Syed Fahad Hashmi was finally extradited to the US on Friday, May 25, he is a member of Al-Muhajiroun from Queens NY.He had been arrested at London's Heathrow Airport on June 6, 2006, suspected of assisting an Al Qaeda terrorist plot, and assisting jihadists in Afghanistan and Iraq. A resident of Flushing, Queens, he was a follower of the Islamic Thinkers Society. After 9/11, he had invited a member of Al-Muhajiroun to talk at the campus of Brooklyn College, where he had been a student.
His arrest last year happened as he was boarding a flight to Pakistan.
Since he was extradited to the United States in May of 2007, he has been held in solitary confinement in the Special Housing Unit at Metropolitan Correction Center in Manhattan, with no trial (as of 5/19/2008).
Hashmi was also a senior figure in Al Muhajiroun's US network. Investigations by private detective Bill Warner have been crucial in piecing together the links between the British membership of Al Muhajiroun with their counterparts in New York, and their combined links with terrorism.
The recent Operation Crevice terrorism trial, which concluded in London on April 30 had heard testimony from a former Al Muhajiroun member turned supergrass Mohamed Junaid Babar.
In 2005, Bill Warner took BBC journalist Richard Watson to the Masjid al-Fatima on 37th Avenue, Woodside, which had been taken over by radicals from Hizb ut-Tahrir in the mid 1990s. Watson videotaped Bill Warner's interview with imam Aqeel Khan, who spoke of the problems of radicals at the mosque.
Mr Warner's sleuthing managed to show that Junaid Babar, who was an Al Muhajiroun member from Queens, had attended the Woodside mosque, and here in 1999 had first met Sajil Shahid. Shahid had founded the Al Muhajiroun office in Lahore in Pakistan, which became a center for ferrying British jihadists (including the five men convicted of the Operation Crevice plot, and also Mohammed Sidique Khan, leader of London's 7/7 bombers) from Lahore to the regions bordering with Afghanistan, where they met Taliban and Al Qaeda controllers.
Mr Warner's investigations also showed that a meeting took place at the Masjid al-Fatima mosque from June 2 to 4, 2000, with lectures given by Sajil Shahid. This three day convention was also attended by an individual called "Brother Fahad", who is Syed "Fahad" Hashmi. 27-year old Hashmi was presented in United States Magistrate's Court on Tuesday May 29, and on the following day he was indicted at Manhattan Federal Court before United States District Judge Loretta Preska. He was indicted on three charges, with the main count involving conspiracy to contribute funds, goods or services to the terrorist group. If he is found guilty at his future trial, he could serve 50 years in jail.
This extradition from Britain to the US is the first ever to have taken place on terrorism charges. Why is this so? Britain signed an extradition treaty with the US in March 2003, which would have made extraditions to the US easier. No new treaty was signed to make extradition to Britain more straightforward. There are at least three individuals who have been requested to be extradited to the US. Hook-handed preacher of hate Abu Hamza was subjected to a US extradition order in May 2004, connected with his alleged attempts to set up a terror training camp at Dog Cry Ranch, Oregon in 1999.
Currently, Hamza is in Belmarsh jail, after being given a seven-year jail term for soliciting murder on February 7, 2006. He has fought the extradition request by trying to have his UK conviction overturned, a strategy which was rejected outright by the House of Lords on January 31. The Lords' decision should make his extradition more likely.
On July 19, Bow Street Magistrates Court closed, but the arguments against extradition have continued. Babar Ahmad, now aged 32, has been indicted on charges of supporting terrorism, conspiring to kill Americans, and maintaining a website used to fund terrorists. He has been in custody in the UK since he was arrested on August 2004. On May 17 2005, judge Timothy Workman had declared that Babar Ahmad could be extradited to the US. On November 16, 2005 Charles Clarke, who then had been the Home Secretary, had approved the extradition of Ahmad.
He ran several websites, which were used to recruit terrorists. The most important of these was Azzam.com, which recruited people for al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Chechen Islamist separatist organizations. The website also supplied gas masks, night-vision goggles and camouflage clothing.
On July 18, 2006, 26-year old Syed Talha Ahsan was arrested at his home in Tooting, after he was indicted by a federal court in Connecticut. A federal indictment had been made against Babar Ahmad from Connecticut in October 2004, on virtually identical charges.
It appears that Syed Talha Ahsan is connected with Babar Ahmad's internet recruitment drives. Ahsan is also charged with setting up terrorists in temporary housing in Britain, and shortly before 9/11, 2001, he owned a classified US Navy document which revealed troop movements. Ahsan and Ahmad are alleged by prosecutors to have run their pro-jihadist websites from 1998 to 2002.
Connecticut district attorney Kevin O'Connor said of Ahsan's case: "These charges are the result of several years of investigative work by ICE and FBI agents in New Haven, NCIS agents, and several additional law enforcement partners here in the United States and overseas."
Bill Warner
Private Investigator
www.wbipi.com
