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FAKE PASSPORTS SOLD AT MOSQUE Mar 16 2003 [a few years old but very interesting what goes on in the mosques in London and I'm sure here as well]

One's in the name of bin Laden henchman

By Graham Johnson, Investigations Editor

A MUSLIM extremist is making fake passports to help fanatics sneak into Britain.

The scam exposes a huge hole in national security as fears grow of a terror attack in Britain.

Our investigator bought three phoney passports from a North African fundamentalist who boasts of supplying fake documents to fanatics.

One was even in the name of Midhat Mursi, Osama bin Laden's chemical weapons mastermind dubbed Dr Death and currently on the run from the FBI.

"Everybody comes to me for passports. I make passports and then go to the mosque to hand it to them."

Mekdaia, 29, "works" from a mosque at the Muslim Welfare House on London's Seven Sisters Road.

He uses the prayer room there - where he says worshippers are doused in alcohol-free Mujahadeen fighters' perfume before they pray - to cover his illicit trade in passports. [They do have a fascination with perfume, remember the 7-7 bombers bought many boxes of expensive perfume]

Sunday Mirror investigators first negotiated the sale of one counterfeit French passport as he put his shoes back on seconds after praying.

Mekdaia said: "I do a good job, my brother. Everybody comes and gives me a deposit, photo, first name and surname, date of birth, height and eye colour. Then tomorrow they come and take their passport. They say, 'Thank you, brother', and go away."

To the man in the street, Mekdaia looks like a well-to-do businessman sporting expensive designer casual clothes and tinted shades.

But he is a fanatical zealot who hates Britain and the USA and insists that he is going to Iraq to fight in the war against the West.

Our investigators told Mekdaia that Midhat Mursi was hiding out in the war-torn Islamic state of Chechnya and needed to travel to Britain.

Mursi, a leader in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad movement, is in the top 50 on the FBI's most wanted terrorists list with a five million dollar bounty on his head.

Before the fall of the Taliban, Egyptian-born Mursi ran al-Qaeda's chemical weapons programme near Jalalabad in Afghanistan. He made worldwide headlines last year after videotapes from the camp showed live puppies writhing in pain after being exposed to a chemical agent.

At the camp Mursi trained terrorists to deploy chemical weapons. His "pupils" included one man who was imprisoned in the US for a plot to bomb Los Angeles airport in 2000.

Mekdaia boasted how he also sells fake National Insurance cards so that illegal immigrants can work in the UK or claim benefits.

The bogus ID also helps terrorist cells blend into British society and open bank and credit card accounts.

Mekdaia, who conducted his shady conversations in French, Arabic and broken English, said: "I make fake National Insurance numbers. Sometimes the names on the cards, along with a number, I just make them up in my head. The card is original but the number is fake.

"I made three for Mohammed (another client) last week. Every week he comes and collects three or four with different names."

Our reporter told Mekdaia that we needed a fake passport to smuggle another muslim extremist into Britain from Germany.

He said: "He could travel here if he wants to. He can work here."

Looking from side to side, Mekdaia bragged that he had made passports for North Africans, Ghanaians and people from the Ivory Coast in Africa.

"They take the plane and come here without problems," he said. He explained how he switches the photographs from one passport to another and doctors details.

He grinned: "I take the picture out and put in another picture, put the plastic on and that's it."

Mekdaia - who says he learned to use a gun in Afghanistan in 1998 - introduced our investigator to an illegal immigrant called Hasman who came to the UK on one of Mekdaia's passports.

Hasman said: "Don't worry, he has made passports for everybody, even me.

"He makes you a passport and you could go to Canada on it, I swear. Look at mine. The passport name is not mine but the picture is me."