Preacher quizzed over al Qaida link

Jan 21 2007

THE firebrand Midland Islamic preacher at the centre of a controversial TV documentary was questioned by the FBI in America about alleged links with an al Qaida operative, the Sunday Mercury can reveal.

Abu Usamah At-Thahabi, who was secretly taped by undercover reporters as he delivered extremist lectures at a Birmingham mosque, was quizzed by US agents just months after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

The New Jersey-born Muslim convert was an imam at the Islamic Center of Peoria in Illinois when federal agents swooped in December 2001 and arrested Qatari student Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who was a regular worshipper.

Abu Usamah was questioned by federal agents who believed he may have had some influence on the student - but he was never arrested.

Al-Marri was later charged with using false documents to open bank accounts. He was also in possession of a telephone credit card which he had used to call a number in Dubai.

The FBI said the number was linked to reputed Al-Qaida financier and September 11 organiser Mustafa al-Hawsawi.

Al-Hawsawi, a Saudi known as 'the paymaster' reportedly filtered more than $325,000 (£165,000) to the September 11 hijackers, and is currently being held at the US base in Bagram, Afghanistan.

Al-Marri, meanwhile, remains in custody and is awaiting trial by a military tribunal as an enemy combatant.

Among the evidence reportedly seized by federal agents was his computer, which contained a folder labelled 'jihad arena'.

According to court documents, the folder contained information on hydrogen cyanide - used in chemical weapons - and the teachings of Osama Bin Laden.

The Joint Intelligence Task Force for Combating Terrorism said the information about hydrogen cyanide on the computer 'far exceeds the interests of a merely curious individual'.

The task force report also alleges that Al-Marri was instructed by Al-Qaida to hack into the American banking system to wreak havoc on the US economy.

Last week, Abu Usamah hit the British headlines after being featured on a Channel Four documentary exposing extremist preachers at the Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham, where he now lives.

He was filmed saying: "If I were to call homosexuals perverted, dirty, filthy dogs who should be murdered, that's my freedom of speech, isn't it?"

The black Muslim later offered an explanation of his sermons, which he posted on the internet website YouTube.

Sources in the US said that although Abu Usamah's public teachings there were moderate, he occasionally stepped over the line into anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Just prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he called President Bush a "pathological liar" and constantly argued to his followers that "Jews controlled the media."