WASHINGTON, 3 March 2005 — A federal magistrate in Virginia ordered terror suspect Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, accused of plotting to kill President Bush, to remain in custody until his yet-unscheduled trial on charges of providing material support to Al-Qaeda.
The order was issued during a detention hearing held Tuesday, after an FBI agent testified that Abu Ali, 23, of Falls Church, Virginia, confessed “multiple times’ that he had allied himself with Al-Qaeda in a plot to assassinate the president.
FBI agent Barry Cole said Abu Ali spoke with Al-Qaeda members about conducting another Sept. 11-type attack in which he and other members of an Al-Qaeda cell in Saudi Arabia planned that “hijackers would board planes in Great Britain and Australia” to fly into “designated targets” in the United States.
Cole also testified that while Abu Ali was detained in Saudi Arabia for 20 months, he told the FBI several times that he wanted to carry out the assassination plot personally by getting close enough to Bush to shoot him or blow him up.
Cole said Al-Qaeda asked Abu Ali for a list of US targets where “mass causalities’ could be inflicted, such as stadiums and amusement parks, and that he provided it to them.
The FBI agent said Abu Ali also discussed plans to kill members of Congress and military personnel, and target navy ships in US ports.
Cole told the packed courtroom Tuesday that Al-Qaeda gave Abu Ali the choice of becoming part of a martyr operation or establishing a terrorist cell in the United States.
Under the terrorist cell plan, Agent Cole said, Abu Ali would “marry a Christian woman, assimilate into the community and they would provide him the necessary operatives for the mission.”
Abu Ali’s Defense Attorney John Zwerling called the accusations “preposterous.”
But US Magistrate Judge Liam O’Grady said the government had provided “way beyond clear and convincing evidence” that “this defendant... is a grave danger to the community and to this nation.”
Judge O’Grady added, however, he was disturbed that Michael Mason, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, had apparently disagreed with Cole following his interviews with Abu Ali.
O’Grady said he would reconsider the defense’s motions for bail because of an email sent by Mason, which was filed by the defense, where Mason wrote that his office, whose agents had investigated the case, “has no further interest in Mr. Ali’s detention.”
Also yesterday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defended the Bush administration’s decision to detain alleged Al-Qaeda operative Jose Padilla for more than two years without criminal charges, saying the government has the right to hold alleged enemy combatants in the war on terrorism “for the duration of hostilities.”
Gonzales’s remarks followed a critical decision Monday but US District Judge Henry Floyd, who ruled that detaining Padilla indefinitely without charges is illegal and that he must be charged with a crime or freed within 45 days. The government said it would appeal the decision.
