WASHINGTON, May 20: A translator who lied about his identity to get US nationality and kept copies of classified documents about the Iraqi resistance was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Monday.

The man, whose true identity and nationality remain unknown, was employed in Aug 2003 as a US army translator in Iraq by the major private contracting firm L-3 Titan Corp, the Justice Department said.

Using his false identity, the man — who has been alternately known as Abdulhakeem Nour, Abu Hakim, Noureddine Malki, Almaliki Nour, and Almalik Nour Eddin — gained “secret” and then “top secret” security clearance.

He used this clearance to gain access to secret military documents without authorisation during assignments in Iraq, the Justice Department said.

Following a US government probe led by the FBI, he was sentenced to 121 months in prison after pleading guilty to “unauthorised possession of classified documents” and to a “false identity” charge.

“While assigned to an intelligence group in the 82nd Airborne Division of the US Army at Al-Taqqadam air base, he downloaded a classified document and took hard copies of several other classified documents,” the department said.

“The documents detail the 82nd Airborne’s mission in Iraq in regard to insurgent activity, such as coordinates of insurgent locations upon which the US Army was preparing to fire in Jan 2004.”

Other documents the translator took involved US army “plans for protecting Sunnis travelling on their pilgrimage (Haj), Saudi Arabia, in late January 2004.”

He was also accused of taking pictures of a “classified battle map identifying US troop routes used in Aug 2004 during the bloody battle of Najaf, where the US and Iraqi security forces sustained serious casualties”.

The documents were found during a search of his apartment in Brooklyn, New York in 2005, officials said. He is also to be stripped of his US citizenship, the Justice Department said. It did not elaborate on how or when he obtained this citizenship, saying only that he had used a false identity to do so.—AFP