www.DemocraticFundamentalism.org - Archives - Historical Events - The War On Terrorism - A Witness Against Al QaedaSays the U.S. Let Him Down 6/3/2002

	Globalization - Countries - United_States see also Archives - Historical Events - 911 A Witness Against Al Qaeda Says the U.S. Let Him Down By JUDITH MILLER June 3, 2002 New York Times



	Assam Al Ridi, an Egyptian-American pilot, has seen Osama bin Laden and his world of militant Islam up close, and he is one of the few people who helped prosecutors penetrate it long before Sept. 11. Early last year, his testimony was crucial in convicting Mr. bin Laden's former personal secretary for conspiring in the 1998 plot by Al Qaeda to bomb two American embassies in Africa, in which more than 200 people died. But Mr. Al Ridi says that since he described his dealings with Mr. bin Laden, his life has taken a harsh turn.Even though the Justice Department offered to protect him from reprisals by Egypt, he said, he was detained, kicked and held incommunicado for 24 hours during a trip to Cairo last May to see his parents. When the Federal Bureau of Investigation sought his help again after the Sept. 11 attacks, he was fired by a Middle Eastern airline that suddenly viewed him as a security risk. Mr. Al Ridi, 43, sees his treatment as a sign of the potential perils facing Arabs and Muslims who help the F.B.I. in its war on terror. Justice Department officials acknowledge that he has suffered from the fallout. But they say that while they have tried to help him, there are limits to what they can do, especially with other countries. "I said, `Help us, and we'll help you,' and it didn't work out," said Robert Miranda, an F.B.I. agent in Dallas dealing with Mr. Al Ridi. "It's been a whole ugly mess." Law enforcement officials now worry that Mr. Al Ridi's complaints could create more problems when the F.B.I. is eager to recruit Arab and Muslim informants and remake itself with a much greater domestic intelligence capability. "Things like this make recruitment 100 times harder," said Robert M. Blitzer, a former senior F.B.I. counterterrorism official. At the trial, Mr. Al Ridi, who was born in Cairo and became an American citizen in 1994, helped convict Wadih El-Hage, who was once Mr. bin Laden's personal secretary. Mr. Al Ridi testified that he had bought a surplus United States military jet for Mr. bin Laden in 1992 and then flew the plane to Sudan, where Mr. bin Laden ran businesses while quietly building his Qaeda network. Mr. Al Ridi testified that Mr. El-Hage had told him the plane might be used to move American-made Stinger missiles left from the Afghan-Soviet war. Mr. Al Ridi, who was never part of Al Qaeda and was not charged with a crime, said recently that some of Mr. bin Laden's activities were suspicious. But he said that he viewed his involvement with Mr. bin Laden as a business deal, and that he never saw any sign of the terror to come. Now, unable to find work in aviation, Mr. Al Ridi is living off his nearly exhausted savings with his wife and five children in a rented house near Dallas. "I am at the end of my rope," he said in one of several interviews, the first by a major witness in the embassy bombings trial. "The government and I had a gentleman's agreement: Help us, they told me, and we won't forget you. But they have forgotten me, except when they need information." Mr. Miranda, the F.B.I. agent, said he had twice recommended that officials at bureau headquarters give Mr. Al Ridi $50,000 for his help. He said they were considering the request. Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who was the prosecutor in the embassy bombing case and is now the United States attorney in Chicago, confirmed that the government had tried to protect Mr. Al Ridi from reprisals in Egypt, which has long clamped down on Islamic militants. But law enforcement officials said they could not guarantee that nothing bad would happen to him there. "We can control only what we can control," one federal official said. Still, the officials say, Mr. Al Ridi's complaints provide a glimpse of how delicate and taxing it can be to maintain the confidence of vulnerable witnesses. Like many other witnesses, in cases of organized crime or terror, Mr. Al Ridi says he now sees how hard it is to shake free of the shadows caused by old associations. Mr. Al Ridi said he was living in the Dallas area in 1983 when he heeded a call from a Muslim scholar, Abdullah Azzam, to support the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union. He went to Pakistan, where he later met Mr. bin Laden, who became a leader in that fight. He met Mr. El-Hage, a student also in thrall to the jihad, during a return visit to the United States. Mr. Al Ridi said he had once helped the Central Intelligence Agency obtain photographs of a downed Russian helicopter. He also arranged a shipment of 25 heavy-duty sniper guns to the Afghan resistance in 1987. Though C.I.A. officials say they never supplied weapons to Mr. bin Laden, Mr. Al Ridi said the agency knew that Mr. bin Laden ended up with some of the guns. Still, he said, he later saw many of the guns "rusting away in their boxes." After the Afghans expelled the Soviets in 1989, the jihad attracted a different kind of believer, Mr. Al Ridi said — "young Muslim kids, without passports, running away from who knows what." Depressed by this, he said, he returned to Texas. When Sheik Abdullah was assassinated shortly after that, he said, "the Afghan chapter and jihad were closed for me." But not entirely, as it turned out. In 1992, Mr. Al Ridi said, Mr. El-Hage called, asking him to buy the plane. Mr. Al Ridi agreed — purely, he said, because he needed cash. Mr. Al Ridi said he paid $210,000 to a dealer in Arizona for a T-39 passenger jet that had been retired by the United States military, earning a $25,000 fee. He flew it to Sudan and handed the keys to Mr. bin Laden. The next day, Mr. Al Ridi testified last year, he told Mr. bin Laden that he objected to "the fact that you are a rich man and trying to be a military leader." He told Mr. bin Laden that his spurring of young Arabs into battle had amounted to their own "flat killing, not jihad." He said Mr. bin Laden took the scolding in stride. He then offered him a job as a pilot, Mr. Al Ridi said, but he declined. The two men also discussed starting a crop-dusting business in Sudan, Mr. Al Ridi said. He said he told the F.B.I. about this in 1999, but the bureau never asked him for a report he had written for Mr. bin Laden until after Sept. 11, when agents realized that one of the hijackers had inquired about crop-dusting planes. Mr. Al Ridi said that as far as he knew, Mr. bin Laden never used the surplus jet to move the shoulder-mounted Stinger missiles from Pakistan to Sudan. Mr. Al Ridi also flew the plane to Nairobi from Sudan in 1993, taking five men who he thought were working on a business project. Mr. Al Ridi later learned, he said, that one of the men was Muhammad Atef, Al Qaeda's senior military commander, who is believed to have died last fall in Afghanistan. He said he heard the men had gone to Somalia to stir tribal leaders against American peacekeeping forces. Mr. Al Ridi said he flew the plane one last time in 1995, but the brakes failed and it crashed into a sand dune. The authorities said his co-pilot was Ihab Mohammed Ali, a member of Al Qaeda known as Nawawi who had attended flight school in Oklahoma and is in federal custody. Given these connections, investigators say, Mr. Al Ridi's name came up once they started looking into the embassy bombings in 1998. Mr. Al Ridi was living in Bahrain, and he agreed to return to Dallas for an interview in late 1999. He said he did not ask for money, and he told Mr. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor, that he did not want to be placed in the witness protection program. Records show that the government spent $1 million to provide two former members of Al Qaeda, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and also testified at the trial, with new identities. But on the stand in February 2001, Mr. Al Ridi did ask for one favor: protection from Egypt, which, having been victimized by Muslim-inspired terror, has dealt harshly with veterans of the Afghan campaign. Mr. Fitzgerald responded by asking Mr. Al Ridi, "What is it that the United States government promised to do for you to aid in your situation?" Mr. Al Ridi replied that the Justice Department had pledged to tell Egyptian officials that "I'm not involved directly with Osama in any of his acts." Before going to Egypt last May, Mr. Al Ridi said, he alerted F.B.I. officials in Cairo. Nevertheless, he was detained. He said he managed to leave a message for Mr. Miranda, the agent in Dallas, before he was kicked while handcuffed near a urinal and deprived of sleep, food and water. After nearly a day, he said, the F.B.I. got him out of jail. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Al Ridi, who was a pilot trainer for Qatar Airways in Qatar, said F.B.I. agents went there to interview him again about Mr. bin Laden. Mr. Al Ridi expressed concern that the airline might misconstrue why they were there. The agents assured him, he said, that Qatari security knew he was helping them. But shortly after their visit, he said, he was fired. Egyptian officials and Qatar Airways executives did not respond to requests for comment. Justice Department officials said the F.B.I. tried unsuccessfully to allay the airline's concerns. Worried about further problems, Mr. Miranda and Mr. Fitzgerald also arranged for Mr. Al Ridi's brother to move from Cairo to the United States, officials said. For weeks, though, Mr. Al Ridi said he also tried to call Mr. Fitzgerald, who was swamped with post-Sept. 11 investigative work. Mr. Al Ridi said he wanted Mr. Fitzgerald to write a letter to counter fears among potential employers that it would be risky to hire him. Mr. Fitzgerald said he would write a letter commending Mr. Al Ridi's service as a government witness. But he said no federal prosecutor would write what Mr. Al Ridi really wants — a letter that would give him a "clean bill of health." New information about his past dealings could still emerge, Mr. Fitzgerald said. He said he also could understand why any airline would be wary of a pilot who had worked for Osama bin Laden. Mr. Al Ridi countered that the prosecutors "tell me I did the right thing" in cooperating. But, he asked, "Would others do what I did if they knew the price I have paid?"