Surveillance Tapes Offer Damaging Evidence Against Sheik in Terror-Funding Trial

NEW YORK (AP) - Things had been looking up for Sheik Mohammed Ali Hasan al-Moayad as he approached his trial on charges of supporting terrorist groups Hamas and al-Qaida.

The government's star witness set himself on fire in a bizarre protest outside the White House. A judge limited some of the evidence that prosecutors said linked the Yemeni sheik to Osama bin Laden.

And prosecutors had begun their case relying on hours of secretly recorded Arabic conversations that were hard to understand even in translation.

But those tapes proved surprisingly damaging this past week as jurors in federal court heard the defendants speak in familiar terms about men prosecutors call some of the world's most dangerous terrorists. The tapes close with al-Moayad's prayer for the deaths of Jews and Americans: "Dear God, strike them with earthquakes, put them in their coffins, abandon them and defeat them."

Al-Moayad and his assistant, Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed, also spoke about code names for weaponry and false names for bank accounts.

As the trial's first week ended, lawyers for both defendants said it would be difficult to overcome the bad impression.

"It's very hard for an American jury to overcome the emotion that's wrapped up in 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," al-Moayad's lawyer, William Goodman, said after the last recording was played for the jury.

Al-Moayad is accused of providing material support for terrorism, as well as conspiring and attempting to provide material support. He could receive a 60-year prison sentence. Zayed faces the conspiracy and attempt charges and could serve 30 years behind bars.

Marks said few of the inflammatory statements came from his client's mouth. And Goodman said he remained confident he could persuade the jury that the Islamic cleric and his assistant were simply trying to wheedle money for their legitimate charities from two FBI informants who lured them into a sting operation in Frankfurt, Germany.

One informant, posing as a Black Panther turned militant American Muslim, said he needed help funneling $2.5 million to terrorist groups. Al-Moayad and Zayed could take a 10 percent cut for their services, the informant said. The second informant, a Yemeni named Mohamed Alanssi, acted as a go-between.

"Eventually, they said what the government agents wanted to hear," Goodman said.

Alanssi was dropped as a witness after burning himself outside a White House gate in November in what he called a protest against government mistreatment.

And U.S. District Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. excluded evidence allegedly linking al-Moayad to al-Qaida and Afghan training camps from the government's case, including a videotape that would have required supporting testimony from Alanssi.

But whatever optimism those events generated in the defense camp seemed muted after jurors heard al-Moayad and Zayed talking alone and at length about secretly executing the informants' wishes.

"Look, any organization, anything: Hamas, al-Qaida or whatever as long as it is for jihad," al-Moayad replied.

Al-Moayad closed the final meeting with a prayer: "Dear God, defeat the Jews the tyrants. Defeat the infidel Americans."

And prosecutors had begun their case relying on hours of secretly recorded Arabic conversations that were hard to understand even in translation.

But those tapes proved surprisingly damaging this past week as jurors in federal court heard the defendants speak in familiar terms about men prosecutors call some of the world's most dangerous terrorists. The tapes close with al-Moayad's prayer for the deaths of Jews and Americans: "Dear God, strike them with earthquakes, put them in their coffins, abandon them and defeat them."

Odd. The tapes evidently were damaging yet the reporter describes it as "surprisingly" so . It sounds like the reporter was sympathetic to the defense and was on the receiving end of leaks from that party as to what to expect.

We will never win the WOT until we start EXECUTING Islamofacists like these two pieces of scum. Putting them in jail will not help, they will only recruit more terrorists behind bars. Death would help.

Maybe what's surprising is that the government seems to have made an attempt to get them accurately translated.

I was at a conference where the interpreter for the crazy blind sheik in the first WTC bombing announced that the sheik used to come into the court every morning and say, "Victory to the armies of Allah" - which the interpreter boasted that he translated simply as "Good morning." (He also apologized to the sheik after the trial for not being able to "help" him more.)

Now, there are many ways of saying "Good Morning" in Arabic languages, just as there were many ways of saying "Good Morning" in German. But surely people who greeted one with "Heil Hitler" were different from those who said "Guten Morgen." And the same is true in any language.

It sounds to me as if the jurors may have gotten a less "smoothed out" translation with this latest case, and that probably is a little surprising.

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