Swede Charged in Plot to Set Up Camp

Oussama Kassir, a Lebanese-born Swedish man, has been charged with taking part in a 1999 plot to establish a terrorist training camp in rural Oregon, federal authorities said Tuesday. The camp was never set up.

Kassir, 39, was arrested Sunday in Prague, Czech Republic, where he was being detained as U.S. officials sought his extradition.

Kassir, according to an arrest warrant, traveled from London to Seattle in late November and on to Bly, a small, unincorporated town in southern Oregon about 50 miles east of Klamath Falls.

But, the criminal complaint said, Kassir “complained to a witness that there were only a few men available to train at the jihad training camp, and that he was not going to waste his time with such a small number of men, and that the facilities and supplies were inadequate.”

The complaint against Kassir was unsealed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, said U.S. Atty. Michael J. Garcia.

When detained at Prague International Airport on an Interpol warrant, Kassir was in the midst of a trip from Stockholm to Beirut, authorities said.

It is unclear how close Kassir and other suspected terrorists got to acquiring property or taking other steps to set up a camp for jihad, or holy war. Residents in Bly have recalled a few men gathering there for target practice but never establishing any sort of permanent camp.

The complaint describes a letter sent by facsimile from one alleged conspirator to another, in which the Bly property was described as looking “just like Afghanistan” and that it was located in a “pro-militia and firearms state.”

The conspirator said a group of men there were “stockpiling weapons and ammunition.”

Also, according to the complaint, Kassir possessed a compact disc that had information on how to create poisonous substances.

“Supporters of terrorism must know that they should not feel safe in trying to hide overseas,” said an assistant U.S. attorney general, Alice S. Fisher, in announcing the indictment.

“We will work to bring these individuals to justice, however long it takes.”

Kassir’s case is related to charges against two other men, Mustafa Kamel Mustafa and Haroon Rashid Aswat, who have been implicated in the alleged plot.

Mustafa, who is also known as Abu Hamza al Masri, and Aswat are being held in England pending extradition to the U.S.

Aswat was arrested in Zambia in July in connection with the London subway bombings that month.

Kassir, federal officials said, was born in Lebanon and moved to Sweden in 1984, becoming a Swedish citizen in 1989.

He spent several months in prison in Sweden in 1998 for assaulting a police officer and drug possession, and he was jailed there for 10 months beginning in 2003 for illegal weapons possession.