Limousine driver Aly, an immigrant from Egypt, said Alanssi hired him as a chauffeur for 10 days in May when Alanssi came to Washington with the family of one of his sons. Aly said Alanssi paid him with two checks totaling $4,000 but then stopped payment on them and disappeared.
Around the same time, the housekeeping manager at a District hotel gave Alanssi $3,800 to buy plane tickets to send his son's family back to Yemen. He promised to pay her back within weeks but never has, said the Eritrean-born woman, who asked not to be identified because her family does not know she gave Alanssi that much money.
Mohamed Alanssi screams after setting himself afire outside the White House.
(AP)
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"He cried, he cried, like a baby," she said. "He make you believe him."
Alanssi said in the interviews that after moving to Virginia, he sought help at Dar Al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church. He used a false name, he said, because he believed that everyone at the mosque was aware that someone named Mohamed Alanssi had worked with the FBI to arrest Moayad. He was given a job in the mosque bookstore.
Jamal Abdulmoty, the bookstore manager, called Alanssi "weird" and said he presented himself as homeless when he showed up in July. Abdulmoty said he let Alanssi stay in his own apartment while he was on vacation and gave him chores to do in the bookstore. Then Alanssi disappeared. The mosque has been looking for him, Abdulmoty said, because he made $1,500 in overseas phone calls from the bookstore phone.
Nobody at the mosque, Abdulmoty added, knew or cared about Moayad's case.
Alone and Depressed
Alanssi, who appeared severely depressed and lonely in the recent interviews, said that he knew he could be arrested if he went home but that he did not care. "I'm very scared and nervous. But at the end, I feel I did a good job . . . for all American people," he said. "I like them very much. When I do anything to protect them from bad people, I feel happy. . . . And I don't think the American people would be happy if my wife died before I see her. To keep me in this country -- is this my reward?"
Alanssi told a reporter that he was unable to go home to visit his seriously ill wife because the FBI was keeping his passport. But Basharaheel Hisham, editor of Al Ayyam, a Yemeni newspaper, said Yemeni citizens can get travel documents from any Yemeni embassy.
"I don't think his intention is to come back to Yemen," Hisham said. "Basically, he's looked at as a traitor for doing something like this."
When U.S. Park Police searched Alanssi's apartment after his suicide attempt, among the items they seized, according to the search warrant filing, was a "passport . . . for Mohamed M.M. Alanssi."
Staff writers Tom Jackman, Allan Lengel and Michael Powell and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
