Opinion ID: 2427524
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: 2005: Shah and Sabir Swear Allegiance to al Qaeda and Attempt To Provide Material Support

Text: For most of the time between May 2004 and May 2005, Sabir was out of the United States, working at a Saudi military hospital in Riyadh. On May 20, 2005, during a visit to New York, Sabir met with Saeed and Agent Soufan at Shah's Bronx apartment. Sabir told Soufan that he would soon be returning to Riyadh. He expressed interest in meeting with mujahideen operating in Saudi Arabia and agreed to provide medical assistance to any who were wounded. See GX 906T at 15, 87. He suggested that he was ideally situated to provide such assistance because he would have a car in Riyadh and carte blanche to move freely about the city. Id. at 67. To ensure that Shah and Sabir were, in fact, knowingly proffering support for terrorism, Soufan stated that the purpose of our war, ... our jihad  is to [e]xpel the infidels from the Arabian peninsula, id. at 22, and he repeatedly identified Sheikh Osama (in context a clear reference to Osama bin Laden) as the leader of that effort, see, e.g., id. at 31, 34, 59, 87, 98-99. Shah quickly agreed to the need for war to [e]xpel the Jews and the Christians from the Arabian Peninsula, id. at 22, while Sabir observed that those fighting such a war were striving in the way of Allah and most deserving of his help, id. at 66. To permit mujahideen needing medical assistance to contact him in Riyadh, Sabir provided Soufan with his personal and work telephone numbers. See id. at 40, 83. When Shah and Soufan noted that writing down this contact information might create a security risk, Sabir encoded the numbers using a code provided by Soufan. See id. at 49-53. Sabir and Shah then participated in bayat, a ritual in which each swore an oath of allegiance to al Qaeda, promising to serve as a soldier of Islam and to protect brothers on the path of Jihad  and the path of al Qaeda. Id. at 106-08, 114-16. The men further swore obedience to the guardians of the pledge, whom Soufan expressly identified as Sheikh Osama, i.e., Osama bin Laden, and his second in command, Doctor Ayman Zawahiri. Id. at 98, 108-10, 115.