A former student and lieutenant of handless hate preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri testified Wednesday about the cleric’s alleged role in setting up a terrorist training camp in Oregon.
Federal witness James Ujaama told jurors that he regularly communicated with al-Masri in 1999 via phone, fax and e-mail.
“I conspired with others attempting to carry out, implement and construct a jihadist training camp in Bly, Oregon,” Ujaama said. “He [al-Masri] agreed and sent me two men from London to help with jihad training.”
Al-Masri, the one-eyed, hook-handed terrorist suspect, is on trial on charges of conspiring in a 1998 kidnapping in Yemen that resulted in the deaths of four tourists, attempting to set up a jihadist training camp in Oregon and committing other terrorist crimes. He faces life in prison if convicted.
Ujaama said he got the idea for a training camp from al-Masri’s tapes and lectures on how people should go to fight in Afghanistan.
“We could set up a place for Muslims to come, especially from [Britain], to engage in training in shooting and guns, and go from there to Afghanistan,” Ujaama said.
When a prosecutor asked about al-Masri’s views on training, Ujaama said, “Abu Hamza’s views in physical training was obligatory. Every Muslim should partake in it.”
Defense attorneys have said the Egyptian-born, London-based cleric plans to testify on his own behalf,
Lawyer Joshua Dratel said his client was actually a moderate, who taught “a third way between Osama bin Laden on one extreme and George W. Bush on the other.”
The defendant, who is blind in one eye, claims he lost his hands and forearms in an explosion in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion from 1979 to 1989.