Washington Post:
This guy must be with al Qaeda, he is certainly following their manual on alegations of torture when caught. Do his defense attorneys have any idea how guilty they are making him look?
A Falls Church man charged with conspiring with al Qaeda to kill President Bush told Saudi interrogators that he dreamed up the plot on his own but that it never got past the "idea stage," prosecutors say in court documents unsealed yesterday.
"I wanted to be the brain, the planner" of the assassination, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali is quoted as saying. He likened himself to Mohamed Atta, who led the terror cell that carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to the court papers, which quote from an FBI report detailing Abu Ali's interrogation by Saudi security officials while he was detained in the kingdom in June 2003.
"My idea was . . . I would walk on the street as the President walked by, and I would get close enough to shoot him, or I would use a car bomb," Abu Ali is quoted as saying.
Abu Ali, 24, also said during the same interrogation that he "wanted to be in al Qaeda so bad that I decided to go to Afghanistan for jihad." He said he was unable to get a visa to travel there but did join an al Qaeda cell in Saudi Arabia.
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Abu Ali is charged in U.S. District Court in Alexandria with conspiracy to kill Bush and other terrorism counts. Prosecutors say he has admitted to plotting with al Qaeda to conduct a Sept. 11-style terrorist attack in the United States.
Defense attorneys are also pursuing the torture allegation in the criminal case, arguing that any statements Abu Ali made while in Saudi custody were obtained through torture. Two doctors who examined Abu Ali found evidence that he was tortured in Saudi Arabia, including scars on his back consistent with having been whipped, defense attorneys have said in court papers.
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