Posted on 02/22/2005 10:24:03 AM PST by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK (AP) - An FBI informant testified Tuesday that he wanted to put "the world on notice" when he set himself on fire outside the White House, throwing the terror-funding case against a Yemeni sheik into turmoil.
Testifying for the second day as a hostile witness for the defense, Mohamed Alanssi said he had not intended to kill himself, even though he sent suicide notes to the FBI and The Washington Post.
"I did not have the intention but I wanted to put the government and the world on notice," Alanssi said.
Until he set himself on fire outside a White House gate in November, Alanssi, 53, had been scheduled to be the star prosecution witness against the defendant, Sheik Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad.
Instead, the defense called Alanssi to the stand in an effort to portray him as unstable, greedy and untruthful.
In the notes and interviews made public after he burned himself, Alanssi claimed the FBI promised him wealth and permanent U.S. residency in exchange for his cooperation. He told the Post that he was afraid the government might "put me in jail and might torture me" if he stopped cooperating.
Alanssi lured al-Moayad and his assistant, co-defendant Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed, to Germany by posing as the fixer for another FBI informant who supposedly wanted to donate $2.5 million to the terrorist groups Hamas and al-Qaida.
Al-Moayad and Zayed were charged with conspiring to fund and attempting to fund the two groups. Al-Moayad also is charged with supporting the groups.
If convicted, al-Moayad could receive a 60-year prison sentence and Zayed three decades.
He was more amenable to setting himself afire rather than wear panties on his head? How did he weigh out those two alternatives?
I guess he showed us, huh?
Looks like one of the Muslim brothers got to Alanssi and explained what will happen to his family if he co-operates.
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