Jail snitch says key witness made up terrorist story

Thursday, May 8, 2003 | 10:04 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

DETROIT -- The credibility of the government's main witness in the terror trial of four Arab men was challenged in federal court on Wednesday by a former jailhouse neighbor.

The witness, Youssef Hmimssa, has described the four defendants in the case as an ambitious terror cell planning a wide range of attacks including strikes against Las Vegas resorts and California's Disneyland. Hmimssa testified that the men had referred to Las Vegas as the "City of Satan."

But a man who once occupied a cell next to Hmimssa, Omar Shishani, 48, testified on Wednesday that Hmimssa told him he did not know that the defendants were terrorists and only wanted revenge because he disliked them and because they had stolen from him. However, Shishani testified that Hmimssa never said he planned to lie in court.

"I just wanted to get revenge," Shishani said Hmimssa told him. "They stole from me. They ruined my life."

Hmimssa has previously testified that he so hated the defendants he labeled them an epithet in his cell phone directory.

"He never said literally that he would lie, but he said he wanted to get revenge for what they did to him," said Shishani, a Chechen born in Jordan who is a U.S. citizen and was himself a terror suspect in an unrelated case. "He just wanted to get off the hook."

Shishani was arrested at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in July carrying $12 million in counterfeit cashier's checks drawn from an account at a non-existent California bank. In June seven men were indicted by a federal grand jury in Las Vegas on charges of passing $800,000 in counterfeit checks at the MGM Grand from the same fictitious bank branch.

The Detroit trial is the first significant terror-related trial since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The defendants, Farouk Ali-Haimoud, 22, of Algeria, and three Moroccans, Karim Koubriti, 24, Ahmed Hannan, 34, and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi, 37, are charged with providing material support to terrorists and document fraud. They have pleaded not guilty.

Much of the prosecution's case, which concluded last week, relied on the testimony of Hmimssa.