When Syed Haris Ahmed first sat down with counterterrorism agents on March 10, 2006, the Georgia Tech student acted as if he had done nothing wrong.
But over the next week, through 12 hours of arduous and sometimes-threatening questioning, the 21-year-old Ahmed changed his story dramatically. He admitted to taking "casing videos" of Washington landmarks, including the U.S. Capitol, that ended up on the computer of a London terrorist. He acknowledged meeting with extremists in Toronto and going to Pakistan for jihadist military training.
Even so, Ahmed told agents at one point, "It was nothing. It was just childish talk and stuff like that." He also admitted in a signed statement: "I hoped to be recruited into a Jihadi training camp where I could learn how to fight Muslim oppressors everywhere."
By March 17, 2006, Ahmed told agents that his jihadist thoughts led him to contemplate attacks on Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, the Masonic Temple in Washington and oil refineries in Texas. Ahmed said he contemplated attacking Dobbins because he once lived near there. He said he believed Freemasons were like the "devil." He suggested the attack on U.S. oil refineries to raise the price of oil and bring more money to the Middle East, because "it is Muslim property and it's being stolen," Ahmed told agents.
Ahmed, born in Pakistan and raised in Dawsonville, now stands indicted with co-defendant Ehsanul Islam Sadequee of Roswell of federal charges of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. Ahmed and Sadequee, who was born in Virginia to Bangladeshi parents, have pleaded not guilty.
The transcripts of Ahmed's taped interviews were released Monday at a hearing in which a judge is considering a motion to suppress Ahmed's statements to counterterrorism agents. Ahmed, then a 21-year-old Georgia Tech mechanical engineering student, was interviewed on five occasions —- initially at his home, then at a hotel and, the final three times, at FBI headquarters in Atlanta. Ahmed did not know the interviews were being secretly tape recorded.
FBI Special Agent Mark Richards testified Monday that Ahmed initially lied to investigators, minimizing his involvement. Later, however, Ahmed divulged more and more about his activities with Sadequee.
Ahmed's primary interrogators were Richards, a member of the FBI's counterrorism task force, and Khalid Sediqi, a DeKalb County detective and Muslim who was brought in to create a rapport with Ahmed.
The agents had suspected Ahmed and Sadequee, who was in Bangladesh at the time of the first FBI interview, were involved in terrorist activities. Because their leads were drying up and they worried Sadequee could be plotting an attack from overseas, they confronted Ahmed at his rental house near the Georgia Tech campus.
Over the course of the interviews, Ahmed became increasingly defensive and weary, at one point asking the agents if they thought it would be "safer for America" if he just left the country.
"No, I think it's going to be safer if you sit here and tell me what's going on," Sediqi said.
"Nothing's going on, man, just kids," Ahmed answered, downplaying his and Sadequee's actions.
The agents pressed Ahmed to tell them the truth, saying he could only help himself by telling what he knew and only make matters worse if he didn't.
If Ahmed tried to conceal Sadequee's activities, he was just as guilty, the agents told him. "I'm saying no more Georgia Tech," Sediqi said. "I'm saying no more masjid [mosque]. I'm talking about praying [in] a six-by-six cell."
Ahmed initially said he knew little about the April 2005 trip he took with Sadequee to Washington, where the videos were taken. The videos were Sadequee's idea, and he had no idea why they were going to the nation's capital until they got there, Ahmed told the agents.
Ahmed later admitted the videos were his idea, he used his father's camera and he knew Sadequee was going to put them online so they could be accessed by "the brothers," meaning terrorist extremists, Richards testified.
The casing videos, Richards said, were found on the computer of Younis Tsouli, an al-Qaeda-inspired computer expert in London now serving 10 years in prison.
Ahmed admitted the videos would be helpful to "plan something," according to the transcripts.
Plan what? he was asked.
"Some kind of terrorist act. I don't know," Ahmed answered.
At one point, the agents asked him directly if he were planning terrorist activity. Ahmed replied: "Look man . . . it was nothing; it was just childish talk and stuff like that."
He said he went to Pakistan in 2005, intending to join Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, an extremist group operating in Kashmir and wanted to join a militant training camp.
Still, Ahmed told the agents his activities were not a cause for concern.
"There is nothing to be worried about," Ahmed said during a March 15, 2006, interview. "We are just stupid, childish. You know we did, yeah, stupid mistake. We went and took a video, but in reality it means nothing. You look at the video. The quality is so stupid, you know. It had nothing of value whatsoever."
Sediqi, the DeKalb detective, would later scold him for such a thought.
"You think it's silly," the detective said. "You think it's stupid. But people are getting arrested and going to jail for it. ... Silly little things that you say and do and talk and take pictures of become big things, once they get into people's hands."
AN ADMISSION
Ahmed admitted the videos would be helpful to "plan something," according to the transcripts.
Plan what? he was asked.
"Some kind of terrorist act, I don't know," Ahmed answered.
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/printedition/2008/01/15/terror0115.htmlMove along folks. Nothing to see here. It's all our meddling fault....
