L'Houssaine Kherchtou

Who is L'Houssaine Kherchtou?

L'Houssaine Kherchtou was an early initiate in al-Qaeda, joining the militant group in 1991. In 2000, he pled guilty to conspiracy to murder, but as he was the chief witness against four of his former colleagues, all of whom were subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment, his charges were withdrawn and he entered the witness protection program.

Testifying in New York in the summer of 2001, he noted that al-Qaeda had trained suicide pilots to fly planes into buildings. Together with Jamal al-Fadl, his testimony forms the bulk of the information known about the early years of the Islamist group.