U.K. terror suspect uses Internet to win support

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The Washington Post

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Declining to address the facts of the case, or to discuss his political and religious views, Ahmad and his family have instead focused on portraying him as a normal, middle-class British professional.

His Web site features a black-and-white photo of him as a smooth-faced toddler, eschewing adult pictures that would reveal his full beard, a suggestion of strict Islamic faith. The site describes in detail how as a child he was kind to animals, and includes dozens of testimonials from friends and colleagues. It also asserts that he never had any scrapes with the law, not even a parking ticket, before his arrest.

Ahmad's most outspoken supporters in Britain include luminaries such as actress Vanessa Redgrave and several members of Parliament. With Redgrave's backing, Ahmad ran for Parliament in May on a platform of overhauling Britain's anti-terrorism laws.

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Confined to his prison cell during the campaign, he received only 685 votes, or about 2 percent of the total cast in his district. But he managed to stir debate over a new treaty that provides for the speedier extradition of British terrorism suspects, such as himself, to the United States. The treaty allows the United States to seek extradition of Britons without submitting specific evidence of their guilt, and even if they do not face criminal charges at home, but the extraditable offense must be punishable by the laws of both states.

"Electing Babar would be the most powerful message on human rights and justice that could be given," the actor Corin Redgrave, Vanessa's brother, said at a campaign event in April, when he announced that he had recruited Ahmad to run for Parliament as a member of the antiwar Peace and Progress Party. "Just let the Americans try to say that an elected MP should be extradited."

Tracking a cyber-activist
U.S. law enforcement officials have said Ahmad secretly operated the azzam.com and its sister Web sites while studying and working at Imperial College, a science, technology and engineering school in central London.

After receiving a master's degree in mechanical engineering six years ago, Ahmad landed a job at Imperial as a computing and networking specialist and worked there full time until his arrest in August 2004. U.S. prosecutors allege that he ran his Web site in part by relying on college networks; British police raided his campus office when he was first arrested in 2003. Imperial College officials did not respond to phone calls and e-mails seeking comment.

Friends and colleagues at Imperial said they had no inkling of Ahmad's Internet activities. Although he was active in the campus Islamic Society, they said he was seen as a voice of moderation, not extremism.

When a controversial Islamic sect tried to establish a presence at Imperial a few years ago, Ahmad was outspoken in opposing the group but also tried to calm tensions by building consensus among Muslim students, said Mustafa Arif, the president of the Imperial College student union.

"He was the father figure in that debate," said Arif, who has known Ahmad for six years. "A lot of the vitriolic talk he was opposed to. He was one of those Muslims whose views were that Muslims need to sort themselves out before they can deal with who they think their oppressors are. That's why it was such a shock when he was arrested. It just went counter to everything we knew about him."

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