Oussama Kassir, a self-proclaimed al-Qaida tough guy, flew into a rage after his late-night arrival at a remote Oregon ranch. The barren rangeland, suggestive of Afghanistan, was to become an Islamic fighter training base. Kassir expected to be welcomed by Muslim recruits, eager to learn the ways of war. Instead, he got an Islamic leader from Seattle, a mentally impaired 18-year-old and two women more interested in canning jars than jihad. Kassir expected access to a weapons armory. He got one pistol and a .22-caliber rifle.
The events that led to the effort 10 years ago to establish a jihad camp outside Bly have been well-chronicled. But testimony and exhibits from Kassir's trial in New York provide the fullest account to date of what went on behind the gates of the Dog Cry Ranch. What emerges from the trial record is an almost comic account of passwords, night patrols and target practice. Jihad, it seems, couldn't take root alongside the sagebrush and weeds that greeted Kassir.
| Kassir recently was sentenced to life in prison for his effort, and his two partners in the enterprise are awaiting extradition to the U.S. |
The whole set up was in fact a hustle by a petty crook from Seattle named James Ujaama. Ujaama envisioned the Oregon camp as an Islamic time share, selling visits to foreign Muslims. Twice he lured groups from his Seattle mosque for weekend visits to the ranch. They thought they were going on a bit of a Western adventure -- riding, shooting and chasing cows.
In late 1999, Ujaama pitched a more grave version to a London imam, Abu Hamza al-Masri. The hook-handed preacher was known for fiery oratory, lashing the West while secretly arranging entree for Muslims to militant camps in Afghanistan. Ujaama promised al-Masri a safe haven, recruits and weapons to transform the desert ranch into a Muslim military training camp.
Al-Masri bought the pitch, and Kassir soon found himself on a trans-Atlantic flight to the U.S. He would later boast that he had trained in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan. He brought along a partner, Haroon Aswat, supposedly an al-Qaida trainer himself. Aswat later would spend time in an al-Qaida safe house in Pakistan, his visit recorded in a ledger bearing the fingerprints of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
For the Oregon trip, the wiry Aswat packed homemade training CDs with graphic instructions on how to make bombs and poisons. One manual warned that making poison was "more dangerous than making explosives. Always use good protective clothing. I know too many mujahedeen whose lungs and bodies are messed up due to the lack of quality protection equipment."
Kassir brought with him a wad of British currency, but this was a low-budget affair. To save money, the trainers endured a two-day ride across the U.S. on a Greyhound bus to reach Seattle and Ujaama.
In early December 1999, they drove south to Bly, arriving at the Dog Cry Ranch about midnight. They were welcomed by Semi Osman, a mechanic and part-time imam from Seattle. He had recently moved into a ramshackle mobile home on the ranch with his wife, their daughter, and his wife's teenage brother. The only other person on the ranch was the Islamic wife of the sheep rancher who owned the place.
Kassir looked around the scruffy compound of two mobile homes and a few outbuildings. In the kitchen of one of the mobile homes, Kassir turned on Ujaama. Over and over, he demanded of Ujaama: Where are the recruits? Where are the recruits? Ujaama and Osman said the would-be jihadists had families and jobs in Seattle and couldn't move down. Where, then, are the guns, Kassir demanded. The men from Seattle said they had a couple and would get more.
Kassir raged on, asking about housing for their beloved imam once he arrived from London. "Where are you going to put this man?" Kassir hissed. By morning, Ujaama was gone and so was his idea of a Muslim retreat.
| Kassir later confided to one of the women at the ranch that he intended to kill Ujaama on the spot and bury him in the woods. |
Kassir wasn't ready to give up on the idea of a training camp. He initiated night patrols, leading Aswat, the Seattle imam, and the mentally impaired teenager on all-night forays. They dressed in black, checked fence lines, looking for signs of intruders. Kassir explained they were practicing reconnaissance. He blackened his eyes with coal, explaining that made the whites stand out in a more menacing way in battle. Using the guns they had, they practiced shooting in an advancing line, from a crouch and from sniperlike positions on the hills. They bought a shotgun for their tiny arsenal, but Kassir took it for himself. From then on, he carried it over his shoulder wherever he went on the ranch.
Kassir taught the men to throw knives and claimed he got his curved Gurkha knife in fighting overseas. One day, they gathered at the horse corrals for Kassir to teach them how to kill with a knife. The teenager was instructed to drop to his knees to serve as sort of a practice dummy. Kassir asked the teen whether he could kill a man. The boy replied that he could because he had killed sheep. "Killing a man is not like killing a sheep," Kassir said.
| Al-Masri called the ranch from London one day to check on progress. The call alarmed Osman. "You can't have him call here, because he has heat on him," Osman told the others. Too late. |
Aside from such lapses, Kassir did impose security measures. He instructed Hyat Hakimah, the ranch owner's wife, to use a password before leaving her mobile home. Hakimah was growing uneasy with developments. She had expected to run a sort of Home Extension Service for Muslims at her place. "They were, you know, training for war," she later explained. She and her husband were never implicated in any wrongdoing. "I was just wanting, you know, people to be able to raise their own vegetables and preserve them and eat more healthy," she said.
Kassir suggested that she send the Arab horses she was raising overseas to Afghanistan. She saw the poison-making manual and its recommendation to test poisons on horses. "That was a needless thing," Hakimah later testified. She soon abandoned the ranch to the visitors, and a month later they were gone too.
Kassir and Aswat took refuge in a Seattle mosque and tried taking the training to the Muslims who hadn't wanted to move to Bly. After a few classes, the men from London gave up and packed their bags for home. Kassir explained his exasperation to Osman. "I've been trying to train these brothers," Kassir said. "They're not taking it seriously."