Origins of LAX Plot Reportedly Detailed

Convicted terrorist Ahmed Ressam has confessed that his plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport originated in a jihad camp in Afghanistan, where he and other Islamic extremists were given training, instructions and money to launch bloody attacks during millennium celebrations, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday.

Ressam, 33, has told authorities that after receiving a year of training in firearms and advanced explosives at the camp in 1998, he was given $12,000 and a mission to return to his home city of Montreal “to set up a house and prepare for the arrival of the rest of the cell members who would help him conduct the millennium attack,” according to Assistant U.S. Atty. Joseph F. Bianco.

Once the group was reunited in Montreal, they were to launch as deadly a strike as possible, placing a suitcase bomb in a crowded LAX terminal at the height of holiday travel leading up to New Year’s Day 2000, Bianco said during opening statements in the federal trial of one of Ressam’s alleged co-conspirators.

That plot was thwarted when Ressam was stopped at the U.S.-Canadian border Dec. 14, 1999, and arrested with more than 130 pounds of bomb-making materials in his rental car.

“It was an evil and chilling plan, involving explosives, death and destruction,” Bianco told the jury of 10 women and two men at U.S. District Court in Manhattan. “Undoubtedly it would have resulted in the death of hundreds of people and injuries to hundreds more.”

Ressam has told authorities that his particular unit of terrorists in training, comprised of Algerian expatriates, was only one of many at the camp, according to Bianco. Other units, or cells, originated from Yemen, Germany, Italy, Jordan and other countries, and all left Afghanistan with their own missions of attacking U.S. and Western targets, some during millennium celebrations, Bianco said.

Bianco’s statements marked the government’s first official confirmation of a Times report that Ressam has been cooperating in an ongoing federal investigation into the foiled bomb plot after his April 6 conviction in Los Angeles on terrorism charges.

His defense attorney, Thomas Hillier, has said he would have no comment on his client’s cooperation.

Ressam faces as many as 140 years in prison and was scheduled to be sentenced today. The sentencing was postponed while Ressam continues to cooperate in the trial of Mokhtar Haouari and the ongoing terrorism investigation.

The prosecutor promised that as the government’s star witness against Haouari, Ressam will provide the jury not only with details of the alleged LAX plot, but also of his intimate knowledge of the jihad camps and the shadowy world of global Islamic terrorism.

“From Ressam’s testimony,” he told jurors, “you will get a rare and chilling glimpse into the inside world of a terrorist.”

Haouari, 32, is on trial on federal charges of conspiring to commit an international act of terrorism, allegedly by providing Ressam with logistical and financial support in the plot.

Ressam has told authorities that Haouari gave him $3,000 and a fake Canadian driver’s license to help him, and prosecutors allege that Haouari took steps to cover up his role in the plot after Ressam’s arrest. Haouari also is accused of sending a third man from Brooklyn to Seattle to provide Ressam with even more money, translation services, transportation and other help as he made his way toward LAX.

Haouari, a Montreal shopkeeper, also is charged with raising money through credit card fraud and bank fraud to provide material support and resources to Ressam and a terrorist organization. If convicted on all seven felony counts, he faces more than 85 years in prison.

Haouari has insisted he is innocent of all charges, particularly aiding and abetting a terrorism plot.

On Wednesday, as Bianco pointed to him and described his alleged role in the plot, Haouari shook his head vigorously and loudly muttered, “You lying [expletive].” That prompted U.S. District Judge John F. Keenan to order him to keep quiet.

In his opening statement, Haouari defense lawyer Daniel Ollen said his client knows Ressam and the man he allegedly sent to Seattle to help him, Abdelghani Meskini, who also has agreed to cooperate with the government and testify against Haouari. Ollen also admitted that Haouari has engaged in some fraudulent activity.

“But that man is not a terrorist,” he said, pointing to Haouari, who sat at the defense table sporting a crew-cut and a starched blue shirt. Ollen said Ressam and Meskini would make things up about Haouari as a way of getting reduced sentences for themselves.

Ressam’s disclosures about his links to the Afghanistan-based terrorist training camps are significant. Until his cooperation, authorities had lacked definitive information about whether the millennium plot was hatched by a few Montreal-based Muslim extremists, or whether it was linked in some way to the global terrorist network overseen by exiled Saudi militant Osama bin Laden.

Ressam’s confessions appear to confirm what U.S. intelligence officials have feared for months: that he was a member of one of many terrorist “sleeper cells” worldwide. Such cells, the officials say, have trained in the jihad camps, returned home and now await activation by the network to put their training to use in the jihad, or holy war, against the United States.

In his statement, prosecutor Bianco never mentioned Bin Laden, but U.S. intelligence officials say Bin Laden created and has financed the camps.

The officials also have put together a compelling trail connecting Ressam and others in the Montreal cell with Bin Laden associates, who they say helped in the LAX plot and two other millennium conspiracies in Jordan and Yemen. It was not known Wednesday if any of those alleged Ressam associates attended the camp with Ressam, as Bianco alleged. He did not identify them.

Several men allegedly associated with the Montreal cell are in custody in France, England and Algeria, and also attended the camps.

At the camp, Ressam has told authorities, attendees were taught various strategies and methods for conducting terrorist attacks against American targets, from U.S. embassies, warships and military installations to tourist sites abroad, hotels and airports, Bianco said.

“They also received training in conducting assassinations of government officials,” he said. “The teaching at the camp was very clear: The United States was the enemy, and its citizens and its interests anywhere around the world are viable targets for terrorist attacks.”

In Ressam’s case, Bianco said, he left Montreal early in 1998 so he could attend the camp, get training and, ultimately, “fight in some troubled spots around the world on behalf of his Muslim brothers.”

Ressam says he was told to return to Montreal and did so in early 1999. Over the next few months, however, he learned that his fellow cell members were having problems getting back into Canada, Bianco said. One of the cell leaders was stopped by immigration officials in London, and others decided it was too dangerous to attempt to travel to Canada, he said.

So Ressam proceeded on his own, and enlisted the help of Haouari, another former Algerian he had met in Montreal and stayed in contact with over the years, the prosecutor said. At the time, Haouari was engaged in small-time fraud schemes, including trafficking in fake credit cards, counterfeiting checks and making false identification documents, Bianco said.

Ressam told Haouari about his time spent in the camp, and Haouari said he would be interested in attending one too, and so would Meskini, Bianco said, adding that Ressam said he could help the two get access to the camps.

Ressam, Bianco said, then asked Haouari to borrow some money so he could go to the United States. And while he withheld some of the specifics, Ressam did tell Haouari he was planning “a very serious, dangerous and important operation and conveyed the violent nature of his plan,” Bianco said.

Haouari gave Ressam $3,000 “in an effort to help the operation” and sent Meskini from New York to Seattle to help him as well, Bianco said. Ressam had planned to drive the explosives-laden car to Seattle once he had gotten across the border and into Washington state.