PHOENIX – A former U.S. sailor who sent e-mail messages to a jihadist Internet site while a crewman on a Navy destroyer in the Middle East was identified Friday as a communications specialist and Muslim convert, according to sources familiar with the investigation and Navy records.
But a woman speaking on behalf of Hassan Abujihaad, who left the Navy in January 2002, denied Friday that he posted anti-American views on the site, as authorities assert, or did anything wrong.
Abujihaad has not been arrested or charged with any wrongdoing. Federal officials had previously declined to identify him by name.
According to the federal officials, Abujihaad, while serving on the guided missile destroyer Benfold in the Middle East in late 2000 and 2001, sent e-mail messages to a pro-Taliban Web site, including one in which he allegedly praised the deadly October 2000 attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole by terrorists in Yemen.
The messages surfaced in court documents last week in connection with the arrest in Britain of Babar Ahmad, a 30-year-old college employee wanted by U.S. authorities on charges that he acted as a fund-raiser and propagandist for the Taliban and for Muslim separatist fighters in Chechnya.
Ahmad is also accused of operating a defunct pro-Taliban Web site with which the sailor allegedly exchanged messages. He is a cousin of suspected al-Qaida member Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, whose recent arrest in Pakistan triggered a spate of terrorism alerts this month in New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C.
Federal agents are trying to determine how Ahmad ended up in possession of detailed and highly classified information about the San Diego-based aircraft carrier battle group the Benfold was part of, including its classified travel plans and its vulnerability to attack.
On Friday, Lt. Mike Kafka, a Navy spokesman, said, “There is currently no tie between the former sailor and the documents recovered during the raid in London” that contained details on the ships accompanying the aircraft carrier Constellation, including the Benfold.
The battle group was involved in actions against Afghanistan and Iraq. Authorities said Ahmad knew when the battle group was scheduled to pass through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, and that one document noted the ships were vulnerable to attack by small craft armed with rocket-propelled grenades.
Deedra Abboud, executive director of the Arizona chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who is acting as spokeswoman for Abujihaad, said he has done nothing wrong and never mishandled classified information.
“He was very surprised to hear he might be connected to anything related to terrorism,” Abboud said of Abujihaad, who lives in the Phoenix area and whom she said was a convert to Islam. “He’s now scared he might get picked up for something he can’t imagine being a part of.
“He does not feel that he made any anti-American statements,” she said.
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