Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 2, 1995 TAG: 9510020062
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
The jury also convicted one of the defendants, El Sayyid Nosair, in the 1990 killing of extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, an assassination once described as an isolated attack by a crazed gunman but later as the opening blow in a ``war of urban terrorism.''
The jurors, who had deliberated for a week, looked tired as their verdict was read.
Most of the defendants looked on sternly. But one smirked and another repeatedly yelled in Arabic, ``Allahu Akbar!'' - ``God is great!'' - after jurors left the room.
Abdel-Rahman kept his head bowed, as he had throughout the trial, while he listened to an interpreter through headphones. His attorney, Lynne Stewart, cried.
Afterward, she told reporters the blind cleric had expressed the belief that ``He's not the first person to go to prison for his beliefs ... and he won't be the last.''
Lawyers for the defendants said all will appeal.
Security around the courthouse was increased immediately after the verdict, with uniformed police joining dozens of U.S. marshals. Jurors were taken away in a van under police escort and refused to talk with reporters.
Stewart said the sheik would be moved quickly to a prison hospital because of his health problems, which include diabetes and heart trouble.
Besides seditious conspiracy, the defendants faced various lesser charges. Nosair and Ibrahim El-Gabrowny each were found innocent of a direct role in the plot to bomb New York City landmarks but were convicted of the broader seditious conspiracy charge.
The sheik and Nosair face life in prison when they are sentenced in January; the rest face 20 to 30 years.
The verdict concluded a nine-month trial featuring more than 200 witnesses and hundreds of exhibits in a heavily guarded Manhattan courthouse patrolled daily by a bomb-sniffing dog.
Facing a rarely used Civil War-era seditious conspiracy charge, the defendants were accused of plotting bombings and killings to make the United States stop supporting Israel and Egypt, two enemies of militant Muslims.
The centerpiece of the plot featured five bombs in 10 minutes, meant to blow up the United Nations, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the George Washington Bridge and a federal building housing the FBI, according to the government. Videotapes showed defendants mixing bomb ingredients in a Queens garage just before their 1993 arrests.
The government had cast a wide net with the trial, using an FBI informant code-named ``Dallas'' to shut down a terrorist cell that prosecutors said had operated in the United States since 1989.
It cited proof of telephone contact between the sheik and World Trade Center bombers and transcripts of hundreds of taped conversations and excerpts from speeches in which the Egyptian sheik said, ``We must terrorize the enemies of Islam and ... shake the earth under their feet.''
Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said that, in 1990, the 57-year-old cleric, months after arriving in the United States, urged attacks similar to a suicide bombing that killed 241 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983 and caused the withdrawal of a peacekeeping force from the Middle East.
He said Abdel-Rahman called the United States ``the No. 1 enemy of Islam.''
Members of the Jihad Organization allegedly sought to bring a global holy war to the United States by killing Kahane and bombing the trade center.
They then allegedly sought to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, bomb five sites in a single day and kidnap or kill other dignitaries. They even discussed kidnapping ex-President Nixon, who died last year, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
``Terrorism is real. It is here. It is in this courtroom,'' Fitzgerald told the jury.
In 1991, Nosair was acquitted in state court in the Kahane killing but was jailed on related weapons charges.
In the 1980s, the sheik had been acquitted twice in his homeland of commanding others in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. He was convicted in absentia in 1994 for a role in a 1989 anti-government riot and was sentenced to seven years' hard labor.
Defense lawyers argued the FBI created the United Nations plot to save face after ignoring warnings before the trade center attack from informant Emad Salem that a bombing would take place.
``Their arrogance and audacity blew up in their face,'' defense lawyer John Jacobs said.
The slipup, the lawyers argued, gave Salem leverage to demand $1 million to snare the defendants and manipulate FBI agents despite his long history of telling lies, including boasting that he knew Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. He's now in the federal witness protection program.
They noted that Salem, who testified for a month, admitted providing information to the Egyptian government, as did Abdo Mohammed Haggag, a defendant turned government witness who testified he told the Egyptians about the Mubarak plot and where a trade center bomber was hiding in Egypt.
The defense case was aided by dozens of audiotapes Salem made secretly of his talks with his FBI handlers because he feared the agency would turn against him.
Four defendants testified - including the alleged mastermind of the bombing plot, Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali - but not the sheik.
Ali, who once said the plots would show Americans ``we can get you anytime,'' pleaded guilty to all charges in February.
Promising substantial cooperation to avoid life in prison, Siddig Ali said he had concluded terrorism ``does not reflect Islam at all, because God did not tell us to kill innocent people for his sake.''
Sunday's verdict came in the second of three trials stemming from the trade center bombing, which killed six people, caused $500 million worth of damage and reduced Americans' feeling of security.
Four men were convicted last year in the Feb. 26, 1993, bombing and were sentenced to 240 years in prison.
The alleged mastermind of the trade center bombing, Ramzi Yousef, is expected to go on trial next year. Prosecutors are expected to claim the bombing was part of a worldwide terrorism campaign.
by CNB