That suggestion by Timothy McVeigh's defense team could be raised in the weeks leading up to Nichols trial, expected to begin in Denver after Labor Day. McVeigh's defense tried to build a case that he was a fall guy for international terrorists. But Denver U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch barred such testimony from his trial, which ended Friday in a death sentence for the convicted Oklahoma City bomber. The murky questions of Nichols' travels to the Philippines - and whom he met with there - are not expected to become a major part of his trial.
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For prosecutors, it opens a dark area in which the answers aren't yet clear. For the defense, it would drag Nichols deeper into allegations of a broad conspiracy. Nichols' attorneys have said their client's only overseas link is his search for a mail-order bride in the Philippines. But McVeigh investigators turned up an alleged statement from Edwin Angeles, a jailed Filipino terrorist, that he met Nichols in 1992 or early 1993 at a meeting on the island of Mindanao. Also at the meeting, Angeles said, was Ramzi Yousef, the accused mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing. Angeles claimed the meeting centered on bombing activities, providing firearms and ammunition and training in bomb making, McVeigh's lawyers told the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in March. Abdul Hakim Murad, Yousef's co-defendant in an airline bombing conspiracy trial in New York last year, allegedly told a jail guard on the day of the Oklahoma City bombing that the ''Liberation Army'' was responsible for it. Investigators for McVeigh also claimed to have information that an arms dealer for the Moro National Liberation Front had visited Nichols in the Philippines. The Moro front is seeking autonomy for Mindanao under an Islamic government. McVeigh's defense also noted that Nichols telephoned two members of the anti-government group Posse Comitatus in Kansas in 1994. Members of that group had traveled to New York and met with an Iraqi diplomat around the time of the Gulf War in 1991. The McVeigh defense wanted to build a case that the bombing could have been sponsored by a foreign state, possibly Iraq. Dennis Mahon, an Oklahoma racist named by an informant as having discussed blowing up federal buildings before the bombing, admitted receiving regular payments from Iraqi sources for about four years. The payments ended a month after the bombing. Nichols' attorney, Michael Tigar, has scoffed at any attempts to tie his client to the shadowy underground of terrorists hinted at by McVeigh's team. |
But McVeigh investigators turned up an alleged statement from Edwin Angeles, a jailed Filipino terrorist, that he met Nichols in 1992 or early 1993 at a meeting on the island of Mindanao. Also at the meeting, Angeles said, was Ramzi Yousef, the accused mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing.Angeles claimed the meeting centered on bombing activities, providing firearms and ammunition and training in bomb making, McVeigh's lawyers told the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in March.
PHILIPPINES
ZAMBOANGA -- Edwin Angeles, a former leader of the Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf who later became a government spy, was killed by a lone gunman in the southern Philippines, police said.
The Deseret News (Salt Lake City, UT)
January 15, 1999, Friday
WIRE; Pg. A04