NEW YORK — A Seattle man who once tried to open an Oregon camp to train Muslims to fight the Taliban’s enemies in Afghanistan was praised at sentencing Friday for helping the United States prosecute terrorists.
James Ujaama, 49, was sentenced to time served by U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest after a prosecutor described his cooperation over a dozen years as unprecedented.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John Cronan said Ujaama was an “extremely important witness” at last year’s trial of Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, an Egyptian Islamic cleric who was extradited to the U.S. from London, where Mustafa once delivered fiery sermons at a mosque to extremists including Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and shoe bomber Richard Reid.
Ujaama, a Muslim convert who was born James Earnest Thompson, was credited with providing key information that aided the indictment of Mustafa in 2004.
He also testified against Oussama Kassir, who was sentenced in 2009 to life in prison for his role in joining Ujaama in starting the training camp in Bly, Oregon, in late 1999 and early 2000. Prosecutors say the training camp was to be set up as a weapons-training post for al-Qaida so al-Qaida could take advantage of relaxed U.S. gun laws and train European recruits for Islamic militancy.
The judge said the Denver-born Ujaama, who pleaded guilty in 2007 to providing material support to terrorists, had earned leniency through cooperation that included about 70 meetings with prosecutors and investigators along with testimony that was consistent and reliable at trials. He also testified before grand juries.
She called him the leader of the Bly camp and noted that he got people to come from England to train to fight the Taliban’s enemies in Afghanistan.
“The fact the camp didn’t work out is a fortunate happenstance to the American people,” Forrest said.
Ujaama told Forrest he wished he had not gotten involved with Mustafa, also known as Abu Hamza al-Masri, and Kassir.
“I know I’m not a bad person,” he said.
Ujaama served about six years in prison, including a two-year sentence he received in 2007 for violating parole by traveling to Belize with a fake Mexican passport and a two-year stint that resulted from a 2003 guilty plea to conspiring to provide cash, computers and fighters to the Taliban.
Forrest noted that he had a history of petty crimes in the 1990s that included diverting a business partner’s money to himself, counseling others to put false information on Social Security applications and selling counterfeit watches, though he has more recently turned his life around by obtaining a master’s degree in education and pursuing a doctorate.
The judge said she was confident Ujaama would no longer support terrorism but was worried he would return to petty crimes, especially since he owes about $86,000 in student loans.
