Alphecca

Islamic Terrorist Camp in Oregon

It almost happened. From the Corvallis Gazette-Times:

Even in a town as small and out of the way as Bly, local folks find it hard to believe that Islamic militants might think they could train with assault rifles on a sheep ranch without anyone noticing.

"Ridiculous,'' said Marilyn Thomas, who runs the Pit Stop convenience store in Bly, a tiny ranching community in the high desert of south-central Oregon

"I'm from Chicago, where I didn't even know my neighbors,'' she said Monday in a telephone interview. "Here they know what you're going to do before you do it. And if you don't do it they get mad.''

A six-page complaint unsealed in a New York court alleges that Haroon Rashid Aswat, 30, a British-born citizen of Indian descent, spent a month at a sheep ranch outside Bly in December 1999 as a representative for a religious leader in London to see if it would serve as a base for training Islamic militants from London and the United States to fight in Afghanistan.

A fax outlining a recruiting brochure for the camp said people could train in "archery, combat, martial arts and rifle and handgun,'' according to the complaint.

Authorities have said the camp never materialized beyond a dozen people taking target practice in a cinder pit. Even that was abandoned, for unknown reasons.

Aswat is the fourth person arrested in connection with the camp. The complaint does not identify the religious leader who sent him from London or his contact in Seattle, but closely tracks charges brought against Muslim cleric Abu Hamza Al-Masri and James Ujaama of Seattle. Ujaama pleaded guilty to lesser charges and authorities have said he agreed to cooperate in the investigation.

Aswat is accused of violating a federal law prohibiting conspiracies and preparations for killing, kidnapping and maiming people or damaging property in a foreign country.

Bly is an unincorporated town of a few hundred people located 50 miles east of Klamath Falls. Its name comes from the mispronunciation of an Indian word for a place where two rivers come together. The high school closed in 1968, and the town has been struggling to survive since a lumber mill shut down about 20 years ago.

Though a few miles outside town, the ranch is near a highway and surrounded by scattered rural homes, making it unlikely that sustained assault rifle fire could go on without someone taking notice, Bly residents said. They took notice in 1999 when people in Middle Eastern dress living at the ranch came to town.

An unidentified witness cooperating with prosecutors who was promoting the training camp idea to an unidentified religious leader in London described Oregon in a fax as a state that supported militia activity and firearms, and "looks just like Afghanistan,'' according to the complaint.

Anti-gunners will try to use this as an excuse to ban guns, rifles, bla bla bla. What this SHOULD be used for is a reason to close our damn borders already. Yes, I've changed my thinking on this over the past several months. The easiest way to protect the United States and at the same time not infringe our liberties and Bill of Rights for existing citizens is to say, "No more!" And frankly, I see nothing wrong with profiling Muslems for in-depth background checks and surveillance and limiting their travel to this country. The terrorist mutants are coming from their ranks and until they (Islamic countries) start to clean up their own mess and speak up against the terrorists amongst their societies, I have no problem preventing them from entering America.

Call it "religious profiling" if you want. I don't see any Greek Orthodox strapping on suicide bombs. Lutherans aren't flying planes into buildings. Catholics aren't planning to poison our water supplies. If they do, then we'll profile them too.

Posted by Jeff Soyer at August 9, 2005 06:42 AM