FBI Informant Says al-Qaida No. 2 Lived in Lodi

An FBI informant testified that a top al-Qaida official lived in the Central Valley in the years before the 2001 terrorist attacks, but the statements were attacked immediately as unreliable.

The testimony came Monday during an ongoing terrorism-related trial involving a father and son from Lodi, an agricultural town about 35 miles south of Sacramento.

The government informant, Naseem Khan, testified that he often saw Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's physician and top deputy, attending a mosque in Lodi in 1998 and 1999. Khan lived there at the time.

"Every time I would go to the mosque, (al-Zawahri) would be coming or going," Khan testified, according to a story posted Monday on The Sacramento Bee's Web site. "He would quietly come to the mosque and leave."

Prosecutors offered the testimony to show why the FBI began investigating Lodi's Islamic community. The agency recruited Khan in December 2001, and he initially focused his undercover efforts on two Muslim clerics.