Ali Hassan al-Muajjad will get his day in court in New York on Monday. The Yemenite is accused of having raised $20 million for Osama bin Laden. But the case against him hinges on the testimony of a single star witness who is now backing out. What he has to say may not be worth much anyway and could be a major embarrassment for the FBI. Mohammed al-Ansi chose the public stage for his last message to the world. As flames consumed his body, the 52-year-old Yemeni briefly stood upright, a living torch, until the pain forced him to fall to the ground. Directly in front of the entrance to the White House in Washington. His screams could be heard in nearby offices, and secret service agents rushed fire extinguishers to the scene. Bodyguards of United States President George W. Bush had turned Ansi away only moments earlier. The letter he had sought to deliver to Bush was still in the pocket of his trousers when he set his jacket aflame with a lighter.The aborted self-immolation took place on November 15, 2004. The Yemeni was rushed to a hospital in the US capital, where he is now recovering from the burns he suffered. Yet while his outlook may be good, that for the upcoming terrorist trial which depends on Ansi's testimony suddenly looks bleak. It is one of the biggest terror trials yet, and Ansi has decided not to play along. Ansi has been one of the FBI's key informants in the US war on terrorism. He has provided information that has led to the arrest of 20 suspected terrorists. But his most spectacular case is the current one soon to go on trial involving Yemeni imam Ali Hassan al-Muajjad, arrested in Frankfurt, Germany in January 2003 and subsequently extradited to the United States. Attorney General John Ashcroft claims that al-Muajjad raised $20 million to finance Al-Qaida terrorist activities and the German tabloid Bild has dubbed him "bin Laden's finance minister." His trial begins in New York on Monday. In addition to being a potentially major anti-terrorism coup, his arrest, which involved close cooperation between German and American authorities, is seen by US authorities as evidence that it is possible to cooperate effectively with the otherwise obstinate Germans.
At home, Muajjad, the principal imam at the most important mosque in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, is revered as a popular hero. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Salih earmarked $50,000 in government funds for the imam's legal defense, and personally asked German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder for Muajjad's release. But Salih's diplomatic offensive fell on deaf ears with a German government that has no interest in undermining the Americans. Just how risky it was for German security agents to help out the Americans became apparent soon after Muajjad's arrest, when angry protestors staged demonstrations in front of the German embassy in Yemen, prompting Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office to issue warnings about possible retaliatory attacks against German interests in the Arab region. And the Yemeni government was furious with Berlin, demanding irrefutable evidence and a fair trial for Muajjad. German security authorities see the Muajjad trial as a test case on just how reliable the information furnished by Germany's powerful ally is. As it turns out, things aren't going quite the way the Germans -- or the Americans -- had expected.