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Seattle Man Convicted in Terror Case Arrested in Central America
Posted: December 20, 2006
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A Muslim convert from Seattle, who served more than a year in prison for helping the Taliban, was arrested in Central America and then returned to the U.S. for violating the terms of his probation.
Earnest James Ujaama, 41, was arrested outside a Belize mosque on December 18, according to the Justice Department. Ujaama, who reportedly traveled under a Mexican passport with the name Jose Luis Ramirez, was brought back to the U.S. the following day. He waived his rights to a removal hearing in U.S. District Court in Miami and is being held without bail pending transfer to Seattle.
In February 2004, a federal court in Seattle sentenced Ujaama to two years in prison for conspiring to provide goods and services to the Taliban. Under the terms of Ujaama's plea agreement, he was not allowed to travel internationally during his three-year probation without written permission from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle.
Ujaama, arrested in July 2002 by the FBI in Denver, was initially charged with planning to open a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon, and with a weapons violation. Those charges were later dropped and the government filed other charges alleging that Ujaama brought money, computer equipment and a recruit to Taliban officials in Afghanistan. Ujaama admitted traveling with an unnamed co-conspirator from London to Pakistan and then facilitating the co-conspirator's travel to a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, according to his plea agreement.
Ujaama converted to Islam in the early 1990s, becoming involved in the now-defunct Dar-es-Salaam Mosque in Seattle. After moving to London in the mid-1990s, Ujaama attended a Finsbury Park mosque headed by radical Islamic cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, and also frequented by Richard Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber," and Zacarias Moussaui, the alleged 20th September 11 hijacker. For more than a year Ujaama, a computer technician, designed and maintained the cleric's militant Islamic Web site, "Supporters of Sharia."
A video made before the September 11 terrorist attacks shows Ujaama and al-Masri speaking to an audience at the Finsbury Park mosque. During his speech, Ujaama stated that:
There are many Muslims who have forgotten that the Jews and Christians are our enemies….today the crusade is against Islam and they [sic] are led by the Jews because they are misguided…and so they are used in Israel's long awaited campaign to destroy Islam and to dominate the world.
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