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Jury Seated In Newark Missile Plot Trial
Jan 4, 2005 2:07 pm US/Eastern
A jury of six men and six women was selected Tuesday for the trial of a British businessman accused of attempting to sell missiles to a terrorist group he thought would use them to fire on U.S. airplanes.
Opening statements were expected to begin Tuesday afternoon.
A lawyer for Hemant Lakhani, 69, has said his client was entrapped by an overzealous government desperate for a public victory against terrorists.
Federal prosecutors contend Lakhani spoke enthusiastically about shoulder-fired missiles being used to shoot down commercial airliners. The U.S. attorney's office has said it expects to use videotapes and recorded conversations to make its case.
Lakhani has been held at Passaic County Jail since his arrest 17 months ago in a hotel near Newark Liberty International Airport. He is charged with attempting to provide material support to terrorists and attempting to sell arms without a license. He has denied all charges.
The trial is expected to last about 10 weeks.
Three other defendants connected to the case have pleaded guilty to money laundering or related counts: Mathena Raja, 44, an Indian citizen living in London; Moinuddeen Ahmed Hameed, 40, an Indian citizen living in Malaysia and Yehuda Abraham, 76, a New York gem dealer. Hameed and Abraham were arrested at the same time as Lakhani.
All three have denied any connections to terrorist organizations.
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Missile-Selling British Hindu Businessman 'Was Entrapped'
By Mark Sage, PA, in Newark, New Jersey
A British small-time businessman offered to sell 200 shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to be used in a plot to terrorise the United States, a court heard.
Hemant Lakhani, 69, told an undercover FBI agent that the rockets could be used to shoot down 10 to 15 airlines simultaneously on the second anniversary of the September 11 terrorist outrage.
Lakhani, from Hendon, north London, denies the accusations, and rejects further charges that he promised to sell a radioactive “dirty bomb”.
He claims he is the victim of an entrapment operation by American, British and Russian intelligence agencies, under pressure to catch terror suspects following September 11.
Stuart Rabner, prosecuting, told the jury in New Jersey yesterday: “This case is about a man who enthusiastically tried to sell 200 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles to people who he believed would use them to shoot down planes in the sky, with people aboard, as part of a terrorist attack on the United States.
“He spent more than a year and a half eagerly trying to make this deal happen, actively trying to smuggle 200 shoulder-fired missiles into the United States, all the time issuing advice on how to shoot planes out of the sky in order to shake the US economy.”
Mr Rabner told the jury at New Jersey District Court, in Newark, that Lakhani praised terror chief Osama bin Laden for the September 11 attacks.
Lakhani was arrested in August 2003 at a hotel overlooking Newark Airport, moments after allegedly presenting a single “sample” missile to the FBI informant, called Air Haji.
Lakhani was arrested and charged with one count of attempting to provide material support to terrorists, one count of unlawful brokering of foreign defence articles, two counts of money laundering, and one count of attempting to import merchandise into the US by means of false statements.
He has been in custody in New Jersey since.
Mr Rabner told the jury there was a “mood of celebration” in the hotel room moments before it was stormed by FBI and Customs officers.
He told jurors that Lakhani had offered advice on how to carry out a terrorist attack.
Lakhani advised: “You must target 10 to 15 different airports at the same time,” he said. Lakhani noted that there would be an average of 400 people on each commercial airliner and the busiest days for air travel were Monday and Friday.
Mr Rabner said Lakhani had worked as a clothing merchant for many years.
But he was “far more than a clothing merchant”.
In recent years, he claimed, Lakhani had been trying to break into the international arms trade.
The missile Lakhani obtained as a sample for the FBI informant was a Russian-made Igla SA18.
As he was soliciting a Ukrainian arms company in search of the rockets, the Russian intelligence service – the FSB – got wind of the plot.
They set Lakhani up, providing him with a dud and shipping it to the United States.
In one of about 200 tape recordings of conversations between Lakhani and Haji, Lakhani allegedly praised al-Qaida chief bin Laden, because he “had straightened these idiots” on September 11, 2001.
“He did a very good job,” Lakhani allegedly said.
During one meeting Haji, who was posing as a representative of a Somali terrorist group, made it clear the sale would be illegal.
Lakhani told him: “Whatever he asked for is available. You can get as many pieces as you want. The job can be done, 100%.” In another secretly-recorded meeting, the court heard, Lakhani said: “Eventually our dreams will become a reality.
Indian-born Lakhani, who is a strict Hindu, added: “If Allah blesses us we can finish this.”
The pair also discussed whether Lakhani could obtain a radioactive dirty bomb.
Lakhani offered Haji such a device for £1.6 million, saying: “The item is available.”
Mr Rabner accepted that Lakhani was set up but suggested it was not entrapment.
“Was he set up? Yes. He set himself up by reaching out on the advice of a terrorist to the wrong person – to someone who was working in cooperation with law enforcement and was passing that information back to them,” he said.
But Lakhani’s defence lawyer, Henry Klingeman, painted a picture of a man overcome by the temptation to make a massive multi-million pound sale.
“He spent his adult life in search of the almighty British Pound,” he said.
He accepted the general case against his client as true and asked, therefore “how can Mr Lakhani be not guilty?” “The answer is one word: entrapment,” he said.
Lakhani, dressed in a charcoal suit and with greying hair, looked on as Mr Klingeman said his client had no criminal history, no links to terrorism and no sympathies with Islamic extremism.
He added that Lakhani was “utterly incapable” of conceiving and carrying out the missile plot without the aid of intelligence agencies.
The FBI agent, Haji, was a former drug trafficker, Mr Klingeman said, who had apparently become a professional informant to escape jail.
By contrast, Lakhani had lived in Britain for 40 years after training as a lawyer and marrying his wife Kusum.
Mr Klingeman said Lakhani was targeted by the FBI which was under pressure to catch terrorists following September 11.
“September 11 has put enormous pressure on the (US) Government, specifically on the FBI, to prevent future September 11s and to apprehend those who would do us harm.
“You could lock up Mr Lakhani and throw away the key and it would make no difference. He is not a terrorist.
“The government manufactured this. The evidence will show that the government came up with the idea to bring missiles into the United States. Mr Lakhani did not.
“The Government implanted in Mr Lakhani’s mind the idea to try and obtain these missiles.
“How is that making us safer?”
Mr Klingeman confirmed Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, played a role in the operation and compared it to a film by Steven Spielberg.
“Like a Hollywood movie, this case is a work of fiction,” he said.
He added: “If the Government had not come looking for Mr Lakhani, Mr Lakhani would be sitting in the living room of his modest north London home right now asking his wife for some more hot tea no missiles coming to the US, no threat to the US.”
The trial continues.