Author:
Publication: CNN News
Date: June 27, 2003
URL: http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/06/27/terror.arrests/index.html
The FBI Friday issued a 41-count
indictment against 11 men charged with conspiracy to train for and participate
in a violent jihad overseas.
"It was part of the conspiracy that
the defendants and their conspirators prepared to become mujahedeen and
die 'shaheed' -- that is, as martyrs in furtherance of violent jihad,"
the indictment said.
Nine of the defendants, who are
ages 23 to 35, are U.S. citizens, and the others are a Yemeni and a non-resident
alien from Pakistan, said Paul McNulty, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District
of Virginia.
He identified the five men born
in this country and arrested Friday morning as: Randall Todd Royer (who
goes by the name of Ismail), 30; Masoud Ahmad Khan, 31; Hammad Abdur-Raheem,
35; Donald Thomas Surratt, 30; and Caliph Basha Ibn Abdur-Raheem, 29.
A sixth man, Mohammed Aatique, 30,
the Pakistani national and H-1 visa holder, was arrested in the Philadelphia
area.
The indictment also charges two
men who were already in custody: Ibrahim Ahmed al-Hamdi, the Yemeni national
and non- resident alien who was being held on a weapons charge; and Yong
Ki Kwon, 27, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in South Korea who was being
held on immigration charges.
The remaining three men are believed
to be in Saudi Arabia, McNulty said. He identified them as U.S. citizens
Sabri Benkhala, 28, and Seifullah Chapman, 30, and Khwaja Mahmood Hasan,
27, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Pakistan.
Five of the men had their initial
appearances Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, before
Magistrate Judge Thomas Rawles Jones Jr., who appointed counsel to those
who said they had none, and scheduled their next court appearances for
next week.
Two of the men had previously been
arraigned.
Aatique appeared before a judge
in Philadelphia.
"Right here, in this community,
10 miles from Capitol Hill, in the streets of Northern Virginia, American
citizens allegedly met and plotted and recruited for violent jihad," McNulty
told reporters.
Members of what McNulty called the
Virginia Jihad Network allegedly bought and distributed weapons and traveled
to Pakistan, where they trained with Lashka-E- Taiba (meaning Army of the
Pure), a Kashmiri separatist group designated by the State Department in
December 2001 as a terrorist organization.
The Islamic group claims to operate
in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kosovo, Bosnia, Kashmir and the Philippines,
McNulty said.
India blames the group for numerous
deadly attacks against Indians. The group has denied targeting civilians.
The group, referred to by its initials
LET, was founded in the mid-1980s "to wage violent jihad in Afghanistan
and India," McNulty said.
In 2001, the U.S. State Department
designated LET a foreign terrorist organization. The group's recruitment
materials included a banner that showed a dagger being driven through the
flags of the United States, India, Israel, Russia and Great Britain, he
said.
The indictment alleges, among other
things, that the men were preparing to take part in military activities
against a nation friendly to the United States, that they purchased, transported
and received firearms to be used in a felony, used and attempted to use
false and altered passports, and provided false statements to law enforcement
investigators, McNulty said.
Convictions "could actually result
in (prison sentences of) just dozens of years," he said.
Defense attorneys are expected to
argue it was not illegal for the men to train at the camps before LET was
designated a terrorist organization.
The investigation began in 2000,
centered in suburban Washington, and then extended into Fredericksburg,
Virginia, Philadelphia, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, McNulty said.
The men received training in the
United States and in training camps in Pakistan, he added.
Some of the men allegedly bought
weapons, including AK-47-style rifles, in January 2000, to improve their
weapons skills, McNulty said.
In April 2000, Royer allegedly entered
Pakistan to train with the LET, then traveled to Kashmir, where he participated
in actions against Indian military forces, and then returned to the United
States.
That fall, Royer and al-Hamdi allegedly
recruited followers to join them to become mujahedeen and martyrs, "furthering
their violent jihad," McNulty said.
The group of organizers and recruits
allegedly met in secret in private homes in the Northern Virginia suburbs
and in an Islamic center in Falls Church, Virginia, "to hear lectures and
review tapes of mujahedeen engaged in violent jihad," he said.
The lectures were given by cleric
Ali Al-Timimi, sources told CNN. Al-Timimi is not charged in the indictment.
Al-Timimi's lawyers have said he
"fervently denies any formal or informal charges by the FBI or the Department
of Justice that he has in the past supported or currently is supporting
terrorism and terrorist activity."
Throughout 2000, the men trained
at firing ranges in Virginia and Pennsylvania, McNulty said. Instruction
was provided by Surratt, Abdur-Raheem and Chapman, who had U.S. military
experience.
To train in small unit military
tactics, the men practiced at a paintball war games facility in Spotsylvania
County, Virginia, he said.
In all, seven of the men obtained
further training with the LET in Pakistan, where they learned to use machine
guns, rocket grenade launchers and anti-aircraft guns, he said.
"Anyone who doubts the importance
of breaking up this Virginia jihad network underestimates the challenge
America faces in its ongoing war against violence and even terrorism,"
he said.
"When individuals meet here in the
shadow of our nation's capital to go prepare for violent action, we will
take action," said Alice Fisher, deputy assistant attorney general of the
criminal division.
In previous interviews, Royer, a
resident of northern Virginia, denied any links to terrorism and said he
had not traveled overseas after September 11, 2001.
(CNN Justice Correspondent Kelli
Arena and Producers Kevin Bohn and Terry Frieden contributed to this story.)
