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Haouari, a Montreal shopkeeper, is charged with multiple counts of aiding a terrorist plot and fraud

By Phil Hirschkorn
CNN Producer

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Federal prosecutors revealed for the first time Wednesday that Los Angeles International Airport was the target of a foiled New Year's 2000 bomb plot.

In his opening statement in the trial of Mokhtar Haouari, accused of aiding the plot, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Bianco said Ahmed Ressam, who was convicted in an earlier trial, planned to detonate a suitcase bomb outside a security checkpoint in one of the Los Angeles airport's terminals in the days before the new year.

The target of the plot was not revealed during Ressam's trial.

Bianco said he will present evidence showing that Haouari, 32, gave Ressam $3,000 and a fake Canadian driver's license prior to Ressam's attempt to drive a car with a trunk full of explosives and timing devices across the border from Canada into Washington state. Authorities discovered the explosives at the border and Ressam was arrested.

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Seattle officials, fearing the plot was aimed at that city, canceled a Space Needle-centered New Year's celebration after Ressam's arrest.

The plot was an "evil chilling plan involving explosives, death and destruction," Bianco said.

He said Ressam himself will testify against Haouari in what will be "a rare and chilling glimpse into the world of a terrorist." Also scheduled to testify is his fellow Algerian and one-time codefendant, Abdel Ghani Meskini, 33, who in March pleaded guilty to participating in the plot and is now cooperating with prosecutors.

Defense attorney Dan Ollen countered that Haouari may be a "semi-retired con man, a two-bit thief (but is) not an international terrorist."

Unlike Ressam, he said, Haouari never trained in Afghanistan terrorist camps and never went to Seattle to further the plot. He said there will be no evidence physically linking him to the explosives.

Los Angeles International Airport was the target of a suitcase bomb, prosecutors claim

With Ressam and Meskini as the cornerstones, Ollen said, the government's case rests on "a gang of two, both desperate men who, you will hear, went to the government hats in hand looking for a deal." He asked the jurors not to trust their forthcoming testimony.

Haouari is charged with two counts of providing material support for the terrorist enterprise, and five counts of fraud by providing fake passports, driver's licenses and citizenship cards, and by trafficking in counterfeit credit cards and checks.

Opening statements are finished and the trial will resume at 9:30 a.m. Thursday with the first witness taking the stand.

The trial in U.S. federal district court is expected to last two weeks. A jury of 10 men and two women, along with four alternates, was sworn in Wednesday morning.

Prosecutors allege that Haouari, a Montreal shopkeeper who had lived in Canada since 1994, aided an Islamic militant cell known as the Armed Islamic Group, also known by its French initials as GIA. The group is opposed to the Algerian government and has claimed responsibility for subway bombings and airplane hijackings in France.

Ressam, 34, who also is suspected of having links with GIA, was found guilty of terrorism and other felony charges after a month-long federal trial in Los Angeles.

In Ressam's trial, Meskini testified that Haouari had ordered him to meet Ressam in Seattle.

Meskini said he created fake passports and Social Security cards, obtained cash with fake ATM cards and forged checks, and shopped with stolen credit cards -- and implicated Haouari in the scheme.

Ressam had trained in the Afghanistan military camps financed by Osama bin Laden, according to Canadian and French investigators, but during his trial, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour forbade prosecutors to talk about bin Laden, and excluded testimony that could have linked Ressam and other alleged conspirators to a global terrorist network.