Three weeks into the trial of four men accused of plotting terror attacks, the testimony has veered from chilling to confusing. The government’s main witness, Youssef Hmimssa, 32, a Moroccan who said he once agreed to provide the four defendants with fraudulent identification documents, has described the men as an ambitious terror cell with plans that included obtaining Stinger missiles to shoot down commercial airplanes and staging attacks in Las Vegas, which he said one defendant, Ahmed Hannan, called the “city of Satan.” Mr. Hmimssa said that the defendants communicated in a code that substituted members of the 1986 Moroccan national soccer team for addresses, calling-card numbers and phone numbers, and that they wanted to survey O’Hare airport in Chicago and the Detroit Metropolitan Airport for potential security weaknesses. One defendant, Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi, told him that “pretty soon, what is happening in West Bank and Gaza is going to happen here,” Mr. Hmimssa said. Full Story
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