Terrorist Training Camp Suspect Changes Course, Pleads Guilty

Earnest James Ujaama, who the government contended planned to open his own terrorist training camp in the Pacific Northwest, abruptly pleaded guilty Monday in federal court in Seattle to a single charge of conspiring to assist the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

The plea agreement, reached after Ujaama began cooperating behind bars with federal agents seeking to learn more about terrorists operating in the United States, brings to a close yet another high-profile case in the war on terrorism.

A decorated civic volunteer in Seattle, Ujaama later turned into a militant Muslim who, the federal government said, hoped to set loose his own band of terrorists from a training camp in rural Oregon.

According to prosecutors, the 36-year-old Ujaama had set about preparing to build underground bunkers to store weapons and ammunition, and had discussed making poisonous materials, pulling off armed robberies and firebombing vehicles.

But on Monday, all related charges were dropped when Ujaama and federal prosecutors announced that they had struck a deal in which the defendant pleaded guilty to the single count of helping providing money, computer software and other goods to the Taliban.

He also accepted a sentence of two years in prison in return for his continued assistance helping agents track down other suspected terrorists. Indeed, federal officials made it clear that they consider him a great help in finding other terrorists.

John McKay, the U.S. attorney in Seattle, said that in accepting the plea, Ujaama “will assist this nation and other nations in the fight against terrorism.”

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said in Washington that prosecutors were “pleased” about the plea arrangement, noting that “an important part of our war against terrorism is to obtain the cooperation of insiders who have direct knowledge of the activities of dangerous terrorists.”

He added, “We expect his cooperation to lead to the arrest of additional terrorists and the disruption of future terrorist activity.”

It was not immediately clear exactly what kind of information Ujaama has been providing FBI agents. But his long association with a radical Muslim cleric in London, along with his past trips to Afghanistan, would appear to make his experiences quite useful to federal law enforcement officials.

The government is continuing to investigate that cleric, Abu Hamza al Masri, a longtime leader of a Finsbury Park mosque in London. Ujaama was often at his side and running the mosque’s anti-American and anti-Israeli Web site.

Ujaama was also videotaped railing against the U.S. and encouraging young men and women to join Osama bin Laden in his terrorist network out of Afghanistan.

“He’s been very helpful into the activities of Al Masri,” one law enforcement source in Washington said Monday. “We only sought a two-year sentence, of which Ujaama’s already served almost a year. So what does that tell you?”

Under the provisions of the plea agreement, he is to cooperate with federal, state and local officials, as well as federal intelligence agents and U.S. military officials, including those interrogating Afghan and other detainees at the U.S. naval base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In a brief court appearance Monday before Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein, Ujaama said little, except to acknowledge that his past activities were wrong and that there were other ways he could have aired his views when he disagreed with U.S. policies.

That was a sharp contrast to sentiments he expressed after his arrest last summer in Denver. From his jail cell he released a series of written statements, saying prosecutors were on a “witch hunt” and “trying to blackmail me.” With his trial set to begin June 2, he once disrupted a pretrial hearing by shouting that prosecutors “have lied, they’ve always lied” about him.

The single felony to which Ujaama pleaded guilty was that beginning in the spring of 2000, through the Sept. 11 attacks the following year, Ujaama used the alias of Abu Samaya and operated the Supporters of Shariah Web site.

He posted information about Taliban-sponsored schools and “urged others to donate money, goods and services to Taliban-sponsored programs.” That is a federal crime because the government had designated the Taliban a terrorist organization, and made it unlawful to help them in any way.

In late 2000, Ujaama traveled with an unidentified individual from London to Pakistan, and then helped him get into an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. During this trip, he “delivered currency and other items” to people in Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan, and also installed computer software programs for Taliban officials.

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Ujaama acknowledged, he tried to return to Afghanistan but was unable to enter “because of the local response to the attacks against the United States.”

He then returned home to Seattle, where in the past he had long been active in volunteering for community projects for disadvantaged residents. But, according to the original charges filed in August against Ujaama, he also set his sights on a small farm in Bly, Ore., near the California line, as his own training camp.

Prosecutors said Ujaama studied the site, found its flat, rugged terrain similar to that of the training facilities in Afghanistan, and dubbed his new enterprise the “Ultimate Jihad Challenge.” They said he brought “operatives” to the site, and planned for guard patrols and secret passwords.

But his vision fell apart, federal authorities said, after they arrested Semi Osman of Tacoma, Wash., on weapons charges. Osman, a former mechanic, also had preached at a now-closed Seattle mosque, and upon his arrest he allegedly alerted agents to Ujaama’s activities in Oregon. Had the case gone to trial, Osman was expected to be the key witness against his former friend.

Ujaama now becomes the latest in a string of federal terror suspects who have pleaded guilty. Others include John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Talib; Richard Reid, who tried to ignite bombs in his shoes on a transatlantic flight; and four of six members of an alleged terrorist cell in Lackawanna, N.Y., who trained at an Al Qaeda camp in the months before Sept. 11.

One case is continuing in Detroit, where four people are on trial for allegedly scouting targets for terrorist attacks.