Abdelghani Meskini - 'The other man'

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Le procès de l'affaire Dahoumène renvoyé à la prochaine session

Lundi 12 Mai 2008 -- Inscrit à l’ordre de cette session, le procès des détenus pour affaire de terrorisme et «ayant bénéficié par erreur» des dispositions de la charte pour la réconciliation nationale est renvoyé à la prochaine session, a-t-on appris hier de source judiciaire. Le procès devait se tenir hier après avoir été reporté une première fois pour «refus des mis en cause de répondre aux questions du magistrat». Dans cette affaire, trois personnes, en l’occurrence Dahoumène Abdelmadjid, Mourad Ykhlef et Adel Boumazbar, auront à répondre de chefs d’inculpation d’appartenance à un réseau terroriste international ayant des liens avec des réseaux algériens. Prévu une première fois en 2005, le procès a été reporté à plusieurs reprises. L’affaire avait connu un rebondissement lorsqu’un magistrat a décidé d’appliquer en leur faveur les dispositions de la charte pour la réconciliation nationale. Or, à leur grande surprise, les trois personnes n’ont bénéficié que de quelques jours de liberté. Elles ont été de nouveau interpellées et renvoyées en prison. La cause ? «Ils ne font pas partie de la catégorie des personnes bénéficiant des dispositions de la charte pour la réconciliation nationale.»

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U.S. case against informer bares a tangled bond

October 17, 2010 -- Abdelghani Meskini was the rarest of government informers, a reformed Algerian terrorist who was convicted in the failed “millennium plot” to blow up Los Angeles International Airport, but then became a valuable witness whose testimony helped convict two other plotters. In return, Mr. Meskini was given a lenient sentence and a second chance: He relocated to Georgia, changed his name, paid thousands of dollars in restitution and found a job managing low-end apartments. The complexes were often occupied by the likes of drug dealers and prostitutes, but one tenant in particular — a woman known as Crystal — became his friend. He lent her money, got her a laptop, taught her how to use the Internet to do background checks on clients, and helped her prepare ads for an escort Web site. He never talked about his past, except that he had been in prison — for doing the numbers, he explained. They forged an unusual relationship, the terrorist and the prostitute, each keeping secrets from the other. He did not tell her about his role in the bomb plot. She also did not know of his past as an informer; he did not know that she would become one.

Last week, Mr. Meskini, 42, faced Crystal Amy Roughton, 33, in a Manhattan court, as federal prosecutors tried to persuade a judge that Mr. Meskini had violated the terms of his release and should go back to prison. He kept his face down as Ms. Roughton, dressed conservatively with blond hair falling over her shoulders, recounted how she learned that her friend and mentor had once been a terrorist. “I didn’t believe it,” she said. “No way in hell.” The judge, John F. Keenan of Federal District Court, heard two days of testimony from Ms. Roughton and other government witnesses; among the things she recounted was his attempt to buy an AK-47 assault rifle. Mr. Meskini’s lawyer, who entered a not-guilty plea for his client, is expected to present his case this week. Prosecutors have not said whether they believe Mr. Meskini, whose first name they have previously rendered as Abdel Ghani, was returning to terrorism.

Mr. Meskini had been a young Algerian Army officer who decided to leave his country in 1994, stowing away on a boat to Boston. He supported himself through fraud, using falsified passports and Social Security cards to open bank accounts and then obtaining checks and credit cards. He eventually fell in with other conspirators in the airport bomb plot, which was foiled in December 1999 when the authorities arrested another Algerian, Ahmed Ressam, as he tried to enter the United States from Canada in a car carrying bomb components. Mr. Meskini’s phone number was found in his pocket. Facing more than 100 years in prison, Mr. Meskini pleaded guilty to conspiring to support terrorism and bank fraud, and cooperated with the government. In 2004, Mr. Meskini was sentenced to 72 months in prison and ordered to pay about $60,000 in restitution. With credit for time served and good behavior, he was released in 2005.

Mr. Meskini applied for the witness protection program, but was denied entry, a former lawyer has said. The reasons are not public. Still, with help from the government — the Federal Bureau of Investigation paid him more than $150,000 in 2005 and 2006, probation records show — he moved to Georgia, legally changed his name, and took a job managing apartments in the Buckhead section of Atlanta, including a 14-unit complex where drugs were sold openly and prostitutes took their customers, testimony showed. He collected rent, did maintenance, moved tenants in and out, and was supposed to stay out of trouble, said Detective Jay Sausmer of the Fulton County Police Department, who testified that he met annually with Mr. Meskini and had approved the job. Detective Sausmer said he told Mr. Meskini in 2005 that as he worked “his way back into society,” if he encountered “any kind of criminal activity, that he should speak up” and let him know or call 911. He said Mr. Meskini never did.

It was around 2006 when Crystal Roughton moved in. A softball player in high school, she said she spent several years at college in Virginia and Delaware without graduating and later worked in a homeless shelter. Granted immunity for her testimony, she seemed to hide nothing. She has a young son, who lives with her mother, and has given up more than one child to adoption. She has used cocaine, crystal meth, Ecstasy and marijuana, she said, and has smoked crack nearly every day for the last five years, although she recently stopped to prepare for her court appearance. She has been arrested frequently for drug possession. And she regularly sold drugs to her clients. Mr. Meskini, who despite changing his name was still known as Ghani, became a fast friend, she said. He lent her money for food and cigarettes and, on rare occasions, for drugs. “He hated drugs,” she said. She suggested that their relationship had little to do with sex. “Ghani was trying to always help me do better,” she testified. “His goal was to help me be able to — by myself — to stand alone so I didn’t need a pimp,” she added.

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In helping her promote her services on the Web, he even reviewed her advertisements. “I am a terrible speller,” she explained. He also gave her a telephone and helped pay her bills. In teaching her how to check clients’ backgrounds, she said, he demonstrated how to use the Web to verify phone numbers and identifications. He also advised her never to sign anything, because that would leave “a paper trail with my name” that could lead to “jail time,” she said. When she was frightened of a customer, or had a violent encounter, Mr. Meskini would move her from one apartment to another. When her door was kicked in three different times, she said, he repaired it. He met her parents, and knew her son’s name. “I trusted no one in the state of Georgia more than I trusted Ghani,” she said. She said she saw Mr. Meskini with a handgun in 2007, which shocked her. Then, last year, she said, she began seeing changes in him. He was putting on weight and drinking more, and told her that he felt as if he were dying. He said that he wanted to travel home to see his parents, but that he had no citizenship papers and could not leave the country.

Then last fall he confided in her, she recalled. “He told me he needed my help with something,” she said. He wanted an AK-47, and knew that some of Ms. Roughton’s clients had guns. He said he would spend up to $5,500, telling her that he might need the weapon to get back home. She did not hesitate. “I told him, absolutely,” she said later. “Anything. All he had to do is ask.” She called a client who she said had a warehouse full of guns, and also checked with drug dealers she knew. Last September, she said, she got an e-mail from Mr. Meskini with photographs of the kind of weapon he wanted. Around the same time last fall, Mr. Meskini was also expressing frustration in meetings with Detective Sausmer and F.B.I. agents about his inability to travel overseas or even around the United States. “He just wanted to get away from Georgia,” Detective Sausmer recalled. Mr. Meskini promised that he was not thinking about hurting anyone, but acknowledged that someone had offered to sell him an AK-47, the detective testified. In one meeting, he said he was afraid that he was being followed.

The F.B.I. and the detective met with him again in November, a few days after 13 people were killed in a shooting at Fort Hood, Texas. He seemed agitated and depressed, they recalled. He said he had found a tracking device on his car and asked that it be removed. It was taken off, one agent, James Pinette, testified. They also asked him whether he owned grenades. He replied no, but if he had, “he would have used them,” Agent Pinette said. At one point, Mr. Meskini said he wanted to leave the country, whether he had legal documentation or not, the agent said. “He added that he risked his life to get into the United States, and if he had to, he would risk his life to get out.” Mr. Meskini allowed the F.B.I. agents to copy the hard drive of his computer, and was pacing and rocking as it was done, Agent Pinette recalled.

Prosecutors have said in court filings that Mr. Meskini used the Internet to search for gun shops in the Atlanta area, and that he researched weapons like the AK-47 and rocket-propelled grenades. He also visited jihadist Web sites, including that of Anwar al-Awlaki, the extremist Muslim cleric in Yemen, a court filing shows. Shortly after this visit, the F.B.I. called immigration authorities, who detained Mr. Meskini. At some point beforehand, however, he sent a text message to Ms. Roughton, apparently assuming she had already spoken to the authorities. “After all I have done for you,” she recalled him writing, “this is how you repay the favor.” In court last week, Ms. Roughton testified that the F.B.I. did not interview her until this past March, some months after Mr. Meskini was jailed. “I just told the truth,” she said of the interviews. But the agents’ questions about him raised “a flag,” she added. She recalled that a man who had owed Mr. Meskini money once had claimed that he was a terrorist. She said she had spit in his face. “I didn’t believe him,” she said, “because Ghani never lied to me.” But after the F.B.I. interview, she said, she put her friend’s name into Google, much as Mr. Meskini had once taught her how to do to investigate her clients. She read about his background. “Ghani never told me about that,” she testified. She said she felt she had no choice but to cooperate with the F.B.I. “Because if I had gotten Ghani that AK and Ghani had used it and hurt innocent lives, I would not want that on my conscience,” she said.

If the judge rules against Mr. Meskini, he could send him to prison for several years. Mr. Meskini’s lawyer, Mark S. DeMarco, said by phone that his client was required in his job to associate with his tenants, no matter what their profession. “He was not there to judge anyone,” Mr. DeMarco said. “He gave rent extensions to tenants who were short on their payments and lent money to tenants who needed food or who begged him because they needed to feed their addictions.” As for Ms. Roughton, she told Judge Keenan that she planned to enter inpatient drug treatment, and hoped to get back on her feet. Friends have said she can live with them until, as she put it, “I can make a better way for myself.” And she made clear that she held no enmity toward Mr. Meskini. “You have got to understand,” she said, “Ghani is a person that had been in my heart for a long time.”

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Terror plot cooperator in trouble again

NEW YORK, October 18, 2010 (AP) -- The federal government is hoping the testimony of a crack-addicted prostitute from Atlanta who befriended a convicted Islamic terrorist will help keep the Algerian man behind bars. The prostitute, Crystal Roughton, testified last week at a hearing in New York to decide if Abdel Ghani Meskini had violated his probation. The hearing resumes Tuesday. Meskini pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2001 prior to the September 11 terror attacks. He won leniency by testifying against two men later convicted in the "millennium plot" to blow up Los Angeles International Airport. He has been jailed since being detained by immigration authorities last November. Now, prosecutors have asked a judge to find Meskini violated probation at least nine times. The hearing is offering a glimpse into the world of a rare terrorism turncoat who tried to rebuild his life.

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Terrorist advised hookers after prison, U.S. says

October 18, 2010 (Bloomberg) -- Abdelghani Meskini, convicted after informing on a foiled al-Qaeda plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport during millennium celebrations, got into drugs and prostitution after prison, U.S. prosecutors said. Meskini, 42, an Algerian who pleaded guilty in 2001 to charges stemming from the foiled attack, was sentenced to six years in prison after he testified against a co-conspirator, Mokhtar Haourari and another co-conspirator. Prosecutors said at a two-day hearing beginning October 13 that Meskini, who helped finance the terror plot through bank fraud, slipped back into a life of crime. He became a willing participant in drug dealing, prostitution and bank fraud after he was released from prison in 2005 and took a job as a manager for a suburban Atlanta apartment complex, the U.S. said. His criminal conduct violates terms of his prison release, prosecutors said. Meskini helped commit bank and credit card fraud, obtained an automatic weapon and proofread a prostitute's advertisements, prosecutors and witnesses said. When he lost his job in 2009, prosecutors claim Meskini was "ready to snap" and began visiting Jihadi websites, where he expressed anti-American sentiments and attempted to obtain an AK-47 assault rifle. "These complexes were small, but they were basically a hotbed of criminal activity," Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher LaVigne told U.S. District Judge John Keenan October 13. "There were prostitutes, and there were drugs. The prostitutes operated openly, the drugs were sold openly. He directly assisted those tenants with their criminal activity."

Longer sentence

Keenan, based in New York, presided over the millennium bombing case in which an al-Qaeda trained terrorist intended to detonate a suitcase bomb at the airline terminal. The judge held the hearing to determine if Meskini violated his supervised release from prison. Keenan could order Meskini to serve additional prison time as early as October 19, when relevant testimony is scheduled to resume. Meskini is one of a handful of Islamic terrorists to have pleaded guilty, cooperate and win release from prison. His case highlights the difficulty some U.S. cooperating witnesses face, such as Salvatore "Bull" Gravano. He testified against organized crime boss John Gotti in 1992. After being sentenced to five years in prison for admitting 19 murders, Gravano moved to Arizona where he was later convicted of state drug charges.

Plot foiled

The so-called millennium plot was thwarted when Ahmed Ressam, another Algerian, was arrested on December 14, 1999, while transporting explosives across the U.S.-Canadian border near Seattle. Meskini, who was living in Brooklyn, New York, was charged after his telephone number was found in Ressam's pocket. Meskini testified as a government witness against two co- conspirators in the plot in 2001 federal trials. After being sentenced to 6 years in prison by Keenan in January, 2004, he was released from prison in 2005 after receiving credit for time served and good behavior. He could have faced more than 100 years in prison, the U.S. said. U.S. immigration authorities arrested Meskini in November. The FBI re-arrested him in Georgia in March, charging him with nine release violations. Prosecutors said that by 2006 Meskini had returned to a life of crime. He has also paid only $31,000 of the $60,000 he owes in restitution, they said.

No terrorism charge

Mark S. DeMarco, Meskini's lawyer, said in an October 16 interview that his client never owned a handgun or attempted to obtain an AK-47. He noted that the U.S. hasn't charged his client with any terrorism-related crimes. DeMarco has entered a not guilty plea on Meskini's behalf for the alleged violations. He said the two witnesses the government called, Crystal Roughton, a prostitute and admitted crack user, and Ricky Stephenson, currently imprisoned on bank fraud charges, aren't credible. "His employment was approved by the United States government, and the government was aware of the tenants of the complexes that he managed," DeMarco told Keenan at the October 13 hearing. "Did he associate with his tenants?" DeMarco said. "He did. It was a responsibility of his employment to collect rent, to fix apartments and to do what one would expect a building manager to do," he said. Roughton, who testified that she is a prostitute and daily crack cocaine user, testified that she became friends with Meskini, whom she knew as "Ghani" and "Johnny," when she moved to the complex he managed.

Help with ads

Roughton said he helped her obtain a laptop computer for her escort business, gave her money when she couldn't pay the rent or needed to buy drugs. She said Meskini proofread the online escort-service ads she posted, because is "a terrible speller." "I recall him telling me how to background check my clients, screen them," Roughton said. "I would recall him going over my ads with me and helping me. His goal was to help me be able to be by myself, to stand alone so I didn't need a pimp." Meskini assisted other prostitutes who lived in the complexes he managed and received sexual favors from her and the women in return, she said. Roughton said she is on probation for robbery by force and false imprisonment stemming for an altercation with a client. She said she was testifying because she wanted to tell the truth.

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Innocent lives

"If I had gotten Ghani that AK and Ghani had used it and hurt innocent lives, I would not want that on my conscience," she said, "to have knowingly helped a man that would have taken innocent lives." When Keenan asked her if she was angry with Meskini, Roughton said, "No as weird as that is to say, I am not." He asked Roughton if she still liked him. She said, "Yes. As crazy as that is, I know," she said. "Ghani is a person that had been in my heart for a long time. I trusted no one in the state of Georgia more than I trusted Ghani." Ricky Stephenson, currently imprisoned on bank fraud charges, said Meskini was closely involved with the criminals and prostitutes who lived at the complex. He said the apartments were located in Atlanta's Buckhead neighborhood, adjacent to a building where movie director-writer Tyler Perry, who created the "Medea" movies, occupied a penthouse that Stephenson said was worth $4 million.

Atlanta 'eyesore'

"But this was prostitution, pimps, hustlers, drug dealers," Stephenson testified. "It was just an eyesore, like the 'hood in Buckhead," he said. "Think of just the worst place in the projects, and then you sit it on Rodeo Drive." Meskini, who told him he'd been in prison on forgery charges, "interacted with everybody and everybody pulled to Johnny," he said. Meskini once lent him about $1,600, he said. "Johnny was intact," Stephenson said. "He was in tune with what was going on. He didn't, you know, as far as my knowledge, didn't sell drugs, but he did other things as far as hustling and stuff to make a little money." In 2007, Stephenson said, Meskini asked him to get fake IDs for "some people in Canada." Stephenson said he rejected Meskini's request. During the year and a half he lived in the apartment complex, Stephenson said, he gave Meskini fake checks and Social Security cards, and Meskini let him use mailboxes at the complexes he managed as a drop for his various fraud schemes.

Surveillance Act

Federal agents searched Meskini's computer and invoked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to locate e-mails sent from Meskini's e-mail account to Jihadi websites, FBI Agent James Pinette, of the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Atlanta, testified. The FBI found in Meskini's e-mails a manual on how to operate a rocket-propelled grenade, an image of the Statue of Liberty with its torch-bearing arm being blown off, a picture of Osama bin Laden and photos of bloodied corpses accompanied by a message, "I wanted to share these pics with you to keep you going and never give up," according to a message the FBI says was found in his e-mail account. Agents also found on the computer a book about "The Obligation to Conduct Jihad," LaVigne said. Meskini downloaded stories about the November 5, shooting of 13 people at Fort Hood U.S. military installation, which was allegedly carried out by U.S. Army major Nidal Hasan, LaVigne said in documents he gave to the judge.

Map searches

Meskini conducted Google Map searches for Army installations at Fort Stewart and Fort McPherson, both located in Georgia, LaVigne said. Both Roughton and Stephenson said they saw Meskini with a black, automatic handgun which he kept in his pickup truck in 2007. After Meskini lost his job in September 2009, when the complex was shut down by police, Meskini seemed despondent about being unable to find a new job, Roughton testified. He asked her to help him obtain an AK-47. "His temperament was more angerly," Roughton said. "He said he felt like he was dying" and told her he wanted to return to Morocco to see his parents. She said she didn't know about Meskini's terrorism background. She said he told her he had been in prison "for numbers." Meskini said he wanted the AK-47, "because he needed - he was AWOL from the military and he might need it to get home," Roughton testified.

No questions

"I never questioned Ghani," she said. "Anything he said, I never questioned anything." Roughton said she promised him she'd "get on it." Meskini later asked for her personal e-mail address and directed her to accept a message on his behalf from an unknown individual who posted an image of an AK-47. Roughton said she made inquiries with people she called "discreet gentlemen" to obtain the weapon on his behalf. He later told her he'd already obtained one. Meskini was questioned later by FBI agents, who arrested him this year after U.S. immigration officials took him into custody. In October, Meskini sent her an e-mail stating, "Thanks a lot after all the help. After all I have done for you, this is how you repay the favor." He was arrested by immigration officials in November. LaVigne asked her how she felt. Roughton sighed and said, "To tell you the truth, I was heartbroken." The case is U.S. v. Meskini, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

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Los Angeles airport attack plotter sent back to prison

NEW YORK, October 29, 2010 (Reuters) -- A man convicted over a plot to blow up Los Angeles airport who later cooperated with the government was sent back to prison on Friday for trying to purchase an AK-47 rifle and lying to authorities in violation of his probation. Abdelghani Meskini, 42, an Algerian, pleaded guilty in 2001 to participating in the al Qaeda-sponsored "Millennium plot" to blow up Los Angeles International Airport. In exchange for testifying against his co-defendants, he was given a more lenient sentence and freed in 2005.

In a ruling unsealed ahead of Friday's sentencing of Meskini -- to 31 additional months in jail -- U.S. District Judge John Keenan said the government was partly to blame for Meskini's drift back into trouble. After he was freed, Meskini held a job at an Atlanta, Georgia, housing complex Keenan called a "hotbed of criminal activity," adding that U.S. law enforcement officials never suggested he not work there. "Incredibly," the judge said, probation officers approved Meskini's job at the properties "where narcotics sales and prostitution occurred openly and persistently."

At the housing complex Meskini would collect rent and conduct maintenance. He was arrested by immigration authorities in November and transferred to Bureau of Prisons custody four months later. Meskini's attorney, Mark deMarco, argued his client should be sentenced to time served and said the U.S. government was partly to blame for "depositing him in this hotbed ... putting him in a situation where the influences around him perhaps led him to his conduct, which is no excuse."

At an earlier hearing, prostitute and admitted crack cocaine user Crystal Roughton testified Meskini had asked her to help him purchase an AK-47 rifle. She said Meskini helped her place escort service ads online and lent her money. She also testified she had seen Meskini in possession of a handgun, a probation violation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Rosensaft argued at another hearing that Meskini "had no interest in living a law-abiding life" and was becoming increasingly radicalized. But deMarco said his client was "thrust into a hornet's nest" and "association with criminals was part of his job."