Posted on 01/28/2005 5:37:02 PM PST by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK (AP) - A white-bearded Yemeni cleric peered from behind wire-rimmed glasses and prayed under his breath in Arabic as lawyers drew radically different portraits of him Friday at the opening of his trial on charges of supporting Hamas and al-Qaida.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Moore described Sheik Mohammed Ali Hasan al-Moayad as an Osama bin Laden supporter who cheered suicide bombings in Israel and prayed for "God to put the Jews and the Americans in their coffins."
Moore's voice quavered with emotion as she told jurors they would hear from the victim of a Tel Aviv bus bombing, and see secretly recorded video of al-Moayad clapping and cheering the attack.
"What happened on that bus was nothing to celebrate or cheer about," she said. "The defendants knew what supporting Hamas was really all about."
The prosecution's case centers on what it calls a conspiracy to give Hamas and al-Qaida $2.5 million from two men the cleric later learned to be paid government informants. It also is alleged that the sheik supported terrorism for years with thousands of dollars transferred to Yemen from a mosque in Brooklyn.
Defense lawyers Friday painted al-Moayad and his assistant and co-defendant, Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed, as the well-meaning dupes of informants who lured them into an FBI sting by promising a small fortune in cash for a charity bakery and girls' school they ran in Yemen.
The government's case has changed radically since its main informant, Mohamed Alanssi, set himself on fire outside the White House in November in what he called a protest against FBI mistreatment.
He has recovered from his injuries but his credibility was undermined. Prosecutors do not plan to call him as a witness, and U.S. District Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. ruled this month that the government may not be able to introduce much of the evidence allegedly linking al-Moayad to al-Qaida.
As a result, the jury will not hear some of the most dramatic charges about his ties to Osama bin Laden and his followers. The government's allegations about his Hamas ties were largely unharmed.
The defendants join the small number of people tried in U.S. courts on al-Qaida-related charges since Sept. 11, 2001. Al-Moayad faces more than 60 years in prison if convicted; Zayed faces more than three decades behind bars.
Placing his hand on al-Moayad's shoulder, defense attorney William Goodman described his client as a deeply pious and gravely ill man drawn into the sting by the informants' pledges of cash and medical treatment for his diabetes. Al-Moayad rose, smiled and made a shallow bow to the jury.
Goodman described the two-year-old surveillance recordings as a fictional production designed to portray the naive Yemeni men as masterminds of an international terrorism-funding scheme.
"It had actors, it had a director, it had sound technicians and in the end what was produced was essentially a show," he said. "In the end, the government's case rises and falls on its evidence, the reality show they created. This was a reality show: All show, no reality."
Lets try to make it sound like we're prosecuting Father Flannigan next time ok?
Put the lot of them in their coffins..
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