Ranch’s efforts at terror training detailed presents a detailed investigation, based mostly on an interview with a former tenant of the Oregon ranch the Feds allege Seattle-area activist James Ujaama helped lease with an eye to turning it into a terrorist training camp.

According to the article, Ujaama’s involvement has been accurately described in prior stories about the investigation – there really were jihadis living at the camp – but his interest in setting it up and running it was apparently based on the intriguing marketing concept of jihad adventure travel, from which he hoped to make a buck or two.

It’s an interesting read. The story reminds me of the various militia punch-and-judy stories from the Northwest in the mid-nineties.

The question that comes to my mind remains: is it acceptable to hold someone incommunicado because they have excercised poor judgement in life choices or posted inflammatory rhetoric to a web site?

One thought on “PI article on Ujaama case

  1. When I saw this article, I KNEW that I’d seen James Ujaama somewhere before. Turns out he is a personal acquaintance of my Pakistani-American friend, Riz Samad, owner of New Wave Travel (a travel agency in the U-District where I help out at part-time, while doing website work on an otherwise unused office computer). Lately, Riz has been interviewed by several FBI agents (whom he claims are harassing him for some reason) as well as local media staff members. This is probably partly because of Riz’s acquaintance with the Ujaama brothers, and partly because he is a prominent Muslim business owner with a large international-travel based client base. Riz is afraid to speak much to the press since the FBI started poking around this office (from where I am now writing). I wonder, should this situation with the FBI snoops be getting more public/media attention, or should I clam up about it too, lest I get a knock on my apartment door in the middle of the night one of these days…?

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