Alleged terrorists sought to attack Las Vegas

Thursday, April 10, 2003 | 9:54 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

Alleged terrorists on trial in Detroit talked of destroying Las Vegas, the "city of Satan," according to testimony Wednesday.

A raid connected to the arrest found a videotape of the MGM Grand, which the government said was a potential target.

Las Vegas FBI spokesman Special Agent John Victoravich said that the Las Vegas office did not have a comment on the Detroit trial, but he did say that currently "there is no evidence of a credible threat to Las Vegas."

During an interview regarding the Detroit case last year, Las Vegas FBI spokesman Special Agent Daron Borst said that investigators know that terrorist organizations often come up with large lists of possible targets.

"We know from our experience that during the beginning phases of a planned attack terrorists brainstorm possible targets, but that doesn't mean all of them are viable," Borst said. "Because of the amount of surveillance, the amount of security and the amount of police protection Las Vegas is not an easy target."

The testimony by a key government witness Wednesday in Detroit also included that one of the men accused of being part of a terrorist "sleeper" cell told him about the possibility of massive attacks on the United States one month before the jetliner hijackings of Sept. 11.

Youssef Hmimssa said he was making fraudulent documents for Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and was told that there was a network of Islamic extremist "brothers" organizing in the country, and that possible targets included Las Vegas.

"This place is going to be just like Gaza Strip and West Bank," Hmimssa recalled Elmardoudi said.

Among the dozens of documents Hmimssa said Elmardoudi asked him to make or doctor was a photocopied United States visa registered to Mohamed Tahar Benaouicha. The visa purported to allow the bearer to attend flight school in Texas, but had expired in July 2001.

Hmimssa said Elmardoudi told him little about Benaouicha, but asked him to research flight schools. He testified that he didn't know whether Benaouicha attended flight school.

Charges stem from a raid of a Detroit apartment six days after the Sept. 11 attacks that led to the arrest of defendants Karim Koubriti, Ahmed Hannan and Farouk Ali-Haimoud.

Hannan, Koubriti, Ali-Haimoud and Elmardoudi are charged with conspiracy to provide material support or resources to terrorists. The trial is the first in the United States for an alleged terror cell detected following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

The government says it will be for the jury to consider whether there is a connection to those attacks, but the men are not charged in the strikes on New York and Washington.

Hmimssa, who met the men after being arrested in Chicago in a credit card scam and fleeing to the Detroit area, also testified that Ali-Haimoud talked to him in June 2001 about possible attacks on the United States.

Hmimssa said that the men talked of a dislike for Las Vegas, and that Hannan called Las Vegas the,"city of Satan."

The government says a videotape found in the raid that depicts potential targets includes footage of the MGM Grand and Disneyland. Hmimssa said Elmardoudi told him even a small attack on Disneyland would have a big effect.

When Hannan, Koubriti, Ali-Haimoud and Elmardoudi were indicted in August, MGM/ MIRAGE spokesman Alan Feldman said that the video with footage of the MGM does not lead to the conclusion that there is a threat to the hotel.

Defense lawyers say Hmimssa, who last week pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges stemming from indictments in Michigan, Illinois and Iowa, is a liar who is trying to save himself. They describe him as a master of misdirection and are expected to cross-examine him starting Friday.

Hmimssa testified that Elmardoudi gave him documents as samples to base his fraudulent ones on, but told him to destroy them following the arrest of Koubriti, Hannan and Ali-Haimoud. Hmimssa said he put them in an Iowa storage locker because he planned to give them to the FBI.

Arrested Sept. 28, 2001 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, as part of the government's nationwide probe into terrorism, Hmimssa testified that he was preparing to come forward and had an FBI telephone number in his wallet.

Hmimssa denied knowledge about terrorism in interviews with the FBI in September and November of 2001. It wasn't until March 2002, after talking about his situation with prisoners where he was held in Milan, that he made allegations about the defendants.

"I was scared and feared for my life," said Hmimssa, who described holding back information as "betraying this country."

He had appeared in court with Koubriti and Hannan, who he said both urged him to keep his mouth shut. He said they told him to agree that a day planner that other government witnesses say contains sketches of an American air base in Incerlik, Turkey, and a military hospital in Ammam, Jordan, was found under a couch.

"They were very concerned about the day planner," Hmimssa said.

He testified that he had never seen the planner. But when shown the sketches from it that the government says case the base and hospital, Hmimssa said he had seen similar drawings on a notepad in an apartment he shared with Koubriti and Hannan in Dearborn in June 2001.

In two days of questioning on the stand by a federal prosecutor, Hmimssa claimed the men wanted to ship arms to the Middle East and get "brothers" with extremist leanings into the United States illegally. He says they tried to recruit him because of his computer skills and later threatened him when he wouldn't cooperate.

While offering few specifics, Hmimssa said the men wanted Hmimssa to make them fake airport and FBI identification. And he said Koubriti wanted a license to haul hazardous materials and once, when angered, expressed a desire to drive a truck into a crowd coming out of a Detroit baseball stadium, presumably Comerica Park where the Tigers play.

Hmimssa said Elmardoudi planned to teach him a code used by the four men to communicate that used the names of members of a 1986 Moroccan soccer team to represent numbers. The defendants, as well as Hmimssa, are from Morocco except for Ali-Haimoud, who is from Algeria.

An important part of their fund-raising effort was a long-distance calling scam run by Elmardoudi at airports, Hmimssa said. Elmardoudi was charged in Minneapolis in a separate case where he allegedly remembered numbers people typed in from their calling cards, used some of them and sold other codes.

Elmardoudi was arrested in November in North Carolina.

Charges against Hmimssa in Michigan stemmed from the same raid that led to the arrest of Koubriti, Hannan and Ali-Haimoud. Hmimssa's photo and a Michael Saisa alias he used were found on false IDs in the apartment, but Hmimssa testified Wednesday that those had been stolen from him.

When Koubriti, Hannan and Hmimssa were in custody on document fraud charges in October 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft said that three Arab men in Michigan were "suspected of having knowledge" of the Sept. 11 attacks. He later backed off that statement.

In January 2002, the government said it was trying to build a terrorism case against Hmimssa, Koubriti and Hannan, but Hmimssa's case was later separated from that of the other defendants.