A BRITISH-based Iraqi actor who plays an Al-Qaeda terrorist in a new film about the 9/11 attacks has revealed how he stole thousands of pounds to help his family escape torture and possible death at the hands of Saddam Hussein’s secret police.

Lewis Alsamari described last week how he transferred £37,500 from his employer, the bookmaker William Hill, into his own bank account so he could pay people-smugglers to help his mother, sister and brother flee Iraq.

“I am ashamed by what I did. Of course I am sorry and I feel a lot of regret. But I was desperate and it was urgent. I felt it was the lesser evil than having my family murdered,” he said.

Alsamari, who spent part of his childhood in Manchester and Newcastle before returning to Britain as an impoverished asylum seeker in 1995, plays the lead hijacker in United 93. The film portrays the fate of passengers and crew on one of the four passenger jets hijacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists on September 11, 2001.

It recounts the dramatic final flight of the plane, which crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after its passengers fought back in a doomed attempt to retake control before it reached the terrorists’ target.

Alsamari plays the role of Saeed Al-Ghamdi, the ruthless lead hijacker who storms the cockpit, slitting the throat of the pilot.

The film is directed by Paul Greengrass and opens in Britain next month. It has had a mixed reception in America where feelings about the 9/11 attacks still run high.

One New York cinema stopped showing the film’s trailer — which includes real footage of a hijacked plane crashing into one of the twin towers — after it upset audience members. The movie reportedly drew cries of “too soon” when it was shown in Los Angeles.

Last month it emerged Alsamari had been unable to get a visa to attend the premiere of United 93 at Robert De Niro’s Tribeca film festival in Manhattan. Officially, the US embassy in London would only say that he was late in applying for his visa. But there are suspicions the real reason was that it was tipped off in an e-mail about his criminal record — usually an automatic bar for any foreign visitor.

Alsamari, 30, arrived in Britain more than a decade ago after escaping from a military base in Iraq where he was a conscript. During the escape, he was shot in one leg. “I fled because I could not stand living under a tyranny, serving a criminal running a military state,” he said.

His family is part of the Alsamari tribe, some of whom led a failed coup against Saddam and which had a long record of being persecuted by the Iraqi security forces.

On the flight to London, he ripped up his fake United Arab Emirates passport, and with just £50 in his wallet and a change of clothes, he arrived in Britain to claim asylum.

His assimilation into British life was smooth until the summer of 2000. He was working in the finance department of William Hill in Leeds when he was contacted by his family in Baghdad to say his father Mahmoud, a public critic of Saddam’s regime, had disappeared.

“They arrested my brother and were beating him in custody,” he said. “Every day there was a white van from the security forces parked outside my grandfather’s estate.”

The panic calls from his mother Haifa began. “I knew I had to act. I agreed with my uncle in Baghdad that we would have to pay some Kurdish people-smugglers to bribe officials to get them out. He said we would need between $10,000 and $15,000 to pay for each member of the family. But he never knew where the money came from.”

Alsamari says he applied for loans from finance companies but was rejected. In a state of what he says was “blind panic”, he decided to take a gamble.

“Working in the finance department at William Hill, I saw the opportunity to put the money into my own bank account. I knew the consequences. But I thought that if I went to prison then at least I would have done my utmost to get my family out of Iraq.”

His crime paid off. After an abortive escape to Malaysia, his sister Eseel, 27, eventually got to England in the back of a lorry. She is now settled in London and happily married. But his mother and brother Mohammed got only as far as Cyprus, where they were abandoned by the smugglers. They are still there, seeking asylum. His father survived Saddam’s regime and is now living in Jordan.

However, detectives finally caught up with Alsamari. At his Leeds trial in 2003 the judge accepted Alsamari had acted under duress and he was given a two-year suspended sentence.

So far, the episode has not affected Alsamari’s acting career which has included parts in the BBC television series At Home With the Braithwaites and Spooks. His big break came last autumn when Greengrass cast him in United 93.

But even as his career seems to be taking off, the court case continues to haunt him. Although he has succeeded in his bid for refugee status, the Home Office has refused him a British passport, saying he will have to wait until at least 2010 — which means he cannot travel to France, where the film is to be shown at the Cannes festival later this month.

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