Convicted Terrorist Tells of Training

V A N C O U V E R, British Columbia, Nov. 30, 2001 -- Convicted millennium bomb plotter Ahmed Ressam has detailed for the FBI his transformation from a petty thief who stole a briefcase at Vancouver International Airport in 1998 to a raging holy warrior who set out to blow up Los Angeles International Airport the next year.

Ressam told of his schooling in the arts of terror at an Afghan terror camp run by Osama bin Laden. He learned to fire weapons, make chemical weapons with cyanide, create booby traps and work with explosives.

Lessons included working with anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, causing large explosions by placing bombs near weaker parts of aircraft and gasoline-loaded tankers, Ressam has told agents.

Arrested in December 1999 after being caught entering the United States from Canada in a car loaded with explosives, Ressam was convicted in April of conspiring to bomb Seattle and other cities during millennium celebrations. He is currently awaiting sentencing.

Ressam has since been cooperating with authorities, telling of his terror training — in particular his experiences at the Durunta and Khalden camps in Afghanistan, suspected terrorist compounds that have since been destroyed by U.S. forces.

Look Like a Westerner

Much like the orders in a frightening terror "manual" allegedly distributed by bin Laden, Ressam said his teachers told him it was important to look non-Arabic, and to avoid looking conspicuous. Students were told to avoid attending mosques and joining Islamic groups to evade police surveillance.

Assassination of political leaders also was taught. Ressam said he and others were taught to carry out surveillance of a high-profile target and identify security personnel at airports, embassies and military bases.

Students were encouraged to discuss failed terrorist attacks and analyze successful ones, such as the bombing of a U.S. military barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. One analysis focused on failures to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

In addition to VIPs, oil depots, airports, embassies, economic structures and military installations in the United States all were described as "viable" targets.

Students also were told to learn multiple languages, and to speak in code to defeat Western intelligence monitoring systems. For example, Ressam's former associates might now refer to him as "sick" — code for a captured terrorist.

In the code talk, Afghanistan was often referred to as Canada. Going to fight the jihad was often described as "playing with balloons."

Journey to Afghanistan

Ressam told the FBI how he met Islamists in Montreal and Vancouver after landing in Canada in February 1994, carrying a fake passport he bought in France for 2,000 francs. In Montreal, Said Karim Atmani — who fought in Bosnia — encouraged his zeal for Islam.

Atmani, deported to Bosnia by Canada in 1998, was a jihad teacher and a scholar of Islam sought out by others for advice on joining military conflicts in Bosnia, Chechnya and Kosovo, he said.

Ressam said he obtained a fake baptismal certificate under the name of Benni Antoine Norris, and used that to obtain a genuine Canadian passport. He then flew to Pakistan in 1998 and met bin Laden's top lieutenant, Zainul Al-Abideen Abu Zubaida, and stayed at his guesthouse in Peshawar, Pakistan, according to information made available to ABCNEWS.

Ressam said Abu-Zubaida was the "emir" of the Durunta and Khalden training camps.

At the Peshawar guesthouse, Ressam said, Abu-Zubaida told him to leave his personal belongings in a storage area. He was given Afghan clothing and had to remain there for three weeks — so he could grow a Taliban-style beard before attempting to enter Afghanistan.

He described two ways to enter the isolated nation, then under the rule of the hard-line Taliban. One was to join crowds pushing through Pakistan border checkpoints. But he chose instead to walk up a mountain passage across the border, and was subsequently taken to the Khalden camp.

Life in a Terror Training Camp

The camp had eight barracks. Each morning, trainees would fall into formation for prayer before classes.

Others at the camp included members of terrorist groups such as Algeria's Armed Islamic Group and the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, the Palestinian group Hamas, the Shiite Hezbollah, the Egyptian Jihad and the al Qaeda network.

The cell structure of terror groups was devised to ensure people involved in an operation knew only enough detail to carry out their end of the operation.

Ressam also provided the names of others present during training, offering valuable intelligence to U.S. authorities on numerous Islamic holy warriors around the world. In some cases, students at the camps used pseudonyms. His own name there was Nabil, he said.

Upon completion of his training, Ressam was given $12,000 by the leader of the Algerian cell to set up his own cell in Canada.

Ressam flew to Vancouver in February 1999, via Los Angeles. No one at either airport detected the glycol-filled shampoo bottle or hexamine pills he brought along to make bombs.

Several members of his cell could not make it to Canada, so Ressam had to team up with fellow Algerian Abdel Majed Dahoumane to assemble the bomb at the 2400 Motel in Vancouver.

Ressam told investigators he intended to make a single suitcase bomb that he would have placed at Los Angeles International in such a way that the explosion would have minimized the loss of life. Salim Jiwa, a reporter for The Vancouver Province is a consultant to the ABCNEWS I-Team investigative unit.