Months before Sept. 11, long before most Americans were worried about the violent consequences of Islamic holy war, Lionel Johnson-Bey was doing all he could to escape his terrorist roommate.

But federal prison officials wouldn’t let him.

Johnson-Bey, a convicted sex criminal, couldn’t stomach sharing a cell at the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth with Mahmud Abouhalima, a man convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people and foreshadowed the Sept. 11 calamity.

“I lived with Abouhalima for eight months and learned the concept of jihad (war) against America, because that is his mission,” Johnson-Bey wrote in a January 2001 complaint.

When officials at the penitentiary punished him for refusing the cell assignment, Johnson-Bey sued. A federal trial court judge dismissed the case, and on Tuesday, a three-judge panel from the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also rejected his argument.

“We are unable to discern any possible constitutional violation arising out of that situation,” Circuit Judge Mary Beck Briscoe wrote for the court.

Months of ‘pure evil’

Johnson-Bey, 40, was convicted in 1996 on a federal charge of taking a victim across state lines during a kidnapping and sexual assault in Missouri. He was sent to Leavenworth in 1999.

There, he was assigned a cell with Abouhalima, one of five men convicted in the 1993 truck bombing that killed six people at the Twin Towers.

The time spent with Abouhalima, Johnson-Bey said in court documents, was “pure evil.” He referred to Abouhalima repeatedly as “the terrorist.”

“Time and time again I asked him  almost begged him  to stop telling me things he wanted to do to inmates and staff,” Johnson-Bey wrote. “The terrorist follows the history of radicalism and declared a war against America inside this prison.”

‘Snitch’ set-up

The two apparently were put in separate cells after those eight months. But in July 2000, Johnson-Bey said, officials tried to put them back together. When he refused, officials put Johnson-Bey in a “special housing unit” for inmates receiving discipline.

Later, Johnson-Bey wrote, officials cited him  falsely, he said  for possessing a knife found in Abouhalima’s cell. And he said one prison official told Abouhalima that Johnson-Bey had tried to “set him up” on a disciplinary violation. The rumor that Johnson-Bey was a “snitch” put his life in danger. A subsequent request for transfer to a safer prison was rejected, he said.

He sued Leavenworth’s warden and several aides for $1.8 million for the “mental, emotional duress” caused by the incidents. He was transferred to a federal prison at Lompoc, Calif., after he filed suit.

The appeals court rejected Johnson-Bey’s claim he was unjustly punished for fighting his cell assignment. But it ruled that his accusation that prison officials endangered his life by branding him a “snitch” can go forward.

Lompoc officials didn’t respond to a request to interview Johnson-Bey. Leavenworth Warden N.L. Conner couldn’t be reached for comment.

Avoiding problems

Dan Dunne, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Prisons in Washington, D.C., said prison officials generally try to avoid putting inmates together when harm will result.

“We are attempting to avoid problems,” Dunne said. “If housing two inmates together is a concern, that’s something we’re going to address.”

He said that after the Sept. 11 attacks, extra attention has been paid to security surrounding the 1993 bombers; of those bombers, only Abouhalima is being detained in Kansas.

“There have been no problems or threats at any of our institutions,” Dunne said. “I can’t give you any specifics, but in light of what happened, all appropriate and necessary precautions are being made.”