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| More Details About FBI's Yemeni Informant Who Set Self on Fire |
| 2004-11-27 |
| From The New York Times ..... As an embassy [the US Embassy in Sana, Yemen] employee for five years, until 1984, he cut an intriguing figure. "He [Mohamed Alanssi] dressed sharply and spoke good English," said Mohammed Almelahi, an embassy accountant. Mr. Alanssi coordinated travel arrangements for the embassy. But his tenure was rocky. He was fired twice, embassy employees said. Citing confidentiality, officials would not say why, and it is unclear whether the F.B.I. knew of that history when he signed on as an informer. "Let's just say that the embassy found him to be untrustworthy," said Mr. Almelahi, the accountant. .... After his embassy job, Mr. Alanssi dabbled in the construction business. He opened a travel agency and eventually moved it to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. But the business dried up, people who knew him said. Back in Sana in the late 1990's, he became enmeshed in a bizarre confrontation over a $71,700 loan he took out by mortgaging his house. He fell behind on the payments. A bank repossessed it, and his family, including several of his six children, was evicted. Days later, court records show, Mr. Alanssi broke into the house and the family remained there for the next four years in spite of repeated eviction notices. .... Maybe because of his problems in Sana, Mr. Alanssi shipped out for New York a year or so before the Sept. 11 attacks, which put intense pressure on federal agents to develop sources of information among Arabs in this country. In Brooklyn, he kept at his big plans. But they sputtered out. He could spin a sympathetic story about his travails, sometimes literally through tears. But the sympathy often curdled after he borrowed money and disappeared. .... But soon, Mr. Alanssi's Brooklyn contacts brought a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He could be a paid informer for federal agents who were desperate for leads in those days. His good fortune, it appears from court records, began with the arrest in October 2001 of a Yemeni man who ... had briefly been a partner in one of Mr. Alanssi's failed ventures. The former partner was charged with currency violations for trying to ship $140,000 in boxes of honey jars to Yemen. Soon, court filings show, the former partner agreed to cooperate in an investigation of Yemeni money handlers in Brooklyn, as investigators sought, among other things, to crack down on the kind of illegal money transfers that terrorists could exploit. Federal agents have said that their star informer, "CI1" - Mr. Alanssi - came to them through that investigation of the Yemeni money handlers. .... ... within a month, he [Alanssi] was offering a catch so big that an arrest promised worldwide headlines. It was Sheik Moayad, whose mosque he had sometimes attended in Sana. .... Soon Mr. Alanssi was going back and forth to Yemen at least three times, according to court filings. He provided tantalizing accounts of admissions he said Sheik Moayad had made in conversations there. Before long ... on instructions from his F.B.I. handlers, Mr. Alanssi was to lure Sheik Moayad to Germany, where he could be introduced on tape to the supposed former Black Panther who wanted to give millions to the jihad. In Frankfurt, it was a dance of sorts over three days in January 2003. Sometimes, Mr. Alanssi and the agent who was playing the part of the former Black Panther seemed nearly frantic to get comments that would convince a jury that the sheik "provided material support to terrorist organizations," as the charges would eventually read. Sheik Moayad, 55, a slender man with a loud, high-pitched voice, was no easy catch. He mentioned the need for secrecy and he had the men swear on the Koran. He did talk about preparing for jihad and supporting martyrs. But sometimes, he seemed ready to bolt because of the directness of these Muslims from America. On the hidden-camera videotape, the transcripts say, the sheik's assistant, Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed, 29, fluttered about nervously. The assistant was also charged and extradited by Germany. Both men are in jail in Brooklyn awaiting trial. The supposed Black Panther did not speak Arabic, so Mr. Alanssi translated, placing him in the center of the action. In a transcript prepared by the defense, the Black Panther seemed impatient. He asked directly if the next attack would be against Israel or the United States. ....The sheik often slipped through their grasp. He flatly denied that he had had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks. Asked if he knew of Islamic warriors in New York who might do battle against "the big Satan," his answer was, "We'll talk about this in its proper time." .... Some of the most charged material prosecutors have amassed, like the comment Mr. Ashcroft highlighted about delivering the $20 million to Mr. bin Laden, is based on Mr. Alanssi's accounts of conversations he said he had with the sheik, but which were not recorded. Those accounts of conversations could not be put before the jury without him. But if Mr. Alanssi does testify, the defense may turn the trial into a test of his credibility. And that could include his tangled history, from his dismissal from the embassy up to his bad check charge in May and beyond. .... Mr. Ashcroft's announcement of the charges against the sheik was made in March 2003. By that fall Mr. Alanssi appeared to have been tearing through the money he received. In Washington, where he was sometimes seen, he left $100 tips in barbershops and cheap restaurants, people who saw him then said. .... He ran Friendly Dry Cleaners for a while. But soon, the money was gone, people involved with him at the time said. .... He stopped making payments on the dry cleaning shop. His checks started bouncing. He was back to talking about his heart problems and diabetes. He was telling people he worried about his sick wife back in Yemen. He was borrowing money again. By December 2003, records show, he was in New York State court, pleading for more time to pay his debt on the dry cleaner. In early 2004, he seemed to be living out of hotel rooms in Washington. But he could still be persuasive, said a Washington hotel housekeeping manager who met him then. He literally cried, about his troubles, she said. "I believed him because he seemed like a successful man who was having just a little bit of bad luck," she said .... She lent him $3,800. She never heard from him again. .... ... in the letter he sent to an agent on Nov. 15, the day he went to the White House, he said the agent had sent him $200 that was supposed to have gone for a train ticket to New York, where he was evidently expected to begin preparing for his testimony. He had spent the $200 on diabetes medicine, he wrote. He would not testify, he wrote, unless he was sent first to Yemen to see his wife, who had stomach cancer. ..... |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #3 this guy goes through money like a minor-league Suha |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-11-27 4:23:45 PM |
| #2 The description of the sting operation against Sheik Moayad is just sad. These are professionals? |
| Posted by: beer_me 2004-11-27 3:41:41 PM |
| #1 Geebus, call me next time. I have friends in the lizsrd world. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-11-27 3:13:25 PM |