Of course hes going to lie why the surprise?
Bruce http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003508560_ressamletter04m.h tml Millennium bomber changes story about friend By Mike Carter Seattle Times staff reporter Convicted millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam has recanted testimony that has been helping to detain a fellow Algerian as an enemy combatant in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In a letter to U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, Ressam wrote that a Montreal friend, Hassan Zemiri, had nothing to do with plans to detonate bombs at Los Angeles International Airport over the New Year's holiday in 1999. "It is not right or just to accuse somebody of something not true," Ressam wrote. Ressam, 39, had testified at the 2001 trial of his co-conspirator, Mohktar Haouari, that Zemiri had aided in the plot. Zemiri was captured in Afghanistan after an American airstrike in late 2001 near the caves of Tora Bora along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, said his lawyer, Jim Dorsey of Minneapolis. Dorsey said Zemiri was in Montreal in 1999 and knew Ressam, who had returned from Osama bin Laden's terrorist-training camps in Afghanistan. News broke in May 2001 that Ressam was cooperating with federal agents. Within weeks, Zemiri and his wife, a Canadian citizen, fled to Afghanistan, his lawyer said. Zemiri is one of 529 people being held as enemy combatants at the U.S. military base in Cuba. Ressam's testimony about Zemiri's Montreal activities is the basis for Zemiri's five-year incarceration, his lawyer said. Dorsey was unaware that Ressam had written the letter aiding his client until contacted by The Seattle Times on Wednesday. Dorsey said the letter was "great [but] you just don't know how much good it will do." He referred to the shifting legal status of the detainees as the "through-the-looking-glass weirdness down in Guantánamo." Ressam sent Coughenour the letter, written in Arabic, in November. The judge ordered the letter translated but then withheld the original and the translation from the court file. On Tuesday, The Times, through its attorney, asked the judge to file the letter and its translation in the court file. He did so on Wednesday. According to the translation, Ressam denied that Zemiri "had provided aid and support for the operation I was about to carry out. This is not right, it is false." Ressam said his initial account about Zemiri was given while "I was in shock and had a severe psychological disorder" after his April 2001 conviction on nine counts, including conspiracy to commit an act of international terrorism. Customs agents in Port Angeles caught Ressam with explosives in his rental car in December 1999. Facing a lifetime in prison, Ressam agreed to cooperate and began providing information on his cohorts and others. He testified only once: at the New York trial of Haouari, a member of Ressam's terrorist cell in Montreal. After two years of interrogation and a nervous breakdown, Ressam stopped cooperating in 2003. As a result, federal prosecutors said, they had to dismiss indictments against two alleged terrorists: Samir Ait Mohamed, who Ressam had said once planned to detonate a gasoline truck in a Jewish neighborhood in Montreal; and Abu Doha, an alleged al-Qaida recruiter in London. In testimony, Ressam has acknowledged that Zemiri gave him $3,500 and a video camera to use to make himself look like a tourist. But Ressam testified that he never gave Zemiri details of his plans to bomb holiday travelers at the Los Angeles airport. "He knew that you were going to commit a terrorist act, yes or no?" a prosecutor asked. "A job in America, yes," Ressam replied. In the recently released letter, Ressam said he had asked his lawyers a year ago to help him contact the FBI or prosecutors about changing his testimony. The lawyers said they would contact Zemiri's lawyers, Ressam wrote. "But recently, I have been having problems with my attorneys and I don't trust them or their promises anymore," Ressam wrote. His lawyer, federal public defender Thomas Hillier, said Wednesday that he believes Ressam's continued isolation at the federal supermax prison in Colorado has led to the distrust. "The truth is, we will fight even harder for him now," Hillier said. Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Copyright <http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/general/copyright.html> © 2006 The Seattle Times Company [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. 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