http://www.mlive.com/news/aanews/index.ssf?/base/news-7/1073819424106320.xml Sunday, January 11, 2004 News staff and wire reports A Saudi graduate student who the government says has ties to a local Islamic group has been indicted on federal charges he used his computer expertise to help terrorist groups wage a holy war against the United States. Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, 33, was charged with providing material support to terrorism under the 12-count indictment returned by a grand jury Friday in Boise, Idaho. The indictment charges the University of Idaho computer science student used the Internet to raise funds, field recruits, and locate prospective U.S. targets - military and civilian - in the Middle East. Al-Hussayen, a doctoral candidate in a computer science program sponsored by the National Security Agency, is accused of creating Web sites and an e-mail group that disseminated messages from him and two radical clerics in Saudi Arabia that supported violent jihad, or holy war. Authorities have said that Al-Hussayen developed Web sites sponsored by the Ypsilanti Township-based Islamic Assembly of North America that posted articles advocating terrorism in the months leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. The FBI raided IANA's offices on Packard Road last February, carting away three carloads of materials but making no arrests. Friday's indictment on terrorism charges came less than two weeks before Al-Hussayen was set to go on trial on visa fraud charges brought against him last February. He has been in jail since then. U.S. Attorney Tom Moss said Al-Hussayen knew his computer services and expertise on behalf of two Islamic organizations would be used "to recruit and to raise funds for violent holy war, or jihad, in Israel, Chechnya and elsewhere, which have involved destruction of property, kidnaping, maiming and murder." "Sami is not guilty of committing these offenses," defense attorney David Nevin said. "I don't see anything that wasn't available to them long ago. I think they have stalled this off to avoid going ahead with their trial." Al-Hussayen is accused of moderating an Arabic-language e-mail group that posted instructions on how to train at a particular terrorist camp. The same e-mail group was used to issue an "urgent appeal" to Muslims in the military last February for locations of U.S. military bases in the Middle East, residences of civilian base workers, storage facilities for weapons and ammunition, facilities of American oil companies, and routes followed by oil tankers, to select them as targets for acts of terror, according to the indictment. The posting also urged an attack on a high-ranking American military officer, according to the indictment. The indictment charges Al-Hussayen with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists through his operation and control of Internet Web sites, his financial support of IANA, and by signing contracts and doing Internet work for the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation. That organization is a Saudi-based charity whose branches in Bosnia and Somalia have been designated terrorist organizations by the U.S. Treasury Department. The Al-Hussayen investigation is part of a cluster of interrelated probes across the country, federal officials have said. Previous court filings and testimony have linked the Idaho effort to investigations of charities and foundations suspected of financing terrorism. Those groups include the Illinois offices of the Benevolence International Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation, and the northern Virginia-based SAAR foundation. The Global Relief Foundation was founded by former Ann Arbor Muslim leader Rabih Haddad, who was deported to Lebanon last summer. Al-Hussayen's uncle Saleh Abdel Rahman Al-Hussayen, a senior religious official in Saudi Arabia, has been involved with those charities and has provided funds to IANA, according to the FBI. Federal documents unsealed last March alleged that the uncle met with IANA officials in Ann Arbor just before Sept. 11, 2001, then traveled to Virginia, where he stayed in the same hotel as three hijackers who crashed a passenger jet into the Pentagon. Those documents also allege that IANA sponsored Web sites developed by Sami Omar Al-Hussayen that promoted terrorism. One of those sites posted an article from an unidentified writer from Afghanistan, just two days before the Sept. 11 attacks, who said "the only answer is to ignite and trigger an all out war ..." The Sami Al-Hussayen probe is also linked to the case of 11 men indicted in Alexandria, Va., last June and accused of training to wage jihad with a Pakistani terrorist group. Four have pleaded guilty, and law enforcement sources said they are expected to be called as witnesses in Al-Hussayen's case. Without commenting directly on those witnesses, Moss said his office "will no doubt call people who have responded to admonitions and calls for action" they found on the Web sites Al-Hussayen operated. The Saudi government, which sponsored Al-Hussayen's studies in the United States, has provided money for his legal defense and sought his release, though Saudi Embassy officials have said they consider IANA a radical organization and a branch of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood. Embassy officials were unavailable for comment on the new indictment. - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomo@private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
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