Trainee At Camp Had Australian Accent, Court Told

Sydney Morning Herald

Wednesday January 14, 2009

Geesche Jacobsen Crime Editor

A KOREAN-AMERICAN met a man with an Australian accent at a Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp in Pakistan weeks after the September 11 attacks, a Sydney court was told yesterday.

Yong Ki Kwon told the trial of five men charged with conspiring to plan a terrorist act that he knew the man only by the name Abu Asad.

Mr Kwon said he prayed, ate, exercised and studied with the man, who had arrived at the camp about four days before the end of his own training. He saw him clean a firearm and crawling and rolling on the ground in field manoeuvres, he said. He had later identified Abu Asad in a photograph, the court heard.

At the beginning of the trial the Crown alleged that one of the accused men, Moustafa Cheikho, had trained with Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan - an allegation he has disputed. Yesterday the jury was told it could consider Mr Kwon's evidence in relation to Moustafa Cheikho only, not in relation to any of his four co-accused.

The Supreme Court Justice Anthony Whealy also told the jury to disregard anything it might have ever heard about the organisation. "Please put anything you may have read about that organisation completely out of your mind and focus solely on the evidence you hear in the trial," he said.

Mr Kwon, 33, who served 38 months in prison after initially being charged with conspiracy and firearms offences, gave evidence via videolink from the US.

He told the court he had left his home in Virginia in September 2001 after an Islamic lecturer told him and some friends about a fatwa and the need to defend Afghanistan.

He made arrangements to go to the Lashkar-e-Taiba camp 2400 metres high in the mountains of Kashmir to undergo 45 days of training.

For the first 12 days the recruits learnt about weapons, taking apart and firing pistols, assault weapons, machine guns, and discharging rocket-propelled grenades and anti-aircraft guns.

For the remaining days, Mr Kwon said, his group of nine trainees learnt field manoeuvres, ambush techniques and practised target shooting.

At the end of his training the border to Afghanistan had been closed and Mr Kwon said he decided not to join Lashkar-e-Taiba's fight.

Instead, he said, he set up a business in Pakistan exporting mangoes. Eventually he returned to his family in South Korea, where the FBI questioned him in March 2003.

But, he admitted under questioning by Moustafa Cheikho's lawyer Richard Button, SC, that he had initially lied to the FBI in nine interviews, and had lied to a US grand jury, his own family and US and Pakistani immigration authorities. He had given the FBI three different reasons why he travelled to Pakistan, including that he planned to look for a wife.

"It suited Mr Kwon to lie to get something he wanted," Mr Button said. Mr Kwon agreed. He also admitted he had cheated in college to get better grades.

He also had things onhis mind, and was tired froma day's training, when hemet Abu Asad, Mr Button suggested to Mr Kwon. He agreed.

Mr Kwon had also toldUS authorities about other foreigners, including a "black French guy", who trained at the Lashkar-e-Taiba camp.

The trial and Mr Kwon's evidence continue.

© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald

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