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Less than two years before the 9/11 attacks, an Algerian named Ahmed Ressam tried to cross from Canada into the United States to bomb the Los Angeles Airport. This is one of 15 stories we present as part of the Citizen’s ongoing Canada 150 coverage.
“The fire is on. And it’s coming.”
With those cryptic words, a plot to unleash a devastating terror attack on the United States was set in motion by a Canadian-based jihadist group.
At that moment, in December 1999, a short, slender Algerian named Ahmed Ressam was the most dangerous man on the continent: The trunk of his rented Chrysler sedan was packed with high explosives and powdered fertilizer. He was headed for a ferry terminal that would take him from Victoria to Washington State.
His plan was to detonate a massive explosion inside the Los Angeles International Airport as passengers travelled to welcome the new millennium.
The terror attack that would define the early 21st century, 9/11, was less than two years away.
Ressam, who never made it past U.S. customs, would end up providing U.S. officials with an early warning of the destruction to come – it went largely unheeded – while highlighting embarrassing security flaws in Canada.
The case would reverberate for years inside the Canadian security establishment, and contribute to the government’s overreaction to the 9/11 terror attacks. Six Canadian citizens, including Ottawa’s Maher Arar and Abdullah Almalki, would be tortured in other countries as Canadian security agents scrambled to identify potential threats – that is, more Ressams.
—
Ahmed Ressam grew up in a small, seaside village in Algeria, the first-born son of a government chauffeur who had fought in the war of independence against France. Ahmed was good at mathematics and loved soccer, but was plagued by stomach pain that cost him time in school.
He failed his university entrance exams, went to work in a café, and fled Algeria as the country descended into civil war in September 1992.
Ressam travelled to France, where he lived for a year until being charged with immigration violations. In February 1994, facing deportation to Algeria, he boarded a Montreal-bound Air Canada flight with a phoney French passport.
Canadian customs officials arrested Ressam, but he claimed political asylum after concocting a story about being tortured in Algeria. His refugee claim was rejected, but Ressam was allowed to stay in the country because Canada did not deport people to the chaos of Algeria in the mid-1990s.
Ressam joined Montreal’s burgeoning population of Algerian refugees and immigrants, and supplemented his welfare cheques by shoplifting, pickpocketing and stealing luggage from tourists.
An Algerian immigrant named Fateh Kamel enlisted Ressam to supply him with stolen travel documents, which he sold to would-be jihadists worldwide.
That brought Ressam to the attention of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) as early as July 1996. He was not the focus of the spy agency’s investigation, and agents considered him a minor player in Kamel’s scheme.
At a local mosque, Ressam met Raouf Hannachi, a middle-aged Tunisian-Canadian who praised the merits of jihad, and boasted of his time at Osama bin Laden’s Khalden camp in Afghanistan.
Ressam was receptive to the idea of joining the holy war, particularly since his status in Canada was increasingly uncertain: He had been arrested three times for theft and had failed to report to immigration officials. A nationwide warrant for his arrest was issued in September 1998.
But by then, the failed refugee claimant was already in Afghanistan. What’s more, Ressam had also assumed a new identity: Benni Antoine Noris, 28, of Montreal.
He had obtained a Canadian passport using a forged baptismal certificate from a Montreal church and a counterfeit Université de Montreal student card. It was all the ID that the passport office required at the time.
Using his new passport, Ressam travelled to Afghanistan, where he joined the Khalden camp, a training facility funded and administered by al-Qaida. He learned to use machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades; how to conduct assassinations and urban assaults. He was schooled in the use of cyanide and the manufacture of explosives.
He also began discussions with his fellow Algerians at the camp about deploying their newfound skills against targets in the United States. A loose plan took shape: to conduct a series of robberies that would finance an attack on the eve of the new millennium.
In February 2009, Ressam used his fake Canadian passport to fly back to Canada. Packed in his luggage, in toiletry bottles, were two bomb-making components — hexamine tablets and glycol — along with some assembly instructions.
In August, he began to prepare for his mission. Ressam bought electronic components and built four timing devices, while criss-crossing the country to stockpile urea fertilizer in British Columbia. Mixed with nitric acid, the fertilizer becomes highly explosive.
Canadian authorities had at least one opportunity to stop Ressam’s gathering plot.
In April 1999, a French terrorist hunter, magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguière, sent an official request to Canadian officials, asking that they track down Ressam. Bruguière said he believed Ressam was part of a passport smuggling ring, based in France, with ties to international terrorism.
An RCMP officer was assigned the case in June, but couldn’t find Ressam, who was living in Canada as Benni Noris. CSIS had also lost track of him.
In November, Ressam flew to Vancouver and met an old friend, Abdelmajid Dahoumane; they rented a motel room and converted it into a crude bomb-making factory. The chemicals they used were so caustic that the men kept the windows open even as temperatures dipped below freezing. The malaria that Ressam had contracted in Afghanistan recurred.
On the morning of Dec. 14, the men packed the explosives into the spare wheel well of Ressam’s rented Chrysler, and took the ferry to Victoria.
Believing (wrongly) that a single man would raise less suspicion, Dahoumane left and Ressam drove alone on to the ferry, the M.V. Coho, bound for Port Angeles, Washington. He waited for all the other cars to leave the ferry before driving to U.S. Customs.
It was 6 p.m. His was the last car from the last ferry of the day at the Port Angeles terminal.
Customs inspector Diana Dean leaned toward Ressam’s open window. She asked the usual questions: Where are you going? Why are you going to Seattle?
U.S. Customs agent Diana Dean, shown here on her regular screening assignment, nabbed Ahmed Ressam as he tried to enter the United States with a trunk-load of explosives in Port Angeles, Washington.
Ressam gave one-word answers: “Seattle.” “Visit.” Dean didn’t like the way he fidgeted; she thought he looked nervous and sweaty. “Hinky,” she would later say.
She had him fill out a custom declaration as a stalling tactic before deciding to refer him for a secondary inspection. Dean told him to get out of the car and open the trunk. She suspected he might be a smuggler.
Two other customs officers joined the inspection, since they were waiting to close the station. One inspector searched the trunk, then opened the spare tire compartment: It was stuffed with garbage bags, a few boxes, some pill bottles and two jars of a mysterious brown liquid.
Ressam wriggled free from the customs agent holding him and bolted, running towards downtown Port Angeles.
The customs officers gave chase. Ressam tried to commandeer a car, but the driver stepped on the gas, sending him spinning to the ground. The officers hauled him back to the terminal where he was turned over to Port Angeles police and placed in the back of a cruiser.
The investigators poured over the contents of Ressam’s car; they were convinced he was a drug smuggler since the garbage bags were filled with a white powder. A customs agent shook one of the mystery jars.
A wide-eyed Ressam ducked to the floor of the cruiser.
It would be days before tests revealed that the jar contained a nitro-glycerine equivalent known as EGDN. The high explosive was one of four bomb components in the car trunk.
Diana Dean later told reporters: “My heart dropped right into my toes when I realized what it was.”
In April 2001, after a four-week trial in Los Angeles, Ressam was convicted of nine charges in connection with the bomb plot. One month later, he agreed to co-operate with U.S. authorities in exchange for a more lenient sentence.
Ahmed Ressam at trial.
In the six months leading to 9/11, Ressam met with U.S. investigators 22 times and testified in New York against one of his co-conspirators. Some of the intelligence gathered from Ressam was included in the prophetic presidential briefing of Aug. 6, 2001, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”
In the days after 9/11, Ressam confirmed that the so-called “20th hijacker,” Zacarias Moussaoui, had attended the Khalden terrorist training camp. Had the FBI known and acted upon that information sooner, the 9/11 Commission Report says, agents might have been able to gain a warrant to search Moussaoui’s computer, and obtain the breakthrough they needed to disrupt the 9/11 plot.
Ressam’s treatment deteriorated post 9/11 as authorities pressed him for more and more detailed information. He spoke with security agents from seven countries, including Canada, and provided the names of 150 people involved in terrorism, according to court reports.
But, fed up with the endless demands and his harsh prison conditions, Ressam stopped co-operating with authorities in February 2003. He recanted much of his evidence.
He was sentenced in October 2012 to 37 years in prison and is now serving that term at a maximum security facility in Colorado. Ressam is not scheduled to be released until December 2032, when he’ll be 65.
查看原文...
“The fire is on. And it’s coming.”
With those cryptic words, a plot to unleash a devastating terror attack on the United States was set in motion by a Canadian-based jihadist group.
At that moment, in December 1999, a short, slender Algerian named Ahmed Ressam was the most dangerous man on the continent: The trunk of his rented Chrysler sedan was packed with high explosives and powdered fertilizer. He was headed for a ferry terminal that would take him from Victoria to Washington State.
His plan was to detonate a massive explosion inside the Los Angeles International Airport as passengers travelled to welcome the new millennium.
The terror attack that would define the early 21st century, 9/11, was less than two years away.
Ressam, who never made it past U.S. customs, would end up providing U.S. officials with an early warning of the destruction to come – it went largely unheeded – while highlighting embarrassing security flaws in Canada.
The case would reverberate for years inside the Canadian security establishment, and contribute to the government’s overreaction to the 9/11 terror attacks. Six Canadian citizens, including Ottawa’s Maher Arar and Abdullah Almalki, would be tortured in other countries as Canadian security agents scrambled to identify potential threats – that is, more Ressams.
—
Ahmed Ressam grew up in a small, seaside village in Algeria, the first-born son of a government chauffeur who had fought in the war of independence against France. Ahmed was good at mathematics and loved soccer, but was plagued by stomach pain that cost him time in school.
He failed his university entrance exams, went to work in a café, and fled Algeria as the country descended into civil war in September 1992.
Ressam travelled to France, where he lived for a year until being charged with immigration violations. In February 1994, facing deportation to Algeria, he boarded a Montreal-bound Air Canada flight with a phoney French passport.
Canadian customs officials arrested Ressam, but he claimed political asylum after concocting a story about being tortured in Algeria. His refugee claim was rejected, but Ressam was allowed to stay in the country because Canada did not deport people to the chaos of Algeria in the mid-1990s.
Ressam joined Montreal’s burgeoning population of Algerian refugees and immigrants, and supplemented his welfare cheques by shoplifting, pickpocketing and stealing luggage from tourists.
An Algerian immigrant named Fateh Kamel enlisted Ressam to supply him with stolen travel documents, which he sold to would-be jihadists worldwide.
That brought Ressam to the attention of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) as early as July 1996. He was not the focus of the spy agency’s investigation, and agents considered him a minor player in Kamel’s scheme.
At a local mosque, Ressam met Raouf Hannachi, a middle-aged Tunisian-Canadian who praised the merits of jihad, and boasted of his time at Osama bin Laden’s Khalden camp in Afghanistan.
Ressam was receptive to the idea of joining the holy war, particularly since his status in Canada was increasingly uncertain: He had been arrested three times for theft and had failed to report to immigration officials. A nationwide warrant for his arrest was issued in September 1998.
But by then, the failed refugee claimant was already in Afghanistan. What’s more, Ressam had also assumed a new identity: Benni Antoine Noris, 28, of Montreal.
He had obtained a Canadian passport using a forged baptismal certificate from a Montreal church and a counterfeit Université de Montreal student card. It was all the ID that the passport office required at the time.
Using his new passport, Ressam travelled to Afghanistan, where he joined the Khalden camp, a training facility funded and administered by al-Qaida. He learned to use machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades; how to conduct assassinations and urban assaults. He was schooled in the use of cyanide and the manufacture of explosives.
He also began discussions with his fellow Algerians at the camp about deploying their newfound skills against targets in the United States. A loose plan took shape: to conduct a series of robberies that would finance an attack on the eve of the new millennium.
In February 2009, Ressam used his fake Canadian passport to fly back to Canada. Packed in his luggage, in toiletry bottles, were two bomb-making components — hexamine tablets and glycol — along with some assembly instructions.
In August, he began to prepare for his mission. Ressam bought electronic components and built four timing devices, while criss-crossing the country to stockpile urea fertilizer in British Columbia. Mixed with nitric acid, the fertilizer becomes highly explosive.
Canadian authorities had at least one opportunity to stop Ressam’s gathering plot.
In April 1999, a French terrorist hunter, magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguière, sent an official request to Canadian officials, asking that they track down Ressam. Bruguière said he believed Ressam was part of a passport smuggling ring, based in France, with ties to international terrorism.
An RCMP officer was assigned the case in June, but couldn’t find Ressam, who was living in Canada as Benni Noris. CSIS had also lost track of him.
In November, Ressam flew to Vancouver and met an old friend, Abdelmajid Dahoumane; they rented a motel room and converted it into a crude bomb-making factory. The chemicals they used were so caustic that the men kept the windows open even as temperatures dipped below freezing. The malaria that Ressam had contracted in Afghanistan recurred.
On the morning of Dec. 14, the men packed the explosives into the spare wheel well of Ressam’s rented Chrysler, and took the ferry to Victoria.
Believing (wrongly) that a single man would raise less suspicion, Dahoumane left and Ressam drove alone on to the ferry, the M.V. Coho, bound for Port Angeles, Washington. He waited for all the other cars to leave the ferry before driving to U.S. Customs.
It was 6 p.m. His was the last car from the last ferry of the day at the Port Angeles terminal.
Customs inspector Diana Dean leaned toward Ressam’s open window. She asked the usual questions: Where are you going? Why are you going to Seattle?
U.S. Customs agent Diana Dean, shown here on her regular screening assignment, nabbed Ahmed Ressam as he tried to enter the United States with a trunk-load of explosives in Port Angeles, Washington.
Ressam gave one-word answers: “Seattle.” “Visit.” Dean didn’t like the way he fidgeted; she thought he looked nervous and sweaty. “Hinky,” she would later say.
She had him fill out a custom declaration as a stalling tactic before deciding to refer him for a secondary inspection. Dean told him to get out of the car and open the trunk. She suspected he might be a smuggler.
Two other customs officers joined the inspection, since they were waiting to close the station. One inspector searched the trunk, then opened the spare tire compartment: It was stuffed with garbage bags, a few boxes, some pill bottles and two jars of a mysterious brown liquid.
Ressam wriggled free from the customs agent holding him and bolted, running towards downtown Port Angeles.
The customs officers gave chase. Ressam tried to commandeer a car, but the driver stepped on the gas, sending him spinning to the ground. The officers hauled him back to the terminal where he was turned over to Port Angeles police and placed in the back of a cruiser.
The investigators poured over the contents of Ressam’s car; they were convinced he was a drug smuggler since the garbage bags were filled with a white powder. A customs agent shook one of the mystery jars.
A wide-eyed Ressam ducked to the floor of the cruiser.
It would be days before tests revealed that the jar contained a nitro-glycerine equivalent known as EGDN. The high explosive was one of four bomb components in the car trunk.
Diana Dean later told reporters: “My heart dropped right into my toes when I realized what it was.”
In April 2001, after a four-week trial in Los Angeles, Ressam was convicted of nine charges in connection with the bomb plot. One month later, he agreed to co-operate with U.S. authorities in exchange for a more lenient sentence.
Ahmed Ressam at trial.
In the six months leading to 9/11, Ressam met with U.S. investigators 22 times and testified in New York against one of his co-conspirators. Some of the intelligence gathered from Ressam was included in the prophetic presidential briefing of Aug. 6, 2001, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”
In the days after 9/11, Ressam confirmed that the so-called “20th hijacker,” Zacarias Moussaoui, had attended the Khalden terrorist training camp. Had the FBI known and acted upon that information sooner, the 9/11 Commission Report says, agents might have been able to gain a warrant to search Moussaoui’s computer, and obtain the breakthrough they needed to disrupt the 9/11 plot.
Ressam’s treatment deteriorated post 9/11 as authorities pressed him for more and more detailed information. He spoke with security agents from seven countries, including Canada, and provided the names of 150 people involved in terrorism, according to court reports.
But, fed up with the endless demands and his harsh prison conditions, Ressam stopped co-operating with authorities in February 2003. He recanted much of his evidence.
He was sentenced in October 2012 to 37 years in prison and is now serving that term at a maximum security facility in Colorado. Ressam is not scheduled to be released until December 2032, when he’ll be 65.
查看原文...
