Danger man started life as a fan of Americans

By SOUHAIL KARAM IN CASABLANCA

Friends say he grew up dreaming of going to America, with a Clint Eastwood poster pinned to his bedroom wall.

Today he is an international fugitive - suspected by the FBI of planning strikes on the United States, wanted for bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, and now sought by Spain over the March 11 train bombings in Madrid.

Spanish investigators chasing suspects in the attacks have identified the wanted man - Abdelkarim el Mejjati, 36 - as the suspected organiser. He was not among those who were the subject of an international arrest warrant, as sources close to the investigation said.

But for Mohamed Darif, a political analyst and university lecturer who has been following Moroccan Islamist groups for 20 years, there is little doubt Mejjati is a significant figure.

"Abdelkarim el Mejjati's profile is typical of a senior co-ordinator of al Qaeda," Darif said.

"He is no minor player: Moroccan, Saudi and US security services wanted him months before the Madrid attacks."

Saudi Arabia named Mejjati last December as one of its 26 most wanted militants, and newspapers there have repeatedly published "wanted" portraits showing him both clean-shaven and with a variety of beards.

A "seeking information" notice on the FBI website shows him with a half-smile and neatly trimmed hair and beard.

It says he was born on October 30, 1967, and uses the aliases Bashir Al-Maghribi and Abu Ilyas.

"He can convincingly look Saudi as well as a Westerner. His looks are ever-changing," Darif said.

Last September the FBI issued a worldwide alert for Mejjati and three other suspects, linking them to al Qaeda and saying it had intelligence they might be planning attacks against the US.

A welter of French, Spanish and Moroccan newspaper reports have named him as a key suspect in the Madrid rail bombings.

Acquaintances in Casablanca, where Mejjati was born, paint a picture of an outgoing youth who did not behave like a strict Muslim.

He drank alcohol, ate pork and enjoyed parties on the beach at Les Sablettes in Mohammedia, a nearby resort.

Mejjati is the son of a wealthy Moroccan civil servant and a French mother. Nothing in his upbringing hinted at antipathy to the West.

"As a young man he dreamed of going to the US and he liked American movies very much," said an acquaintance who declined to be named.

Friends said the turning point for Mejjati came in the mid-1990s when he gave up his Western lifestyle and joined Arab fighters in Bosnia and later in Afghanistan. They said they had not seen him in Morocco since before the September 11 attacks.


- REUTERS