Man in U.S. Custody Has Ties to Al Qaeda
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 25, 2005; Page A14
It is safe to assume that most people would not react to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in quite the same way as Mohammed Junaid Babar. After all, the longtime resident of Queens, N.Y., told a Canadian television network that his own mother had been one of the survivors -- barely escaping from the ninth floor of one of the towers before it collapsed.
Yet, Babar said in that same interview from Pakistan in the fall of 2001, his "loyalty is to the Muslims, not the Americans."
"I will kill every American that I see in Afghanistan, and while I am in Pakistan, if I see them in Pakistan, I will kill every American soldier I can in Pakistan," he said during the interview with ITN Five News.
Thus began the strange jihadist odyssey of Babar, 30, a naturalized U.S. citizen and Yankees fan who said he gave up a $70,000-a-year job as a computer programmer to join al Qaeda operatives in plotting attacks against U.S. soldiers and targets in Britain.
Now in U.S. custody after pleading guilty to terrorism charges last year, Babar has proved invaluable to U.S. and British investigators probing this month's attacks on the London transit system, numerous officials said. He has identified at least one of the suicide bombers, Mohammed Sidique Khan, through photographs and has provided other details that may be helpful in unraveling the plot, according to law enforcement and intelligence sources.
The revelation that Babar is linked to the July 7 London attacks, which killed at least 56 including the four suicide bombers, is only the latest connection to emerge between the grandson of Pakistani immigrants and al Qaeda.
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