"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…

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

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… Every day there was a white van from the security forces parked outside my grandfather’s estate…

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…

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."

I was an actor once.

I guess I'd have to admit that I would've liked to have been a film star, making lots of money and bedding all the starlets around that time.

I should've pulled a few bank jobs, tried to smuggle some foreigners into the country and, maybe, gone to Germany and shot a taxi driver in the back of the head, like Leslie Grantham (Dirty Den) did.

I'd, probably, have been the next James Bond by now.

Or, at least, the next Dirty Den.

Things don't ever seem to pan out for us law-abiding, little Englanders any more do they?