FBI informant wanted to put world on notice

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An FBI informant testifed on Tuesday that he wanted to put "the world on notice" when he set himself on fire outside the White House, throwing the terror-funding case against a Yemeni sheikh into turmoil.

Testifying for the second day as a hostile witness for the defence, Mohamed Alanssi said he had not intended to kill himself, even though he sent suicide notes to the FBI and The Washington Post.

"I did not have the intention but I wanted to put the government and the world on notice," Alanssi said.

Until he set himself on fire outside a White House gate in November, Alanssi, 53, had been scheduled to be the star prosecution witness against the defendant, Sheik Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad.

Instead, the defence called Alanssi to the stand in an effort to portray him as unstable, greedy and untruthful.

In the notes and interviews made public after he burned himself, Alanssi claimed the FBI promised him wealth and permanent US Residency in exchange for his cooperation.

He told the Post that he was afraid the government might "put me in jail and might torture me" if he stopped cooperating.

Alanssi lured al-Moayad and his assistant, co-defendant Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed, to Germany by posing as the fixer for another FBI informant who supposedly wanted to donate $25 million to the terrorist groups Hamas and Al-Qaeda.