BOSTON, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- An Algerian national facing federal charges of identity theft has been linked to an al Qaida terrorist convicted in a failed 1999 plan to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport.
Mohamed Amry, 36, was being held in Plymouth, Mass., pending transfer to New York to face charges of credit card, bank and identity fraud, reports said Thursday.
"This is part of the millennium plot involving the cell in Montreal and another in western Canada and two guys here in Brooklyn," FBI spokesman Jim Margolin said in Thursday's Boston Herald.
Amry, a personal trainer, allegedly stole the identities of 21 members of Bally's Total Fitness health club in Cambridge, Mass., and sold them to Abdelghani Meskini, one of three Algerians convicted of plotting the LAX attack.
Amry was arrested two weeks ago at his home in Somerville, Mass., where he lived with his wife and 8-week-old son.
According to a 3-count federal complaint, Meskini implicated Amry in the plot to steal identities using a hand-held device that gleaned information from magnetic strips on credit cards. The complaint, however, did not charge Amry with knowingly taking part in a terrorist conspiracy.
Amry allegedly used the "skimmer" to obtain information from Bally's members between 1998 and 1999. Meskini and another, unnamed man, then used the information to create counterfeit credit cards, false Social Security cards and green cards.
The complaint said Montreal shopkeeper Mokhtar Haouari originally provided the skimmer. Haouari was one of those convicted in the LAX plot.
Meskini told authorities he used the false identities to open two bank accounts in New York City and one in Boston. He later deposited counterfeit checks and withdraw about $11,000.
According to the complaints, Meskini paid Amry $300 for each false Social Security and green card, with Amry keeping $50 and giving $250 to an unidentified accomplice.
Meskini was arrested in 1999 and confessed to plotting with two others to blow up LAX. That plot unraveled Dec. 14, 1999, when Ahmed Ressam, 34, was arrested as he tried to cross into the United States at Washington from British Columbia, with explosives in the trunk of his car.
Ressam told authorities he trained at al Qaida camps in Afghanistan.
Both Ressam and Meskini were cooperating with authorities.
Amry's wife, Marie Lamour, told the Herald is innocent and that authorities "don't have proof of anything." Amry is expected to plead innocent when arraigned in New York.
Amry's prosecution was to take place in New York because that is where Meskini used the stolen identities.
