IANA benefactor charged

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

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.



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