(Oregonian) NEW YORK (AP) — A man with alleged ties to the suicide bombers in the July 7 attacks in London once traveled to the United States intending to help set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon, according to a court document unsealed on Monday.
The criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan charges Haroon Rashid Aswat, 30, a British-born citizen of Indian descent, with conspiring to provide material support for the scheme orchestrated in 1999-2000 by Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri.
Manhattan prosecutors allege Aswat and another al-Masri associate, Oussama Kassir — a Lebanese-born Swede convicted of weapons violations in 2003 — were dispatched to the United States in 1999 to assess property in Bly [Oregon] for a training camp. They allegedly flew to John F. Kennedy International Airport on an Air India flight, then caught a bus at the Port Authority Bus Terminal to complete the trip to Bly via Seattle.
Documents allegedly prepared by the plotters indicated they planned to bill the site as being in a “pro-militia and firearms state” that “looks like Afghanistan,” the complaint said.
That’s not far from the truth, either. Once you get east of the Cascade Mountains, you are in some of the most desolate, wind-blown, hot, dusty, brown, rugged country I’ve ever seen. While Oregon may be considered a “blue” state, it is really a blue oasis running through the Willamette Valley from Portland down to Eugene and west to the Pacific. The rest of the state is very “cowboy” and very red. If cows could vote, the state would’ve gone to Bush twice.
The only problem with a terrorist training camp in rural Oregon is that a group of brown-skinned young men not working in the fields would really stand out.
