A bearded man shouting "Allah" set himself on fire outside the White House on Monday before uniformed Secret Service agents wrestled him to the ground and extinguished the flames, officials and witnesses said. Hours later, another man jumped a wrought-iron White House fence down the street on Pennsylvania Avenue and was quickly apprehended by Secret Service agents after injuring his ankle. Neither man was identified by authorities.
The incidents occurred less than a week after Pennsylvania Avenue was reopened to pedestrians following an 11-month construction project aimed in part at bolstering security on the boulevard that runs along the front of the White House.
A 52-year-old man doused himself with what appeared to be gasoline and set himself ablaze on the sidewalk outside the West Wing of the presidential mansion shortly after 2 pm (1900 GMT), authorities said.
He suffered second- and third-degree burns over 30 percent of his body but was conscious as an ambulance took him to a nearby hospital, an emergency services spokesman said. The hospital refused to divulge the man's condition.
A Reuters reporter saw the man try to present an envelope to Secret Service agents outside a guard post moments before the scene was engulfed in billows of smoke.
'AN INFORMANT' A man who set himself on fire outside the White House on Monday was a Yemeni federal informant on terrorism upset over how the FBI had managed his case, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
Mohamed Alanssi, who had recently discussed his work as an informant in interviews with The Washington Post, told the newspaper by faxed letter and telephone on Monday he intended to "burn my body at unexpected place," the newspaper reported.
The US Park Police said in a statement that a Middle Eastern male in his early 50's approached the north-west gate of the White House around 2:00 pm EST (1900 GMT) with a letter for the president. After a brief conversation with Secret Service officers, the man pulled a lighter from his pocket and ignited his jacket, the statement said.
The Washington Post said Alanssi, 52, was taken to Washington Hospital Centre, where he was listed in critical condition with burns over about 30 percent of his body.
Neither the Secret Service nor White House had immediate comment on the incident. The man's name was being withheld pending notification of his family, the Park Police said.
A spokesman for the FBI in Washington was not immediately available for comment on the Post report early on Tuesday.
In interviews with the newspaper, Alanssi, who is from Yemen and also uses the name Mohamed Alhadrami, expressed anguish over not being able to visit his family in Yemen.
He told the newspaper that he suffers from diabetes and heart problems and that his wife suffers from stomach cancer. Alanssi said he could not travel to Yemen because he has no money and because the FBI, which expects him to testify at a terrorism trial in New York, was keeping his Yemeni passport.
"It is my big mistake that I have co-operated with FBI," Alanssi was quoted as saying.
"The FBI have already destroyed my life and my family's life and made us in a very danger position . . . I am not crazy to destroy my life and my family's life to get $100,000," he said.
Alanssi said he became a major informant for the FBI after the 2001 al Qaeda attacks on the United States. He said he was paid $100,000 in 2003 but had expected much more and had not received the permanent residency status he was promised, the newspaper reported.
"We don't have a policy on revealing who is a co-operator or informing witness," Joe Valiquette, an FBI spokesman in New York, told the Post. The US attorney's office in the eastern district of New York, which is prosecuting the terrorism-related trial in January, also declined comment, the newspaper said.
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