Street-Corner Radicals or Al Qaeda Allies?

Mosque's Members Say They Are Not a Threat as Terror Probe Zeroes In on Seattle Group

SEATTLE — The men who pray inside an old storefront known here as Taqwa mosque insist they pose no threat. "We ain't no terrorists, we don't make bombs," Abdul-Hakim bellowed on the sidewalk out front this week. "The FBI is fishing."

Then he went on to share a few other opinions: America's war on terrorism is becoming a war on Islam. No way amateur pilots could crash jetliners into skyscrapers. And was Osama bin Laden really the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks?

Those views are but one reason that a small group of militant local Muslims affiliated with the mosque has become the focus of a terrorism task force here in the Northwest. The FBI and other authorities are examining whether some of the men have ties to a suspected al Qaeda recruiter in London, and whether they once scouted a remote sheep ranch in Oregon for terrorist training.

Law enforcement officials are saying little about the probe and have arrested only one man in connection with it, Semi Osman, a former leader at the Seattle mosque who was apprehended in May and accused of immigration fraud and illegal possession of a handgun. Osman, 32, a British citizen who lives in nearby Tacoma, has not been charged with terrorism.

The probe was disclosed last week by the Seattle Times, which reported that a federal grand jury was investigating the matter. That news has renewed fears that the Northwest might be either a hub for a "sleeper cell" of terrorists or a target for a terrorist strike.

Authorities previously have warned that Seattle's Space Needle, the city's most popular landmark, has been the subject of vague and uncorroborated terrorist threats. And in December 1999, Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian with ties to Islamic terrorists, was arrested at a border crossing near here driving a car filled with explosives. Ressam later admitted to a terrorist plot, planned partly in Seattle, to bomb Los Angeles International Airport.

Whether the men under scrutiny in the latest probe are merely street-corner radicals or potentially dangerous al Qaeda allies is not clear. But some local officials are playing down the threat.

"While we are on heightened alert in general about terrorism," said Elaine Kraft, a spokeswoman for King County Executive Ron Sims, "I don't think the concern about this is terribly high."

Osman's attorney, Robert M. Leen, has told reporters that his client has no involvement in terrorism. But investigators say a search of his home turned up papers written by Abu Hamza al-Masri, a radical Islamic cleric based in London and suspected of being a prime recruiter for al Qaeda.

Two other suspected terrorists have visited al-Masri's mosque: Zacarias Moussaoui, who has been charged as a conspirator in the Sept. 11 attacks, and Richard Reid, arrested for allegedly trying to blow up a jetliner with a shoe bomb. The Seattle Times also reported that an aide to al-Masri apparently visited Osman three years ago at a ranch house he rented with his family for a few months in Bly, Ore., an isolated town of a few hundred residents near the California border.

Osman's stay at the Bly ranch interested law enforcement officials from the outset. The local sheriff, Tim Evinger, said this week that about a dozen Muslims briefly stayed at the ranch in 1999 and may have conducted target practice. But he said he doubted it had been a training camp for terrorists.

"I don't think that it actually got set up to any extent," Evinger said.

Outside the Seattle mosque, Abdul-Hakim, a Brooklyn-born African American who converted to Islam, said that members of the community had gone to Bly in search of a place to raise livestock for meat that would match Muslim precepts, but abandoned the idea. "We decided it was too far away," he said.

He also scoffed at reports that Muslims there had been taking target practice. "If a Muslim shoots a gun down there, they call him a terrorist," he said. "If anyone else does, they call him a hunter."

Others at the mosque, which is in a beleaguered neighborhood a few miles east of downtown Seattle, described Osman as a mechanic and a Navy reservist who does not hate the United States. "I never heard him say anything about terrorism," Omar Hashi said. "This is crazy."

The community that worships at the small mosque is a mix of middle-aged men who are African Americans or immigrants from Africa and the Middle East. Many of them drive cabs.

Authorities say there have been reports that weapons had been stored in a building a few blocks away that housed the mosque until it was damaged in an earthquake last year, when it was known as the Dar-us-Salaam mosque. Abdul-Hakim said some members of the mosque had decided to keep or carry a weapon there because they had had confrontations with local drug dealers. "We were being threatened because we tried to help clean up the area," he said.

Two other members of the mosque who apparently are subjects of the FBI probe, James and Mustafa Ujaama, issued a statement this week denying that they were terrorists. They are brothers who grew up in Seattle and converted to Islam. The Seattle Times has reported that investigators believe that James Ujaama helped post radical Islamic teachings on a Web site for al-Masri's London mosque and escorted two representatives from the mosque to the Oregon ranch.

In Bly, residents recalled seeing Osman and other Muslims in the area but differed on whether their activities were suspicious. Some said the men did nothing unusual and were friendly, and others said they were aloof and edgy.

Billie Livingston, a tow truck driver, said that the men at times made her feel uneasy but that she never had reason to suspect they were terrorists.

"It's still never even entered my mind that they would be part of it," she said. "But you never know."

Staff writer Susan Schmidt in Washington and special correspondent Jeff Adler in Los Angeles contributed to this report.