[1] In 1991 he obtained a visa to visit Pakistan, ostensibly to attend a Tablighi Jamaat conference with his veterinarian friend Abu Ahmed el Masri,[1] through the embassy in Rome.
[8] We are young, we don't know anything: let's go, it's an adventureUpon returning to Peshawar from al-Farouq, Kherchtou was approached and agreed to swear a bayat to Osama bin Laden's fledgling new group, al-Qaeda.
[12] After receiving his pilot license, he returned to the Sudan in December 1995, but was appalled to find that his wife, heavily pregnant and in need of $500 for a cesarean section, was begging on the streets for money to allow her entrance to Khartoum's general hospital.
[15][16] Kherchtou disobeyed orders to relocate to Afghanistan, claiming he was concerned about the education his children would receive in such a country, although he is also believed to have still felt snubbed after being refused financial compensation for his wife's operation,[7] and subsequently "began to drift away" from al-Qaeda.
[4] When Jack Cloonan of the FBI learned that the British had a firm grasp of Kherchtou's whereabouts, he concocted a plan to get him out of Sudan and back to his native Morocco, where he could be renditioned to the United States.
[4] Kherchtou flew immediately to Rabat, where he was met by authorities who took him to a "grand house with stables out back, gazelles bouncing in the background, palm trees, three-course meals..." and he dined with the FBI, cooperating fully and giving them all the information he had on al-Qaeda over ten days of questioning.
He agreed to be flown back to the United States to testify against the four suspected al-Qaeda members in custody following the embassy bombings, after Cloonan suggested to him that he "pray on" the matter and then give his decision.