Briton Used Internet As His Bully Pulpit

In contrast, many other Web sites sponsored by Islamic extremists in those days were technologically primitive and often published in Arabic, limiting their audience. Azzam.com represented a breakthrough, allowing militant groups to spread their message worldwide and recruit new followers.

"It was the very first real al Qaeda Web site," said Evan Kohlmann, a New York-based terrorism researcher who has tracked Azzam.com since the late 1990s. "It taught an entire generation about jihad. Even in its nascency, it was professional. It wasn't technically sophisticated, but it was professional looking, definitely more professional than any other jihadi Web sites out there."

According to a U.S. indictment filed in October, Ahmad used Azzam.com to solicit donations for Chechen rebels and the Taliban, and arranged for the training and transportation of Islamic fighters. Among the specific charges is one alleging that Azzam.com posted messages in early 2001 containing specific instructions for supporters to deliver cash payments of up to $20,000 to Taliban officials in Pakistan.

In addition, the indictment states, Ahmad and unnamed co-conspirators bought camouflage suits, global positioning equipment and gas masks for Islamic militants.

While federal prosecutors described Ahmad's material support for terrorist groups as significant, they said the primary threat posed by his Web sites was their power to spread dangerous ideas by exhorting people around the world to take up arms and become Islamic fighters themselves.

Kohlmann, the terrorism researcher, said Azzam.com made its reputation in part by hawking some of the earliest English-language videotapes to glorify Islamic fighters. One top-selling video, titled "Martyrs of Bosnia," was produced in 1997 and featured a masked narrator -- thought to be Ahmad -- waving an automatic rifle and urging Muslims to go to the Balkans to kill nonbelievers.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Azzam.com printed a lengthy article in praise of the "Nineteen Lions," a reference to the 19 hijackers who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

"The attacks on September 11 2001, which saw the WTC turned to rubble and destroyed an entire section of the Pentagon, were the single most courageous and momentous act of Modern History, sending shockwaves throughout the World, which are still palpable today," read the article, signed by a person who identified himself as Muadh bin Abdullah Al-Madani, from Uruzgan, Afghanistan. "Without doubt, it was the defining moment in the battle between those who wish to destroy Islam and those who wish to make the Name of Allah Most High."

Mounting a Defense

U.S. prosecutors have outlined their case against Ahmad in an indictment and a supporting affidavit filed last year in U.S. District Court in Connecticut, which is where the Briton will face trial if he is extradited. The British government is scheduled to decide in September whether to approve Ahmad's transfer, although both sides expect the case will be appealed to the British High Court.

Ahmad was first arrested in December 2003 by British police on suspicion of terrorist activities, but they released him after a week and declined to file charges. U.S. prosecutors pressed their own charges nine months later, claiming jurisdiction because he allegedly used Internet service providers in Connecticut and Nevada.

During a series of extradition hearings in London since then, U.S. government officials have made other allegations against Ahmad, accusing him of attempting to organize a training camp for Islamic militants in Arizona in 1998 and meeting people near Phoenix who had access to bin Laden. Lawyers representing the U.S. government during the extradition hearings have also said that Ahmad tried to buy 5,000 tons of sulfur phosphate, allegedly for mixing explosives, in 1997 and 1998.

Although London earned a reputation in the 1990s as a haven for Islamic extremists and radical clerics who took advantage of free speech protections to advocate violence and the overthrow of governments, Ahmad did his work secretly and went to considerable lengths to conceal his identity as the sponsor of Azzam.com, according to the indictment.