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Trial Witness Says Al-Qaida Official Lived in California NewsMax.com Wires SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- An FBI informant testified that a top al-Qaida official lived in California's Central Valley in the years before the 2001 terrorist attacks, but the statements were attacked immediately as unreliable. The testimony came during an ongoing terrorism-related trial involving a father and son from Lodi, a small agricultural town south of Sacramento. The Government informant, Naseem Khan, testified that he often saw Ayman al-Zawhri, Osama bin Laden's physician and top deputy, attending a mosque in Lodi in 1998 and 1999. Khan was living there at the time. "Every time I would go to the mosque, (al-Zawahri) would be coming or going," Khan testified, according to a story posted yesterday on The Sacramento Bee newspaper's Web site. "He would quietly come to the mosque and leave." Prosecutors offered the testimony to show why the FBI began investigating Lodi's Islamic community. The agency recruited Khan in December 2001, and he initially focused his undercover efforts on two Muslim clerics. Story Continues Below
He soon began concentrating on 23-year-old Hamid Hayat, who sometimes worked seasonal jobs at a fruit-packing plant. Hayat and his father, Umer, who drove an ice cream truck, have been charged with lying to federal investigators about the younger man's suspected attendance at an Al-Qaida terrorist training camp in Pakistan in 2003. Khan's testimony was discounted immediately outside court by law enforcement officials, Lodi residents and defence attorneys representing the two men on trial.
© 2006 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Editor's note: Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
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