Osama aide recounts stabbing

New York Daily News ^ | 9/07/02 | ROBERT GEARTY

[kattracks]

A top Osama Bin Laden lieutenant who stabbed a Manhattan prison guard in the eye said yesterday that his hand was covered in blood after the attack but denied it was an act of terror.

"My hand was all bloody," Mamdouh Mahmud Salim said as he gave a judge a chilling blow-by-blow account of the Nov. 1, 2000, assault on Louis Pepe at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. "This is the first time in my life that the blood of another person would come on my hand."

Prosecutors are trying to prove the stabbing with a sharpened comb was a terrorist act, which would make Salim eligible for a sentence of life without parole. Otherwise, he would face 14 to 17 years in prison.

Salim told Manhattan Federal Court Judge Deborah Batts the stabbing grew out of his frustration with his legal team in the 1998 embassy bombing case. Salim said he wanted to escape to attack his attorneys, who were waiting in a locked area.

'I became crazy'

Sitting at the defense table in leg shackles, Salim said he lured Pepe, 34, to his cell and overpowered him with the help of fellow inmate Khalfan Khamis Mohamed.

"I was not able to get the keys," Salim testified. "I became crazy, and I took the knife and put it in his eye."

He said Mohamed - convicted of riding in the bomb truck in the Tanzania embassy attack - was "taken aback" at what Salim had done to Pepe. "I had done differently than what I had told him," Salim said. "When he left, I knew I had made a mistake."

Salim, who still faces trial in the embassy bombing case, already had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder and attempted murder in the attack on Pepe.

Salim said he sharpened the comb into a knife after bunk beds were installed in his cell. The top bunk blocked a ceiling camera from filming what he was doing.

He said a month before the stabbing he had asked another embassy bombing defendant, Mohammed Odeh, to help him escape. Odeh was convicted of participating in the Nairobi, Kenya, embassy bombing.

Salim said after he described a plan to take hostages and demand to be flown to Sudan, Odeh responded, "By God, you are drunk." Salim said he dropped the idea.

The stabbing left Pepe brain-damaged, paralyzed and blind in his left eye.

"He calls me 'Mommy,'" said Eileen Pepe, 47, his sister. "He can't say people's names. He's very hard to understand."

After listening to Salim's testimony, she called it "a nicely rehearsed story."

[piasa]

Only 14 to 17 years for trying to kill someone, for utterly destroying a man's life? Not to mention what they've done to others too?

[piasa]

"Mamdouh Mahmud Salim" also goes by the name "Abu Hajer al Iraqi," and also by "Abu Hajer."

[dennisw]

 

 

 

Prosecution completes death penalty case against Tanzania bomber
Mohamed's cell mate at the time, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, is charged with attempted murder for stabbing Pepe in the eye with a sharpened plastic comb. Prosecutors described Mohamed as Salim's accomplice in the assault and what they portrayed as a hostage-taking and escape plan.

---

June 26, 2001 Posted: 12:15 PM EDT (1615 GMT)

Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, a cell mate of Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, allegedly sharpened this comb into a homemade knife

---

From Phil Hirschkorn
CNN Producer

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Federal prosecutors asking a jury to impose a death sentence on convicted embassy bomber Khalfan Khamis Mohamed rested their case Monday.

Prosecutors ended with medical testimony about the condition of the jail guard whose assault, they allege, is proof that Mohamed would continue to pose a danger even in jail, one of the government's justifications for seeking capital punishment.

The government spent two and half days covering the November 1, 2000, stabbing of corrections officer Louis Pepe on the highest security floor of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the federal jail in New York City that adjoins the courthouse.

Mohamed's cell mate at the time, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, is charged with attempted murder for stabbing Pepe in the eye with a sharpened plastic comb. Prosecutors described Mohamed as Salim's accomplice in the assault and what they portrayed as a hostage-taking and escape plan.

Mohamed's continued risk to others, even behind bars, is one of the factors prosecutors are arguing as they ask the jury to consider in its deliberations. Another is the impact on relatives of the 11 people killed and on the 85 injured in the August 7, 1998, bombing of the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Ten victims from Tanzania testified in one day before the jury last week.

The same jurors considering Mohamed's sentence found him guilty on May 29 of participating in the Tanzania bombing and a worldwide conspiracy led by Saudi exile Osama bin Laden to kill Americans and destroy U.S. property. The jury also convicted two men in the coordinated, more lethal Kenya embassy bombing and a fourth man in the overall terror conspiracy.

No witnesses to attack on guard

Dr. Maxim Koslow, a neurosurgeon who operated on Pepe, told the jury Monday that the makeshift knife plunged two and half inches into the guard's skull. Koslow said Pepe's permanent disabilities include loss of his left eye and brain damage that resulted in a 50 percent vision loss in his right eye, partial paralysis of his right arm, and severe language difficulties, both speaking and writing.

No one saw the attack -- except Pepe, who is unable to testify -- and no videotape of it exists, despite cameras pointed at the jail unit's cells and hallways 24 hours a day. Jail officials said their recording device malfunctioned but has since been repaired.

The comb and a filed-down brush that also was wielded in the attack were purchased in the jail commissary, according to receipts found in Salim and Mohamed's cell. Only Salim bought the combs. The jail no longer sells these items to inmates, according to MCC spokesman Robert Brooks.

FBI forensic examiner Samuel Baechtel told the jury that sweatpants and T-shirt worn by Mohamed that day bore stains of officer Pepe's blood, according to DNA tests.

Baechtel testified that Mohamed's blood was found only in one place, in a corridor down the hall from the cell where investigators believe the stabbing occurred.

Defense attorneys begin case Tuesday

Mohamed

Mohamed's attorneys will begin their case Tuesday seeking to persuade the jury of a dozen "mitigating factors" to oppose his execution.

Mohamed's mother and siblings will testify that his execution would cause them to suffer grief and loss, and a psychiatrist is expected to testify that Mohamed does feel remorse for his actions.

Mohamed's defense will further argue that his execution would merely make him a martyr and be used to justify future terrorist attacks.

If the jury cannot vote unanimously for the death penalty, then U.S. District Judge Leonard Sand will impose a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of release.

That is the verdict the jury returned in the death penalty phase against convicted Kenya embassy bomber Mohamed al-'Owhali, the only other one among the four defendants for whom prosecutors asked the death penalty.

 

 

[piasa]

Mohamed's mother and siblings will testify that his execution would cause them to suffer grief and loss, and a psychiatrist is expected to testify that Mohamed does feel remorse for his actions.

Just call me one of those annoying Lutheran types, but if you feel remorse for what you have done, you would plead guilty, apologize, and pray for the recovery of the victim and for mercy. Let the lawyers defend the innocent instead of wasting time on you; and then let God's will be done.

I guess this guy isn't as faithful as advertised.

[thedilg]

Only 14 to 17 years for trying to kill someone, for utterly destroying a man's life? Not to mention what they've done to others too?

And yet it is the liberals that berate us about how poorly we treat the terrorists in our prisons.

It would seem to me that we would often do better in letting the host country or the country of origin take care of these evil terrorists rather then sending them to us for trial.

Godspeed, The Dilg

[I still care]

If you know anything about Muslim rituals of purity it would strike you that he is upset that "blood of another person would come on my hand". Muslims are all tied up about ritual washings and such. They have to wash a certain way and at certain times, shave certain places, not shave others. It is a real bondage to these people. Otherwise they are "unclean". If any biological substance gets on them such as blood, etc, they have to wash it off a certain way, with certain religious strictures, such as silence while they wash, etc.

In fact, a woman who is menstruating is not even allowed to say scripture or repeat the name of Allah - she is unclean.

He does sound as if what upset him about this is that his victim's blood got on him, doesn't it?

[Zeroisanumber]

Only 14 to 17 years for trying to kill someone, for utterly destroying a man's life? Not to mention what they've done to others too?

He has other charges pending, the D.A. didn't see a reason to go for a life sentance when he was already on track for getting three of them.

[MissAmericanPie]

Let's see if cyanide pellets upset him as well.

[Dialup Llama]

If he gets the life sentence, there is a super max prison for dangerous prisoners where they don't see another person, ever. He'll go crazy there.

[Dialup Llama]

Mohamed's defense will further argue that his execution would merely make him a martyr and be used to justify future terrorist attacks.

Lets get over this one right now. The judge in WTC I is still under guard and the muslims have not responded kindly to our enlightened approach of not giving the death penalty. The middle east is full of martyrs adding another one is not going to change anything. As long as terrorists are alive, they can inspire hostage takings, murders etc... in an attempt to free them.

[M Kehoe]

Too bad they won't put Salim into the general prison population.

5.56mm

[AdvisorB]

Let's hope a New York jury gets it right this time.

[joesnuffy]

Thanks to liberals..the namby approach to punishment...kindess is taken for weakness
We are going to have to drop a lot of H.E. on these a#@holes before they begin to understand and fear/respect us again...
And that include the variety inside CONUS

[Behind Liberal Lines]

But did they charge him with a HATE crime?

[weegee]

I wonder if terrorists are jailed for decades in Middle Eastern prisons.

I wonder if terrorists who are imprisoned in Middle Eastern prisons are permitted to have combs.

[null and void]

But did they charge him with a HATE crime?

No. Minorities can't commit "hate crimes". Duh!! What planet are you from???

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

Only 14 to 17 years for trying to kill someone, for utterly destroying a man's life? Not to mention what they've done to others too?

This vile monster won't last a year in prison. Dead man walking.

[Behind Liberal Lines]

This vile monster won't last a year in prison. Dead man walking.

I wish you were correct, but I suspect that you are not.

There is a sizeable percentage of African American Muslims (Nation of Islam, etc.) in prison. They protect him.