UK terror suspect Haroon Aswat pleads guilty

NEW YORK - A British man of Indian Gujarati origin has pleaded guilty in a New York court to plotting to set up a terrorist training camp in the US state of Oregon.  Haroon Rashid Aswat, 40, who was was born in Batley, West Yorkshire, of Indian parents, admitted charges of supporting terrorism and conspiracy and faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced in July, according to media reports.
 Prosecutors said Aswat conspired with Abu Hamza, the radical cleric, to set up the training camp.  He was arrested in 2005 in Zambia and brought to the UK where a long extradition battle ended with him being sent to the US last year.
 In 2008 Aswat had been transferred to Broadmoor suffering with paranoid schizophrenia.  Five years later the European Court of Human Rights blocked his extradition saying he could face inhumane treatment in the US as there were no guarantees over where he would be detained.
 But the High Court in London eventually allowed his extradition after judges said they were satisfied with assurances from US authorities about the treatment he would receive in custody.
 Earlier this month his lawyer said an "agreement in principle" had been reached with prosecutors in New York.  Aswat was accused of being sent by Hamza to the US in 1999 to set up the camp in the remote hamlet of Bly, Oregon to train extremists to fight in Afghanistan.
 Prosecutors said he spent two months living at a mosque in Seattle.  They also said Aswat's name was in a ledger recovered by FBI agents from a safe house in Pakistan, used by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which listed people associated with al-Qaeda.
 Hamza was jailed for life in New York in January after being convicted of charges including the Oregon training camp plot.







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