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September 14, 2006
UK: Accused Muslim Was "Happy" About 9/11
Today, on the 84th day of a trial which began on March 21, one of the key figures among the seven young men accused of a terror plot took the stand. A bearded 24-year old Omar Khyam (right in picture) has previously been heard by the jury at the Old Bailey in London, talking of wanting to blow up airplanes, a nightclub, the Bluewater Shopping Mall and suggesting other targets, such as water supplies, which he suggested should be poisoned. These conversations took place with Jawad Akbar (left in picture), another of the accused, and were recorded secretly in Khyam's apartment in Crawley, West Sussex and at an apartment which Akbar briefly inhabited in Uxbridge, west London. Khyam's car had also been "bugged".
The seven men were all arrested on March 30, 2004. Jurors and the UK public have seen surveillance footage of Khyam visiting a large horde of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, which had been kept in a storage depot. The 600 kilograms (1,320 pounds) had been purchased from a company, Bodle Brothers in Burgess Hill in Sussex. On July 13, the court heard how a search of Akbar's home in Crawley recovered a bank statement from Omar Khyam, upon which the telephone number of Bodle Brothers was written.
The BBC the Times and the Guardian and a later report from the BBC have details of the testimony which Khyam gave today.
He was asked about his reactions to the 9/11 attacks upon the World Trade Center, and he responded: "I was happy. America was, and still is, the greatest enemy of Islam. They put up puppet reimes in Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt."
"I was happy that America had been hit because of what it represented against the Muslims, but obviously 3,000 people died so there were mixed feelings."
He also said that when he later consulted with Islamic leaders, he thought the attacks were a tactical mistake.
He had earlier spoken of his upbringing in Crawley with his mother (who was divorced) and brothers, and how he became captain of the school cricket team. He had become interested in religion and a "cause" in 1998.
He was asked what a "cause" meant, and he had replied: "The freedom of Muslim lands from occupation. I still believe in that cause."
He said his family had been secular, and he had become interested in religion though involvement with Al Muhajiroun. He was on a visit to Pakistan in 1999 to his family's homeland when he first spoke to groups who were active in the Kashmir insurgency.
He went back home to Crawley, but within a few months, while aged 17, he ran away to Pakistan to join a training camp for foreigners who wished to fight in Kashmir. He had told his mother he was going to France to learn French. In the camp, "They taught me everything for warfare," he said. He was trained in reconnaissance, the use of AK-47s, using rocket-propelled grenades. He saw others being chosen to undergo explosives training. He was in the camp from January to March 2000.
Members of his family discovered where he was (they apparently worked in military intelligence in Pakistan) and sent a radio message for him to leave the mountains and see his grandfather. he met his grandfather, and then returned to Britain. Then he went to Belgium, where he worked at clothes shops owned by his father.
He went back to East Surrey College, but dropped out, and enrolled in 2001 at the Metropolitan University in north London. He never attended the course, as he had gone to a friend's wedding in Pakistan. He crossed the border into Afghanistan and visited the Taliban.
On BBC TV news, he was quoted as saying the Taliban were soft and humble towards Muslims, but were fierce towards their enemies. "They were amazing people. They loved Allah very much. This is how an Islamic state should be," he said.
Khyam also said the war in Iraq was a "war against Islam".
On July 20, the jury heard of the involvement of Canadian citizen Mohammad Momin Khawaja, who was alleged to have been involved in the supply of detonators for the explosives which were to be employed by the group.
On 24 July the court watched a police videotape of an interview with another of the accused, Salhuddin Amin, aged 31. In this tape, Amin said that he and Omar Khyam had gone on a two-day training course in Pakistan in 2003.
Amin said he had become "mixed up" with terrorists but did not consider himself to be a terrorist. The interview had been made eight hours after his arrest on March 30, 2004. He said on the tape: "I knew I was involved with terrorism at that time but I regret whatever I have done."
During this training, at a house in Kohat, Pakistan, he and Omar Khyam had learned how to make an ammonium nitrate fertiliser bomb. He said that they had done a test run, detonating a "fertiliser explosive" in a river nearby. Amin also said that he had also been shown how to make the poison ricin, but he had never made or used it himself.
On Tuesday August 29jurors were shown mock-ups of what would happen if a bomb was set on a gas pipeline network. One of the accused (Waheed Mahmood) worked for a contractor for gas maintenance company Transco, and is accused of having a CD-Rom on his home computer with details of the UK's gas pipeline network. National Grid Transco runs the national grid, for electricity and the high pressure gas infrastructure throughout England and Wales.
Those accused are:
Jawad Akbar, Omar Khyam, Shuja & Waheed Mahmood, Salahuddin Amin, Anthony Garcia and Nabeel Hussain all deny conspiring to cause explosions likely to endanger life between 1 January, 2003 and 31 March, 2004.
Khyam, Garcia and Hussain further deny a charge under the Terrorism Act of possessing ammonium nitrate fertiliser for terrorism. Khyam and Shujah Mahmood deny possessing aluminium powder for terrorism.
Our previous stories on this case are:
March 22 - Islamists Were Ready To Bomb Trains And Nightclubs
May 25 - Muslims Planned To Blow Up Famous Nightclub
June 17 - Islamists Wanted To Copy 9/11
July 13 - Jihad Book At Home Of Suspected Islamist Terror Plotter
July 20 - Islamist Terror Trial Hears Of Canadian's Involvement
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at September 14, 2006 6:20 PM
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