Terrorism Suspect Had U.S. Ship Data

British Subject Accused of Trying To Aid Taliban

British police escort relatives of Babar Ahmad from a London court after a hearing on charges that Ahmad recruited and raised support for the Taliban. (Alastair Grant -- AP)

A computer specialist arrested this week in England possessed the classified routes of a U.S. naval battle group and is part of an al Qaeda branch linked to Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed that authorities on three continents have been working to dismantle in recent weeks, according to court documents released yesterday and U.S. officials.

Babar Ahmad, who possessed three-year-old documents detailing the routes and vulnerabilities of the USS Constellation, which was then operating in the Straits of Hormuz, is the cousin of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a key figure in the recent arrests of alleged terrorist plotters, U.S. intelligence officials said.

Khan became part of a sting operation organized by the CIA after he was captured last month and agreed to send coded e-mail messages to al Qaeda contacts around the world, according to a senior U.S. official. U.S. authorities are using the information to identify other operatives.

Khan's arrest led to the discovery of computer equipment containing detailed pre-Sept. 11, 2001, surveillance of five U.S. financial buildings that caused U.S. officials to raise the threat alert level for the financial sectors in Washington, New York City and Newark.

"We believe there were direct and indirect connections between Khan and individuals we believe are involved in the pre-election threat" to sites in the United States, said the senior U.S. official, who asked not to be identified further. The official declined to give any more details about the link.

Khan was arrested after the June apprehension of Abu Musab al Baluchi, a nephew of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who oversaw the Sept. 11 attacks.

The unraveling of a network with direct links to Mohammed and the computer equipment and Internet connections discovered in the process are a valuable catch that has given U.S. and foreign intelligence and law enforcement officials dozens of new leads, officials said.

The computerized data from Ahmad's arrest alone -- 500 gigabytes -- resulted from nine search warrants and 100 subpoenas, said Michael J. Garcia, the assistant secretary of homeland security in charge of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Department of Homeland Security investigators are poring over the data -- the equivalent of 10 hard drives from moderately priced home computers -- for clues to other al Qaeda suspects, plots and Web sites.

Ahmad, who according to the court documents operated two U.S.-based Web sites to recruit and raise money for Taliban fighters, had been under investigation for three years, Garcia said. He is in London, and the United States is seeking to extradite him to face charges here.

Another law enforcement official said Ahmad's arrest on Wednesday and the extradition request were hastened after the apprehension of 12 men in England on Tuesday. They include Eisa Hindi, described as a significant al Qaeda figure in Britain who helped prepare the pre-Sept. 11 surveillance of the five U.S. financial buildings.

One of the men, the official said, had computerized information connected to Ahmad.

Ahmad, 30, a British subject of Pakistani descent, faces four charges of involvement with terrorism, each with a penalty of 10 years to life in prison, according to the criminal complaint unsealed yesterday by the U.S. attorney's office in New Haven, Conn., where Ahmad's Web site servers were based.

Ahmad appeared for the first time in a British court yesterday. Rosemary Fernandes, appearing for the U.S. government, said Ahmad had documents outlining the specific assignments of each ship, a drawing of the battle group's formations and details of its movements on April 29, 2001. The classified documents also noted that ships in the group could be vulnerable to a small craft firing rocket-propelled grenades, she said.

Ahmad's attorney denied he was involved in terrorism, and his sister told a Muslim news service in London that the charges were "all lies." Ahmad told the court he opposed extradition to the United States. A magistrate agreed to hold him pending another hearing next Friday.