Man Without a Name Faces 60 Years

A man whose true identity remains unknown pled guilty in a federal courtroom in Brooklyn today to charges of illegally possessing national defense documents that included details on U.S. firepower and convoy protection in Iraq, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York announced. He faces a maximum sentence of 60 years. The case of the U.S. Army contractor, who became a U.S. citizen using a false identity and worked as a contractor for the U.S. Army under a false identify, has received little publicity since the indictment in March of 2006 following a Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation that discovered the man possessed numerous classified documents in his Brooklyn apartment. Using a false identity, the man had obtained "Secret" and "Top Secret" security clearances and handled intelligence documents, including those containing troop movements of the 82nd Airborne Division during the bloody battle of Najaf in 2004. In a press release, the U.S. Attorney said, "The documents detail the 82nd Airborne’s mission in Iraq in regard to insurgent activity, such as coordinates of insurgent locations upon which the U.S. Army was preparing to fire in January 2004, and U.S. Army plans for protecting Sunni Iraqis traveling on their pilgrimage (Hajj) to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in late January 2004. During a later deployment to a U.S. Army base near Najaf, Iraq, the defendant photographed a classified battle map identifying U.S. troop routes used in August 2004 during the bloody battle of Najaf, where the U.S. and Iraqi security forces sustained serious casualties. In September 2005, the JTTF recovered these classified documents during a search of the defendant’s Brooklyn apartment." In court papers, the U.S. government stated it would be able to prove in court its belief that the defendant had a motive to steal the documents because he supported al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks and was opposed to the United States’ presence in Iraq. The government said a search of computer hard drives found in the man’s Brooklyn apartment uncovered an entire section of pro-al Qaeda images. The government has made clear, however, it has no proof the man had passed off copies of the documents to anyone despite having had many unauthorized contacts with foreign nationals. Specifically, the defendant was in unauthorized phone and e-mail contact with a former United States Army source in Iraq known as "Kifah," according to court papers.  In addition, the government said the defendant was in e-mail contact with Sunni sheiks in the Sunni Triangle — individuals from whom the defendant admitted taking bribes. The guilty plea follows a guilty plea in a separate federal case in which the defendant had been accused of using a false identify to obtain his U.S. citizenship. According to the U.S. government, the former translator has used the following identities at various times: "Abdulhakeem Nour," "Abu Hakim," "Noureddine Malki," "Almaliki Nour" and "Almalik Nour Eddin."