Brit Denies Planning Terror Camp

Lawyer: Man Also Linked To 7/7 Says He Has Nothing To Hide

(AP)  His lawyer says a British man believed to be linked to the July 7 bombings in London denies trying to set up a terrorist training camp in the United States.

Federal prosecutors allege Haroon Rashid Aswat conspired to provide material support to terrorism in the U.S. beginning in 1999.

Manhattan prosecutors allege Aswat and another man were sent to the U.S. to assess property in Bly, Ore., for a training camp.

Aswat appeared yesterday before a judge in London where he was ordered held until Thursday pending a U.S. extradition request.

His lawyer says Aswat has nothing to hide, that he denies "any suggestion that he's a terrorist" and that he will challenge extradition.

He was taken into custody in Zambia last month. British officials want to question him about 20 phone calls reportedly made to some of the suicide bombers who killed 52 people.

Zambia announced his deportation to Britain on Sunday. Aswat, a British citizen of Indian descent, had been detained in Lusaka since July 20, where he was being questioned about 20 phone calls reportedly made on his South African cell phone with some of the bombers responsible for the July 7 transit attacks that killed 56 people in London.

BBC television later showed footage of a plane arriving at Northolt air base in west London. A police van, believed to be carrying Aswat, then drove from the base to Paddington Green police station.

The U.S. warrant accuses Aswat of conspiring with others between October 1999 and April 2000 to set up a camp in Oregon aimed at training and equipping individuals to "fight jihad in Afghanistan," police said in a statement.

Aswat is one of two associates of the Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri who are referred to but not named or charged in a 2002 indictment issued by a federal grand jury in Seattle against a Muslim convert from the area, officials have said. The other is Oussama Kassir, a Lebanese-born Swede, who was convicted of weapons violations in Sweden in 2003.

Aswat and Kassir "inspected the proposed jihad training camp at the Bly property ... and they and others participated in firearms training and viewed a video recording on the subject of improvised poisons" in November and December 1999, it said.

British police also charged two additional suspects in the failed July 21 attacks late Sunday. Three of the four main suspects in the failed July 21 London bombings appeared at a high-security court Monday charged with attempting to murder passengers on London's transport system.

Ibrahim Muktar Said, 27, Ramzi Mohammed, 23, and Yassin Hassan Omar, 24, were ordered to remain in custody until Nov. 14 on charges of attempted murder, conspiracy to murder, possessing or making explosives and conspiracy to use explosives. They face life in prison if convicted.