jury on suspicion of conspiring to support al-Qaida and Islamic terrorism against the United States. View Quote
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