MAMDOUH HABIB

Sometimes word of an action leaks out – this was even the case with September 11th: Mamdouh Habib's foray into Islamism began in 1991, when he took his family to New York, where two sisters lived. He ran into two friends from Cairo who were followers of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. At their urging, Mamdouh Habib went to the federal courthouse to protest the prosecution of El Sayyid A. Nosair, who was on trial for murdering Rabbi Meir Kahane. Mr. Habib held rallies in

1995 for Sheik Abdel Rahman, who was then on trial on charges of conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks, charges on which he was convicted and remains in jail. A few days before September 11, 2001, Mr. Habib called his wife from Pakistan, and as was the will of the disbelievers, her phone was being monitored. In the conversation Mr. Habib said something big was going to happen in America in the next few days. The Pakistanis were alerted and kidnapped then tortured him and turned him over to the Americans who brought him to Egypt where he was subjected to more torture then transferred to Guantanamo then released.1

ANTHONY ELGINDY

Another man who was indirectly connected to our network was known as Anthony Elgindy. At a court hearing the prosecutor, Kenneth Breen, said that Anthony contacted an unidentified broker at Salomon Smith Barney on September 10, 2001. Predicting that the Dow Jones industrial average would soon collapse by about two-thirds, the prosecutor said that Elgindy asked the

broker to sell $300,000 in his children's trust funds. Elgindy, however, was unable to sell that day and did not sell until the markets reopened for trading on September 18.2 Elgindy was arrested but not because he had foreknowledge of 9/11 but because he was caught manipulating stock prices along with a corrupt FBI Agent. It would have been very embarrassing for the FBI to be so connected to a man who knew about 9/11 ahead of time. So, to avoid that embarrassment, the Justice Department avoided any indictments relating to terrorism, and junked any such investigations into Elgindy despite the profile of Khaled Elgindy, his brother. Khaled Elgindy used stints at the State Department and a U.S. government commission to carry out the edicts of Sheik Rahman in regard to Egyptian Coptic Christians. He worked for a Michigan Islamic charity that openly funded Hamas, secretly raised money to fund Iraqi insurgents against American soldiers, and has ties to Al-Qaeda. Finally, there is Khaled Elgindy's good work for the Palestinian Authority and his work for various pro-Islamist Arab Muslim groups, like the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.3

THE JIHADI WHO COULDN’T BOMB STRAIGHT

As the big day drew near Mohammad Salameh became more and careless. He listed the address of the Islamic Center Of Jersey City 17 Park St, Jersey City on his

1. Ray Bonner Australian’s Long Path In The US Antiterrorism Maze New York Times January 29, 2005.2. Eric Dash Broker Who Aided US Going On Trial for Fraud New York Times November 1, 2004.3. http://www.debbieschlussel.com/archives/2005/11/wall_street_jou.html

rental slip for the van that would transport the bomb, as he worshipped there regularly. We thank Allah [subhanahu wa ta’ala] that he did not list Masjid al-Salaam. That is the address of the oldest mosque in Jersey City that was headed by Hamas fundraiser Muhammad Al-Hanooti at the time of the bombing but is now as close to a pro-American mosque as you are going to get. Abdul Rahman Yasin taught him how to drive the van. As identification, he used a New York license bearing his own name and El-Gabrowny’s address, 57 Prospect Park Southwest, Brooklyn, New York, instead of using a forged document. This was the same address that was used by El-Sayyid Nosair before he blasted Kahane. Salameh was convinced the van would be destroyed beyond identification in the explosion. The night before the bombing in order to distance himself from the Ryder van should it be identified, Salameh falsely reported to the police that it had been stolen. Another brilliant move!

Eyad Ismoil, a 21-year-old Palestinian Brother and Jordanian citizen who had entered the United States in 1989 on a student visa agreed to help transport the bomb to the World Trade Center. After a brief stint studying engineering at Wichita State University in Kansas, Ismoil dropped out of school and stayed in America as an illegal alien. He would tell the Jordanian police that while in America, “he had been working odd jobs in different stores and of his two day stay in New York before returning to

Jordan. Ismoil stated that while in New York, in a pornography or sex shop on 42nd

Street, he was confronted by a male from Kuwait, possibly a Pakistani who was in the company of another male. This male told him they had a cleaning business, like soaps and things, and the male asked Ismoil if he wanted to work for them as a driver. Ismoil said that he had initially refused the offer but the male persisted, telling Ismoil that he should give it a try. Ismoil agreed and drove a van with these men into New York and then into a large building, the Trade Tower. Ismoil stated that after they had driven down into the building he was told to stop, the van was left there and all three of them entered a small car and left the building. After leaving the building Ismoil heard a big explosion and he was then told to leave the United States.”4

On February 26, 1993 Eyad Ismoil and Mohammed Salemeh drove to the Trade Center and parked in its basement. Salemeh drove even though he had three accidents recently, one of which landed Ramzi Yousef a hospital. They had planned to arrive there early in the morning, at about 9:30 a.m. but one of the Brothers had forgotten to give them a wake-up call, and they overslept. Because of their tardiness, Mohammed Salemeh was unable to park the truck next to a key column, which might have resulted in toppling the Trade Center and killing at least 250,000 kuffar!

HOW WE KNEW WHERE TO PARK THE TRUCKBOMB

It has been alleged by one Peter Lance that Ahmed Amin Refai, an accountant at the New York City Fire Department came into possession of the blueprints for the Trade Center. These blueprints would have been invaluable in determining the best

4. 93CR180 Doc #599

location to park the truck-bomb. Robert I. Friedman got this statement out of an FBI explosives expert: “If they had found the exact architectural Achilles' heel of the World Trade Center I think it would have brought her down.” Refai attended both the Al-Farooq and Abu Bakr Mosques and had been photographed with Sheik Rahman, who he served as a “translator” for during the Sheik’s immigration trial. Peter Lance discovered that Refai knew Brothers Nosair, Salameh and Ahmed Sattar and was interviewed by the FBI twice in 1992. He revealed Refai called in sick on the day of the first World Trade Center Event and that in 1999 he lied about having lost some Fire Department identification, so that he could gain access to a facility that housed more recent blueprints. Refai claimed the 1992 FBI interviews concerned a money laundering investigation, not so-called terrorism and that he did NOT obtain any blueprints nor did he call in sick on the day of the first World Trade Center Event. When the Brother said that the United States Government carried out our September 11 th action on behalf of Israel he erred and only aroused more suspicion5 but the Islamist line must be followed. Later, the Imam Intikab Habib was forced to resign his post as New York City Fire Department Chaplin because he said this in relation to our 9/11 Victory,

I as an individual don't know who did the attacks. There are so many conflicting reports about it. I don't believe it was 19 hijackers who did those attacks. I've heard professionals say that nowhere ever in history did a steel building come down with fire alone. It takes two or three weeks to demolish a building like that. But it was pulled down in a couple of hours. Was it 19 hijackers who brought it down, or was it a conspiracy?6

On June 20, 1993, shortly before Sheik Rahman’s followers would be arrested for plotting to destroy the bridges and tunnels leading to New York City Emad Salem recorded this conversation between Siddig Ali Siddig and a male called whom the transcriber spelled as “Rafhi.”

Siddig Ali: (UI). (Beeper sounded off). 795 02

Salem: Samir.

Siddig Ali: This will be in Jersey. Dial 201 let us hope it is something good.

Salem: By God.

Siddig Ali: Dial 201.

Salem: 7

Siddig Ali: 9-5, 0-2-9-1, (UI) Yes, someone just called me, yeah, peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings. Hello, who is this? Huh? Hello Rafhi, how are you Brother? May God bless you - How is it going man? Thanks to God. Wahid [Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh] called me the

5. Peter Lance, One Thousand Days for Revenge - Regan Books 2003.6. http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/nyc-imam0930,0,6360713,print.story?coll=ny-top-headlines

day before yesterday, but I were not there. He said he will call. He will come Monday. Umm, I were not there, I mean he called at home while I was not there, by God. Umm, yes. Is he with the family at home? I mean (UI). Monday (UI), so what are we going to do? Didn't you talk to him? That is it, that means. It means because my wife told me that he said he will be here on Monday, I said that is it, he may come in Sunday, umm, yes, as long as he is going to be here Sunday, today, that means thanks to God. No, no, umm, God willing. With God’s blessing, yes ok God willing, God willing, God willing sheik. Do you mean that I should wait on you tomorrow morning? Should I wait on you in the morning? Yes. No, he never gave me any money. No, by God, he did not give me at all. Now, I really need money because I don't have any. He went, do you remember when he told you ‘I am going to Siddig now to give him money?’ He left without even talking to me, by God. I am a little upset with him. But I find an excuse for your brother. Umm do you mean we should transfer it? No problem. God willing, when he comes Monday, no problem, we will find out what can be done tomorrow morning and it will do it, I mean it is not a problem. Ok, no objection, if you like to transfer it to my name tomorrow, there is no objection - I mean there is no objection. Ok, I will wait on you in the morning, and you call me, God willing. Peace Be Upon You and God's mercy and his blessings.7

MATARAWY MOHAMMED SAID SALEH

On January 31, 1986 Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh (Wahid) using the alias Wahid Mohamed Ahmed married Evelyn Cortez, a United States citizen. Based on this marriage, Cortez filed a Petition to Classify Status of Alien Relative. This application started the process of acquiring legal permanent residency for Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh. In the petition, Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh claimed to be a self-employed scuba diver. The INS denied the petition on the ground that Cortez failed to submit a divorce decree from her previous marriage. The denial was sent by certified mail but was returned marked “unclaimed.” In 1987, still married to Cortez, Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh married Leslie Sonkin, also a United States citizen, in a ceremony in Egypt. They then filed an immigrant visa petition for Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh claiming Saleh had never been previously married. In December 1987 Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh entered the United States at New York City as a conditional resident alien based on his marriage to Sonkin. This status allowed him to remain in the United States legally for two years after which time he could file to permanently remain in the United States. In August 1988 Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh was convicted in federal court for selling heroin in Detroit and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. He was paroled after two and a half years and turned over to the INS for deportation on the basis of his conviction. In December 1990 the INS initiated deportation proceedings while Saleh was detained in Oakdale, Louisiana. One month later, Sultan El-Galwi posted an $8,000 bail with the INS to secure Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh’s release. The deportation order was still pending. In March

7. USA v Rahman USDC SDNY 93CR181 Appendix June 20, 1994 Thomas Nooter Tape CM-55

1993 the INS terminated Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh’s conditional residence status. In July 1993 the FBI interviewed Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh’s wife Evelyn Cortez, who claimed she had re-married to Ashraf Mohammed. She claimed that she had a son by Saleh six years earlier. On July 22, 1993 a joint INS-FBI team arrested Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh in Wildwood, New Jersey and on December 15, 1995 Saleh was convicted of conspiracy to bomb various targets in New York City. He was sentenced to time served (21 months) and placed on supervised release for three years despite his outstanding deportation order, despite his illegal immigration status, heroin conviction, violation of probation, assault of his ex-wife Cortez, assaults on his current wife, and involvement in credit card fraud and theft. In June 1996 the INS Philadelphia office issued an arrest warrant for Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh for his violation of immigration laws. Shortly thereafter he was arrested by INS Special Agents at the Federal Probation office in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and placed in INS custody. Based on his terrorism conviction, Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh was placed in administrative deportation proceedings as an aggravated felon. This procedure did not involve a deportation hearing. Egypt issued a temporary travel document allowing Saleh to travel only to Egypt and only God knows what happened to him after Egyptian Security Police had him in custody.8 It was the Ashraf Mohammed and Evelyn Cortes, who hid Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh at a Wildwood New Jersey hotel, who did his time. Mohammed received 42 months and Evelyn 31 months for harboring a federal fugitive.9

The government did not use him as a trial witness. Assistant United States Attorney McCarthy characterized him as having portrayed himself at proffer sessions

As a small-time petty criminal who inhabited a shady world where he had occasional access to, although not the abiding trust of, persons connected with terrorist groups. Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh had developed experience over the years in, among other things, credit card and immigration fraud… Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh was thus able to provide the government with the identities of individuals he had come to know in that capacity, some information about routes of false identification once illegal immigrants arrive in the country. Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh has also provided information that identified persons believed to be involved in the International movement of sophisticated weaponry and counterfeit U.S. currency. Matarawy Mohammed Said Saleh’s co-operation ended in mid-1996 and it did not warrant any new prosecutions. Whether the information he provided ultimately has any value beyond what now appears can only be known after the passage of time.”10

The 1996 Gorelick Memo had been disseminated in March 1996 so even if Saleh’s information had warranted new prosecutions, it was unlikely there would have been any follow-up investigation. Had our Brothers parked the bomb in the right parking space they would have fulfilled the hopes of Adolf Hitler, for Albert Speer reported in his

8. http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/911_TerrTrav_App.pdf9. USDOS Report on International Terrorism 199410. Ltr. McCarthy to McElroy October 25, 1995.

prison diary written in 1947: “I never saw [Hitler] so beside himself as he was near the end of the war when he worked himself...into a delirium over his vision of the downfall of New York in a firestorm. He described skyscrapers being transformed into giant flaming torches, then crashing down into one another, with the imploded city reflected in the night sky.” None-the-less, the first attack on the Trade Center caused six deaths and more hospital casualties than any event in American history since the Civil War! The Brothers were almost killed by their own bomb – they had ignited a seven-minute fuse, gotten in an escape vehicle and were about to leave the Trade Center when a truck blocked their egress. A few minutes later the truck pulled out and they followed it.

Egyptian Islamic Jihad was not about to be outdone by Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya. On the same day as the World Trade Center bombing operative Egyptian Islamic Jihad operative Adel Abu Bakr was arrested for the explosion of a TNT device that was wrapped with tape and imbedded with rusty nails at the Wadi El Nil coffee shop in downtown Cairo. Two people were killed, and another eighteen people, most European and American tourists, were wounded. No one claimed responsibility for the attack. Ayman al-Zawahiri was aware of the date of the World Trade Center bombing and ordered his operative in Egypt to strike on that day.11

Several hours after the first World Trade Center explosion, Salameh returned to the rental agency and reported that the van had been stolen. He showed them the police report he had filed on the night before the bombing. That evening Salameh drove Ramzi Yousef and Ismoil to JFK airport; Yousef escaped to Pakistan using his Pakistani passport, and Ismoil flew home to Jordan. Salameh had a ticket to Amsterdam on Royal Jordanian fight 262, which continued on to Amman, dated for March 5, 1993 but it was an infant ticket that had cost him only $65. He had used it to get himself a Dutch visa. Needing money for an adult fare, he tried to get his $400 van deposit back by telling the rental agency that the van had been stolen. Salameh also wished to be reimbursed for the $20 worth of gasoline he had put in the van’s tank. He returned three times before he was finally arrested on March 4, 1993, after the VIN number on the van was recovered and traces of nitrates were found on his rental documents.12

On March 4, 1993, federal agents executed a search warrant for El-Gabrowny’s home. Salameh’s use of El-Gabrowny’s address when renting the van used in the bombing provided the basis for the warrant. The search of El-Gabrowny’s home revealed stun guns and taped messages from Nosair urging fighting and Jihad in response to the Jewish immigration to the Zionist entity. Just prior to executing the search warrant, the agents encountered El-Gabrowny as he left the building and then, seeing them, started back toward it. The agents stopped and frisked him. El-Gabrowny became belligerent and assaulted two agents. On his person, the agents found five fraudulent Nicaraguan passports and birth certificates with pictures of Nosair and his wife and children. Salem had obtained the passports for him,13 and had helped him secure a pistol permit from the New York City Police all this to gain El-Gabrowny’s trust.

11. http://www.milnet.com/state/chrono93.htm12. Laurie Mylroie “The World Trade Center Bomb: Who is Ramzi Yousef? And Why It Matters” http://www.fas.org/irp/world/iraq/956-tni.htm13. Ralph Blumenthal “Suspect in Bombing Plot Denies Role in Conspiracy” New York Times July 15, 1993 Page B4, 1.

On March 5, 1993 Nosair was thrown into the hole at Attica State Prison. He asked a corrections officer why this had been done and was told that a lieutenant would stop by later to answer his question. Nosair told the Correction Officer – “If the devil leaders of this state think placing me in SHU (Special Housing Unit) will end the war, they are wrong. This is only the beginning. The war will not end until I am released.”

ABDUL RAHMAN YASIN OUTSMARTS THE FBI

When renting the Ryder van, Salameh had given a telephone number that belonged to “Jodie Hadas” at 34 Kensington Avenue, Apartment 4 in Jersey City, New Jersey. This was the home of Abdul Rahman Yasin his brother and his mother. Salameh and Ramzi Yousef also lived there. For 34 Kensington Avenue the only calls to Iran appeared in Government’s Exhibit 818. These calls were billed to an MCI account for that address, and there were a total of two calls made to the number in Iran. One of them was made on September 4, 1992 at 10:50 p.m. It lasted for three minutes.

On March 4, 1993, around 2:00 p.m. - after Salameh had been arrested - police sealed off the block of 34 Kensington Avenue in preparation for a search. When investigators searched that apartment, they found tools, wiring and manuals concerning antennae, circuitry and electromagnetic devices. A dog trained in the detection of explosives responded positively to a closet space within the apartment.14 An Iraqi passport was also discovered since three of the people living there were from Iraq.15 Assistant United States Attorney DePippo reported: “There are tools there that are consistent with the presence of nitroglycerin and he also had that electronic scale, the scale and the pan part of it. And what do we know about it? Again, it’s consistent with urea nitrate and aluminum powder.”16 A law enforcement bomb technician advised the FBI that these items indicated that a bomb maker lived in the apartment.

Abdul Rahman Yasin accounted for these items by telling the FBI that he was a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Hudson County Community College and had known Mohammad A. Salameh for at least two years and considered him a good friend. The items did not belong to Salameh and Salameh did not even know about them. In response to a question by FBI Agent Pilker, Abdul Rahman Yasin said that Salameh had never asked him about electronic circuitry. Abdul Rahman Yasin told FBI Agent Pilker that he and his mother and his brother moved to 34 Kensington Avenue, Apartment 4 in or about September 1992. As of March 1993, Yasin was living part of the time at the college and the rest of the time in Apartment 4. According to Yasin as of 1993, Mr. Salameh was not living in Apartment 4 or at 34 Kensington Avenue but Salameh had lived in Apartment 8 until October 1992 when he moved to 251 Virginia Avenue in Jersey City. In Government’s Exhibit 820, which is a Sprint account for 251 Virginia Avenue, there are a total of 15 calls to the number Ramzi Yousef called in Iran.

14. Affidavit of Thomas Donlon March 4, 1993.15. USDC SDNY 93CR 180 (KTD) Q2699 (SUB K-1-1B7 Item #5)16. USA v Ramzi Yousef Summation page 8409

In Government’s Exhibit 803, the Metro Media account for that address, there are a total of seven calls to that number in Iran.

The FBI took the occupants, Abdul Rahman Yasin his mother and his epileptic brother Abdul to the Newark Field Office for questioning. When Abdul was released the next day he was immediately put on a flight to Iraq.17 Abdul Rahman Yasin pretended to become a confidential informant for the FBI: “A Confidential Informant (the CI) has informed me that on at least two occasions, including on or about February 17, 1993, and February 34, 1993, the CI and Mohammed Salameh went to 40 Pan Ramapo Avenue, Jersey City, New Jersey. The CI informed me that when he and Mohammed Salameh went there they entered a grey door with the number “MO” on it, which leads to a first floor apartment where the CI knew Mohammad Salameh to be living at the time. The CI informed me that on or about February 24, 1993, approximately two days before the explosion in the garage area beneath the World Trade center complex, the CI helped Mohammed Salameh learn to drive a Ryder van. The CI and Mohammad Salameh drove the Ryder van to 40 Pan Ramapo Avenue, Jersey City.” The FBI was appreciate of this information on Brother Salameh as all they had on him to this point was a reported that he had demonstrated in favor of El-Sayyid Nosair.18

Despite the fact that Agent Pilker described the stuff found at Yasin’s apartment as bomb-making tools,19 FBI Agents thanked Yasin for his co-operation and let him walk out. Abdul Rahman Yasin said he was even driven back home in an FBI car. This, despite the fact Yasin had arrived just six months before from Iraq, and might have well attempted to return there. On March 5, 1993, Abdul Rahman Yasin boarded Royal Jordanian 262 to Amman, the same plane Salameh had hoped to catch.

From Amman he went on to Baghdad. An ABC news stringer from Jordan allegedly saw him there, outside his father’s house, and learned from neighbors that he worked for the Iraqi government. After ABC broadcast its story in June 1994, Iraqi authorities took Yasin and imprisoned him for a short time. His sixty-five-year-old mother, ill with cancer, was allowed to visit him until she died in October 1994. In May 1998, FBI director Louis Freeh claimed that Yasin was in Iraq. The CBS News program 60 Minutes interviewed Yasin in June 2002. Yasin expressed regret for what he had done. “I'm very sorry for what happened,” he said. “I don't know what to do to make it up.” Before the occupation Hussein put Yasin under house arrest, but American officials were engaged in a propaganda campaign to link Iraq to Al-Qaeda and claimed soldiers in Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit had found a cache of documents that indicated Yasin home was paid by the Iraqi Government and that he was being liberally supplied with money, women and alcohol. This story started with the second least credible source in America – Dick Cheney on January 22, 2004: “Abdul Rahman Yasin arrived back in Iraq and was put on the payroll and provided a house, safe harbor and sanctuary. So Saddam Hussein had an established track record of providing safe harbor and sanctuary for terrorists.” But USA Today reported that an unnamed official said “some of the analysts have concluded that the documents show that Saddam's government provided monthly

17. Robert E. Precht, Defending Mohammad Cornell University Press 2003.18. Ronald Kessler The FBI: Inside the World’s Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency Page 31 Pocket Books October 1994.19. Robert E. Precht, Defending Mohammad, Cornell University Press 2003.

payments and a home for Yasin.”20 Some, not all, only those who will tailor intelligence to American propaganda needs. Although Yasin was last seen in Baghdad and Iraq offered to hand him over to American authorities in February 2003, he was not included among the 55 individuals that American forces were told to find. When US Troops began scouring the buildings and streets of Baghdad – as well as the tunnels beneath them – yesterday, they carried bearing specially-designed playing cards, each bearing a photo on it of a wanted Iraqi official and Yasin was not one of them.21

FBI AGENT ANTICEV GIVES EMAD SALEM EXCUSES FOR WTC-1

We couldn’t let you make a bomb and then give the bomb to whoever, Shinway, El-Gabrowny, Sattar, and lose it, it’d be gone into the underworld and, because later on if that bomb, let’s say goes off at a synagogue and kills two, three people, and that if comes out that, that an Agent of the FBI participated

in making the bomb, forget it, they would go berserk. The press would say we knew, we’d be sued and people would be fired. And then, so we got to the point where we thought, not in our wildest dreams did we think it was a 1,300 or 1,500-pound chemical bomb in an enclosed area, but we thought we were getting close to a pipe. But, then we said, ‘Okay let’s get it out of there and we’ll try the best we can with surveillances and stuff like that to protect you.’ We didn’t have enough time, I mean if, if, we were working on a longer period of time, you could have introduced an undercover or a friend, ah, who was an agent and that friend could have introduced another, we could have removed you two, three times from the FBI agent who would be there to testify, understand what I’m saying?

DR. MEHDI AND RAHMAN THE ELDER REJOICE

Dr. Mehdi went to the west coast after the World Trade Center explosion ostensibly to translate for Sheik Omar Rahman, who had gone there to distance himself from the action. Before he left New York, Dr. Mehdi was visited by one of the Abouhalima family. They said to him: Give the Sheik a message. Tell him not to talk about knowing Mahmud Abouhalima. Mahmud is in jail in Egypt. If the Egyptians found out about this connection Mahmud Abouhalima would have been taken out to the desert and left at the mercy of the scorpions and desert rats. Dr. Mehdi was asked:

Q. Following the bombing of the World Trade Center did you issue a verbatim quote from the Sheik?

A. Do you remember the exact words of that particular press release?

McCarthy: Objection.20. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-09-17-iraq-wtc_x.htm21. http://www.senate.gov/member/ny/schumer/general/SchumerWebsite/pressroom/press_releases/PR01627.html

A. I do.

THE COURT: Sustained.

BROTHER ABOUHALIMA FLEES TO EGYPT

Before his return to Egypt Abouhalima went to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and obtained an Egyptian visa because he had German documents.22 During a conversation with Siddig Ali, Sheik Rahman, who had his doubts about Siddig, said that Muhmud Abouhalima fled to Sudan, not to Egypt. After their discussion, Siddig Ali told Salem that Rahman had ordered that they be circumspect when discussing their plans with him so that he would not be incriminated in any criminal conspiracy. Salem would betray Abouhalima’s whereabouts to the Americans and Abdo Haggag would betray his whereabouts to the Egyptians. At the same time he turned him in to the Egyptian government Haggag established a fund for Muhmud Abouhalima’s family.

When Abouhalima was extradited to the United States he was covered with cigarette burns. This is what Muhmud told the FBI on his way back to the United States: “Abouhalima appeared awake, and spoke briefly of having received some injuries at the hands of the Egyptian authorities. He made reference to a finger having been inserted into his anus, and to his genital area having been burned by lighted cigarettes. He requested that he be given medical treatment on his return to New York.”23

Abouhalima’s attorneys argued that U.S. complicity in his torture was evidenced by the fact that [Abouhalima’s] torturers interrogated him about the murder of Meir Kahane and the explosion at the World Trade Center, crimes on American soil with only American consequences. They accused him of things about his life in America that they must have heard from Emad Salem or other American law enforcement sources. They asked him about Mousab Yassin, an Iraqi doctor, and Ramzi Yousef. The Egyptians theorized that these men were operatives of Iraqi intelligence involved in the World Trade Center bombing, the same theory put forth by FBI agent John Anticev in conversation with Emad Salem on one of Salem’s recorded phone conversations. The torturers told Abouhalima that the FBI allowed him to come to Egypt in order to capitalize on what would happen after his capture there. Abouhalima overheard his torturers talking about his saying the things the Americans wanted him to say, and he heard them getting information in English from someone and then using that information to question him during the torture.

Abouhalima told them that Iranian intelligence had aided his cell in its pursuit with financial backing and that the cell was responsible for many other crimes.24 Abouhalima said that two Persian speakers, who said they were Iranian intelligence agents, met with cell members in Peshawar to approve the plan. He added that the Brothers were able to draw on funds collected by the Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, which received money from

22. Elaine Sciolino New York Times April 5, 1993 “Egypt Warned U.S. of Terror.”23. FD-302 on 3.24.93 Doc Number #736 USA v. Ramzi et. al.24. Uri Dan “Kahane Killer Named by WTC Suspect” New York Post May 6, 1993.

various sources, such as Iranian businessmen and expatriates in Europe, Islamic institutions in Saudi Arabia and the German offices of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mahmud Abouhalima, after being tortured, told Egyptian officials that the bombing plan was hatched in Afghanistan among Arab veterans of the war, and that it was approved by men describing themselves as Iranian intelligence agents and by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. Two Iranians had appeared in the days before the first World Trade Center bombing to help the cell with final details, then disappeared shortly before the explosion. Sheik Rahman’s followers in Jersey City confirmed this.25 Another report in the Washington Post titled “Egypt told US of ‘Iranian’ Terrorist Link” seemingly based on the same source quoted Abouhalima as saying that two Iraqis, one of them an Iraqi-American, had arranged the money for the operation and recruited the Brothers who carried it out from Mosques in the New York area.26 Harvard educated Dr. Osama al-Baz, the director of President Mubarak’s Office of Political Affairs revealed this during a press conference with foreign journalists. He told them that much of the confession had been verified by Egyptian intelligence.27

Dr. Osama al-Baz stated that Egyptian authorities had informed the United States in January 1993 that Egyptian intelligence had received information from several reliable sources that “certain terrorist groups” assisted by “Iranian elements” were plotting an action against the United States. The Egyptians could not determine for certain if the Iranians were intelligence agents but knew they were plotting and training with Islamist groups in Peshawar.28 In April 1993 a dispatch originating in Paris alleged that Sheik Rahman received money from Iran’s United Nations Mission. The source of this information was the Arabic daily Asharq Al Awsat, which claimed the FBI was looking for Mohammad Chalagian, the mission’s financial controller.29 During an interview with Reuters New Service on March 30, 1993 the Sheik stated, “I am challenging the media that accuses me of receiving money from Iran to prove it. They said that I received $50,000 from Iran. I am challenging them to prove it. I'm challenging the martial court in Egypt that is saying that the Iranians are sending money to my family in Egypt and then my family transfers the money here to me. I'm challenging them to prove it. I'm also challenging that former CIA agent or director who came on ABC and said he had proof that the sheik was receiving money from Iran. I am challenging the media that is trying to link me to the World Trade Center bombing to get proof or any evidence whatsoever linking me to the World Trade Center bombing.” One of the Sheik’s sons, Abdullah Rahman, also denied that his father received money from Iran that was laundered through one of the Sheik’s wives, “This is not true, we don’t receive money from Iran.”30

Sheik Rahman tried to determine the identity of the informant who turned in Abouhalima and also made a number of media appearances, including some broadcast on national television, in which he staunchly denied knowing both Nosair and Abouhalima who had been his chauffeur and had shared a bank account with him.

25. Chris Hedges “Egyptian Says Confession Links Iran to Bombing of Trade Center” New York Times July 16, 1993 Page A1, 2. 26. Caryle Murphy “Egypt told US of Iranian Terrorist Link” Washington Post July 16, 1993 Pg A.14.27. Chris Hedges “Egyptian Says Confession Links Iran to Bombing of Trade Center” New York Times July 16, 1993 A1, 2.28. Caryle Murphy “Egypt told US of Iranian Terrorist Link” Washington Post July 16, 1993 Pg A.14.29. “Iran is Said to Give Money to Abdel Rahman” New York Times April 11, 1993. 30. “Iran Is Not Aiding Rahman, Son Says” New York Times March 15, 1993.

THE SALEM TAPES: I TOLD YOU SO!

Unbeknownst to the FBI, Salem secretly recorded his conversations with his FBI handlers from the very beginning of his relationship with them to use as an insurance policy to hold the Government to its promises of money and protection. Andrew C. McCarthy, an assistant United States attorney, said that he had learned of the tapes while debriefing Salem and that the informer had then voluntarily turned them over. The New York Times reported that the tapes were found in the belongings Salem left behind either carelessly or by design when he evacuated Bretton Hall residence hotel at 2350 Broadway after exposure as a mole within Gama’a al-Islamiyya’s Brooklyn / Jersey City cell.31

Transcripts of the tapes were distributed to defense lawyers although Judge Mukasey ordered the lawyers to keep them secret. Portions of the tapes were made public and reprinted in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Salem said this to Agent Anticev:

Do you deny your supervisor is the main reason of bombing the World Trade Center? We was handling the case perfectly well until the supervisor came and messed it up, upside down.32 We was discussing the bombs we was discussing the explosive, we was discussing the detonators with him and with Sayyid Nosair and ah, ah, because the Bureau asking me to withdraw, and I withdrawed, so he’s not discussing with me anymore, so he discussing with somebody else and this somebody else with him went to visit the man who is arranging the issue from jail one week before the explosion…O.K. Alright. I don’t think it was [a little out of the ordinary]. If that’s what you guys want, fine. But I don’t think that because we was start already building the bomb which is went off in the World Trade Center. It was built by uh, uh, uh supervising supervision from the Bureau and the D.A. and we was all informed about it and we know what the bomb start to be built. By who? By your confidential informant. What a wonderful great case! And then he put his head in the sand and said ‘Oh, no, no, that’s not true, he is son of a bitch.’ (Deep breath) Okay. It’s built with a different way in another place and that’s it…Since the bomb went off I feel terrible. I feel bad. I feel here is people who don’t listen…Guys, now you saw this bomb went off and you both know that we could avoid that. You get paid, guys, to prevent problems like this from happening…you were informed. They told me that ‘We want to set this, what’s the right place to put this?’ Everything is ready. The day and the time. Boom. Lock them up and that’s that. That’s why I feel so bad. I am willing to speak to Bill Clinton himself because the information I supplied was enough to save the country’s ass from this bomb. Your bureau did so many things wrong and I still smell dead fish all over the

31. Ralph Blumenthal “Tapes in Bombing Plot Show Informer and FBI at Odds” New York Times October 27, 1993, 32. Ralph Blumenthal The New York Times October 28, 1993, Final Correction Appended also Section A; Page 1; Column 4; also New York Times Metropolitan Desk October 27, 1993.

places and this dead fish got to be followed to find out the truth and I feel that nobody can follow up this dead fish like me. They play it their way and the World Trade Center be bombed. What other way? The other way is my way now…but listen, because you didn’t listen before. It takes a bomb for you to listen. And you don’t listen yet. You still not listening.” Salem wanted to complain of this to the FBI Director but Anticev told him: “I don’t think that the New York people would like the things out of the New York office to go to Washington, D.C.

The tapes also revealed that under Carson Dunbar’s watch, Salem was considered a suspect. When Salem visited the FBI he saw his photograph on the wall next to those of the suspected World Trade Center crew. Salem felt that despite his loyalty to his FBI masters, he might have been under surveillance by them.

Salem: I’m one of the suspects. Investigate me from A to Z. Well, I saw my picture on the board, number one suspect.

Anticev: Ah, you were crossed out, though.

In December 1991 Agent Floyd wrote: “I was advised by the asset that he was taping conversations of his family members and bad guys. In November 1991 I told the asset to discontinue taping, as it was illegal.”33 In January 1993 Emad told Agent Floyd that he had tape recorded a call with Detective Louis Napoli and she reported: “asset had not previously advised me that he had continued to tape conversations, and he did not say if he had taped anyone else.”

Of course, after the arrests were made in the Sheik Rahman case Carson

Dunbar wanted the tapes that Salem had made of his conversations with Dunbar’s FBI Agents and he contacted Nancy Floyd who reported, “In June 1994 [actually June 1993] while assigned to SOG [Seat of Government – Washington, D.C.] I got a call from Carson Dunbar who advised that a former source of mine named Emad told Assistant United States Attorney Andy McCarthy that he had tapes of terrorist subjects. I told ASAC Dunbar that I had no knowledge that the source was taping conversations, and in fact I’d instructed him repeatedly not to tape conversations…I discussed with Dunbar the procedures for attempting to retrieve these tapes.”

The FBI did not want these tapes to become part of the evidence because of the embarrassment and scandal they would cause, as they indicated that the FBI made a grave error when it pulled Salem off the case. Oliver Revell admitted, “In hindsight, it was obviously the wrong move to shut the investigation down. If we had continued that investigation, it would have led us to the Sheik’s people and it’s possible we could have prevented the bombing.”34

33. USA v Rahman TT 1519934. New York Times, July 30, 1999; Federation of American Scientists Iraq News August 2, 1999. http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1999/08/990802-in.htm

Salem had made the tapes to protect himself against the FBI, which has been known to discard informants like a worn prayer rug when it no longer had any use for them: “But I am trying to protect myself, and I said if you deny that I told you information about the bombing going to take place, I will do something about it and that we are going to have surprises.” On June 29, 1993 Dunbar told Agent Floyd to get these tapes from Salem’s apartment, assuring her that only evidentiary tapes would be taken. All of Salem’s tapes recovered there found their way into the hands of the FBI after Floyd, Crouthhamel and Roth retrieved them from where they were hidden in one of Salem’s arm chairs.

THE FIRST WORLD TRADE CENTER SHOW TRIAL

There is no need to reiterate the details of this show trial: Brother Mohammed Salameh refused to go to court because he did not want to be put in a cold holding cell for hours on end:

I hit the lock on the door. The lock was already not in very good condition even before I came. The door is old and every inmate who comes in starts hitting the lock; especially black Americans who are in good health and they hit the door hard. I like them…On Saturday, what happened, I will not lie, when the officer refused to give me the social call, I had some garbage that they would not take from me, so I dumped it in the tier. And lots of other inmates who do the same thing, and this is wrong, this is bad, I know that. Officer Lopez took the garbage from another inmate and the window to my cell was open and I was sitting there reading some legal papers so he threw the garbage at me. And I lost my mind. And I started cussing and cursing, and I started threatening the cell. I was afraid to hurt myself. I even inflicted some wounds in my hands. I don’t know what to do other than this. So I hit the lamp and I felt the electricity. The officer wrote a report saying that I wrecked the cell without saying why did this occur. So anybody looking at that report would say that this is a crazy man who is doing things like that for no reason. I am not crazy!35

Mohammed Salameh was sentenced to 116 years in prison. At his sham re-sentencing, wherein Judge Duffy shaved off only a few months from his sentence, Mohammed Salameh had this to say:

You accuse President Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq, that he is a despotic ruler and dictator. I say that if the Iraqi president was a dictator as you claim, then why does he arm his people? But it is actually in his interest to deprive them and disarm them of all possible weapons, even to disarm them of knives, if able to do so, so they would not revolt against him and collapse his rule, or dispose of him. There is no hole in Iraq that is empty of a gun or machine gun ranging from the Kalashnikov or what is referred to in the U.S. as the AK-47. In return we see the

35. Conference with Judge Duffy dw 9 20 5 p254

government of the United States of America is attempting to disarm its own people by the excuses of stopping crime, yet they find a way around the Second Amendment of the Constitution. Therefore, who is the dictator? The United States is the highest in the world with regard to the ratio of prisoners to population…36

Ahmad Ajaj’s whose left lung was removed during a cancer operation in prison was sentenced to 114 years. In November 1993 Ajaj went on a hunger strike and then attempted suicide. He was placed on suicide watch with bright lights and observation at all times. On November 12, 1993 he was moved to the prison hospital.

Eyad Ismoil, who was extradited from Jordan, got life. Mahmud Abouhalima got 108 years and Nidal Ayyad 117 years. Ayyad’s punishment began even before he was convicted. He was eating his lunch and found that someone had inserted a sharp object, a broken piece of glass, in his sandwich: “No doctor saw me since then. The only thing I saw is the nurse that came, and they start asking me where is it, or whatever? I said I could really see it. Once it happened I just went and spit and all the defendants were with me and they saw what happened, and I had a roll full of tissue full of blood, it was really bleeding, it wasn’t a small cut. But you know, like any normal person once this happened to me I was hesitant even to eat my lunch. I was like very careful going through the meat.” Ayyad’s attorney added: “My client Ayyad pointed out the scar to me and it seems to be in the middle of the tongue, and the location that he was pointing out essentially, it cannot be a self-inflicted type wound, because of that location.”37

THE SALEM WITCHHUNT ENDS

After Salem surfaced in the Rahman trial the New York Times writer Ralph Blumenthal scolded the FBI but there was no Congressional investigation, no demotions or dismissals, no accountability. The American secret police just continued to go about their business. If the security service of an Islamic Republic failed so miserably, they would have been lined up against the wall and shot. The only change in policy was that suddenly Salem was deemed “reliable” and taken back into the good graces of the FBI and once again began working for the FBI as an informant. Salem discussed his situation with Detective Louis Napoli of the Joint Terrorist Task Force.

Salem: I don’t think that Mr. Dunbar even want to meet with me. Because that’s the impression I get from John. He says he’s busy running like a chicken with a chopped head.

Louis Napoli: And you know I can’t see where he’s doing all the running. I mean if he’s running, he’s running from one office to another, we’re running all over town.

Salem: I know, I know. But I requested to meet him so many times.36. 93CR180 Doc #79137. Conference with Judge Duffy, Ayyad and Ahmed, page 506

Napoli: Would you want that if I see him, I will ask him?

Salem: I did requested that so many times from John. And he never. He’s always, “Oh, he’s busy, he’s busy.” As a matter of fact I ever requested to meet John (sic) Fox himself. If he is busy let me meet with the Director. I mean, I will discuss things with him, and things I think its very important. And I think that the agents agree with me that these things is important…it’s became like a game, you know. Trying to degrade the type of information I’m giving. Just to make me feel that, oh, no, no, we know these things.”

Salem told this to Anticev: “He destroyed my case. And I'm considering it my case because that was my work with you, and with Louie Napoli, and with Nancy Floyd. And this guy, and I'm pointing my finger to him and saying, “This guy destroyed the case…At the first place, he would be very happy to have a remarkable, historical day for his squad if he arrested these motherfuckers before they get this bomb to be, to, to go off. And we all know that we should, we could of do that. And he destroyed it by his, whatever. And now he's coming to play the same nastiness again? Fine. I'm sorry to say that. I am really so sorry. But I see that that's no sense for nothing. I'm not trying to abuse the Bureau for, absolutely not. I'm helping the Bureau.38

FBI Special Agent Steve Veyera, now Unit Chief, FBI Bomb Data Center wanted Salem back on the case:

Veyera: We need to do the rest of them while they think they’re safe, which is probably, this is probably the best time to continue after them because they think they’re safe.

Salem: When I talked to John Anticev and John talked to his supervisor, which is John Crouthhamel and he said, activate Emad’s file again, and they are, they hesitated. Let me put it that way Steve, and I know that you know that, that they start asking me to build the bomb. If we continued in that time to build the bomb, there would be such a fight with this (U/I) bomb, which is supposedly pipe bombs at that time. Uhh, they will trust me more, and then we will come to the big truck, to the big van.

Veyera: Yeah.

Salem: The really historical day, the really remarkable day in the FBI history, if this van will be driven by a couple of wonderful people, and they get locked up.

Veyera: Exactly.

38. FBI Transcript (Source 34-3) 11560-1654, 0000-0524, 0560-0830, 0838-0999, 1014-1147, 1202-1653

Salem: That’s it. That was the real good job. And of course you will be informed second by second. Of course. I’m inside. Everything will be monitored. And I was completely inside until the people trusting me. Mahmud Abouhalima before the bombing with like, three, four weeks, he called me. And he wants me, they wants me desperately. And Sayyid Nosair wants me desperately. Sayyid Nosair called me from jail. And of course I cannot go because I am out of the case. I just don’t know how these supervisors thought.

In March 1993 there was much unrest in Egypt. Three bombings took place that month, at Assiut 2,500 Islamists demonstrated - at Manflout, 3000! Sheik Rahman had a premonition of doom and stated, “I feel that my meeting with God is nearing.”39 The Sheik was in touch with God as the devil, Emad Salem asked to be put back on the case in March 1993 and told Agent Anticev:

I don’t know, I mean I didn’t hear anything from the Bureau, John. I mean the only person contacting me from the Bureau is you now. I mean even Nancy [S.A. Nancy Floyd] stepped away. I feel that she’s not calling me now for almost a week or something. And I understand her position. But you are the only one who is contacting me from the Bureau and you are not giving me any definite answers…so that’s why I said well I gotta better ease up my mind and stay away, that’s why I didn’t go to the rally yesterday…I mean we, you, you’re not participating our things anymore…it takes forever for the, it takes about another bomb until the Bureau will decide something. So wait until the judge will be kidnapped, or one of the Jewish leaders with be bombed, or another building like the World Trade Center will be bombed. I mean what will the Bureau say. ‘Oh God that these people is really serious.’ I mean the Empire State or somebody else will be what ever and then the Bureau will say, Oh God! That these people is really serious. But they didn’t wake up that way, they didn’t feel that these people is serious yet. I spoke to Dunbar. He was suspicious in me, and he put me on a polygraph exam, and he didn't believe me and, uh, he waited until the bomb went off. It takes a bomb to go off for him to believe that I was saying the truth.

THE THIRD MUBARAK PLOT

In March 1993, President Mubarak was scheduled to visit New York. Certain members of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya’s Brooklyn-New Jersey cell saw this visit as an opportunity to assassinate him, in the words of Siddig Ali, “to execute the desire of the Sheik.”40 In one plan, Siddig and his assassination team would dress up as room service waiters, sneak into Mubarak’s hotel room and spray the suite with automatic machine gun fire. In another plan, they would steal a United Parcel Service truck and drill a hole in the side while a sniper pointed his arrival out and murdered him as he walked into the hotel. In seeking financing for this plan, Siddig Ali called Khalid Shaikh 39. Caryle Murphy “Bomb Kills an Officer in Cairo” Washington Post March 28, 1993. 40. USA v Rahman TT 10087-89, 10295-96

Mohammed’s relative and operative Ammar al-Baluchi (Ali Abdul Aziz Ali) in the United Arab Emirates for funding, stating that Sheik Rahman would vouch for him. Siddig Ali also contacted a source in the Sudanese government to get a copy of Mubarak's itinerary while in New York. Siddig Ali:

In March 1993, after I learned that Mahmud Abouhalima was arrested in Egypt I and others actively sought to carry out the assassination of Hosni Mubarak. The Sheik had previously given me a fatwa for a killing of Mubarak, and I discussed that assassination with others prior to Mahmud Abouhalima’s arrest. After his arrest, I discussed this operation with Hampton-El and another individual first, then with Abdo Mohammed Haggag, Amir Abdelgani, Tarig Elhassan and Fadil Abdelgani. Amir and Tarig were very enthusiastic and interested in the plan, but Fadil was not because he wanted to go to the Sudan…Hampton-El agreed to provide the firearms and grenades, but he said he needed a few days to acquire them. Hampton-El told us to prepare or to appear on a specific date to pick up the weapons. It was at this time that Haggag reported that the FBI was aware of the plan, and no weapons were therefore obtained from Hampton-El. Mubarak canceled his trip to New York, and the decision was made to postpone the plot…It was my understanding that the killing of Mubarak would still be pursued in the future even though the prior plan had been foiled.

Haggag had secretly given the Egyptian government information about the plot, and the New York part of Mubarak’s trip to the United States was canceled, instead of arrests being made. In June 1993 Siddig Ali informed Salem about a plot being formulated in Egypt to kill Mubarak and bomb the United States Embassy there.

As a result of the failure of the plan to execute Mubarak, there was some speculation by members of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya Brooklyn-Jersey City cell that Siddig Ali was the FBI informer, thanks to Haggag, who was behind the allegations. Haggag would also blame the arrest of Mahmud Abouhalima in Egypt on Siddig Ali. Siddig Ali and Salem conversed one day with Sheik Rahman about the issue. Sheik Rahman voiced his suspicions that Siddig Ali was the informer. Ironically, Salem secretly tape-recorded this conversation for his FBI handlers. In conversations with Siddig, Salem learned that he attributed the leak of the plot on electronic surveillance:

Salem: Who leaked the news?

Siddig: There was no leak. It appears that Haggag’s apartment in monitored, and God knows because they asked him.

Salem: I made a check of Haggag’s apartment…The telephone is monitored.

Siddig: No one talked on the telephone. The conversation was at his house…there is no leak. I suspect fully there is something in house and in his car…because we didn’t discuss this subject at all except at Haggag’s house and his car.

Salem: You and only him?

Siddig: Only. Of course the man that we were going to obtain the weapons from [Hampton-El].

SIDDIG ALI’S PLOT TO BOMB THE FBI AND THE UNITED NATIONS

Siddig Ali proposed a new round of bombings. In late April 1993, Siddig Ali became very friendly with Emad Salem, who was, by that point, tape recording his conversations for the FBI. The FBI concluded that Salem had told the truth about the intentions of our cell but still could not admit it. An FBI Teletype of April 1993 stated that Mr. Salem’s affiliation with the FBI was closed “because polygraphs show[ed] deception regarding his reporting of violent acts planned and encouraged by Rahman and Nosair”41 not because the results were inconclusive.

Salem agreed to assist Siddig Ali in putting together the bombs but stated that he would have no part in deploying them. After contemplating bombing a U.S. armory, Siddig Ali proposed bombing the United Nations complex. When initially discussing this plan with Salem, Siddig Ali stated that Rahman had approved the attack on the United Nations, and had called it not merely permissible, but a “must” and a “duty.”42 After he agreed to co-operate Siddig testified: “I proposed to Salem that we change our target from armories to the United Nations. I added to the list of targets 26 Federal Plaza.” Siddig and Salem discussed these targets in early May 1993. Siddig wished to kill as many FBI agents as possible and then take hostages. But the FBI’s offices at 26 Federal Plaza could only be approached very early in the morning:

Salem: Yes, at 3-4 a.m. it is going to be a symbolic operation more than.

Siddig: Materialistic.

Salem: Materialistic. Yes, there will be financial loss but you will be the one who blew up the FBI building but you are not going to kill agents because they will be sleeping at home.

Siddig: Yes this is a problem. So we just place it, yes, right.

Salem: First we shall know that is the benefit.

Siddig: Yes, unless we do it in the day time, but how we will get in?

41. USA v Rahman TT 575442. USA v Rahman TT 5527-28

Salem: During the daytime means we destroy ourselves.

Siddig: Of course not, no, no.

Salem: I am not ready to do that.

Siddig: There is nothing better than what I have told you, the big house [the United Nations]. Oh God, it is beautiful.

Siddig confessed:

The Holland and Lincoln tunnels and the George Washington Bridge were also targets. In May 1993 Salem and I and another individual visited Nosair in Attica. Salem spoke with Nosair privately, as did I. In our private conversation we discussed…Salem’s reliability. Nosair advised me he was a good man, but to be careful. I told Nosair about targeting the United Nations by placing a bomb in a car and driving it into the United Nations garage. Nosair said it was not a good plan because of the heightened security of the World Trade Center bombing. He told me that instead I should consider kidnapping Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger…In connection with the plan to attack the United Nations I received assistance from the representatives of a foreign government [the Sudan] in connection with obtaining access to the United Nations garage, surveillance of the garage and the use of diplomatic license plates. One of the representatives introduced me to Mohammed Saleh as being a representative of the Hamas who was raising money through people in the Middle East…Saleh agreed to assist with the financing of the operation.43

In 2001, a Sudanese-born suspect arrested in a foiled plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi told Indian investigators that Sudanese diplomats had given him explosives and detonators.44

AMBASSADOR SIRAJUDDIN HAMID YOUSOUF

Ambassador Sirajuddin Hamid Yousouf served on Khartoum’s mission at the U.N. and was our contact there. Consul Hamid and his deputy Ahmed Yousef were in a constant contact with Siddig Ali and Emad Salem. In the course of the action, Siddig Ali would always brag to Salem about his high level contacts with officials from Khartoum mission at the U.N. and the National Islamic Front. Ali even took Salem to the mission to see Sirajuddin Hamid. During a phone conversation with Ahmed Yousef, Ali prayed, “May God grant you the ability to repulse the enemies…the ones who are here.” He said he and others are “ready to die” if necessary. Yousef invoked the Qu’ran during the recorded conversation by saying, “We are not going to prevail by outnumbering you, but

43. USA v Rahman TT 2239-224044. Council on Foreign Relations in Co-operation with the Markle Foundation Sudan http://www.terrorismanswers.org/sponsors/sudan_print.html

rather God’s wrath is focused upon you.” Ali noted in agreement that, “we will fight them with this religion.”

To fulfill it’s part in the event, the Khartoum mission granted access of the targeted U.N. facilities for Siddig Ali to survey the sites. The officials from the mission promised to provide diplomatic license plates for 4 stolen cars to gain access to the target areas. Siddig Ali then expected to escape to the Philippines and then Sudan using fake documents provided by the Khartoum. During Mubarak’s scheduled trip to the U.S., Ali was able to get Mubarak’s itinerary from Ahmed Yousef. The itinerary included details of Mubarak’s stay in New York where it enabled Ali to plan diligently for the operation to assassinate the Egyptian scoundrel.

The Khartoum mission connected Siddig Ali with Hamas operative Mohammed Saleh who was caught carrying with him personal telephone numbers of Hamid, Yousef, and a phone number of an official from Khartoum embassy in Washington. Sirajuddin Hamid and Ahmed Yousef were declared as persona non grata and expelled from the U.S. They were considered security agents who posed as diplomats.45

Ambassador Sirajuddin Hamid Yousouf is a trained Sudanese lawyer who joined Khartoum government diplomatic service almost immediately after the Islamist regime took power in a coup. He also served as Khartoum’s ambassador for the mission in Uganda until 2005 and as well as in other parts of the world. Hamid is currently Ambassador at the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the Sudan unity government and was also on the commission investigating the helicopter crash that killed Dr. John Garang de Nabior, the chairman of SPLA, the Christian / Animist opposition based in the Southern Sudan.

THE ASSASSINATION OF GARANG

On July 8, 2005, millions of people throughout Sudan came to show their support in Khartoum when Garang was sworn in as First Vice President of Sudan and on July 30, 2005, Garang died in a helicopter crash near the Uganda-Sudan border on his way back to southern Sudan from Uganda. On August 1, 2005 violence erupted following the announcement Garang’s death -- mainly in the capital Khartoum. Reports put the number of deaths near 130. Observations indicated gunshots and beatings with sticks and steel bars to be the main causes of death. A commission was empanelled to look into the crash.46 Black boxes that were recovered from the crashed Ugandan presidential helicopter were sent to Russia for analysis while other parts of the helicopter were sent to the United States. The Russian manufacturer of the helicopter said it was in good condition. “The crash did not appear to have been caused by any technical malfunction,” said Rudolf Temurazov, the director of technical security for the Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee of the 12-nation Commonwealth of Independent States. Temurazov said one of the two flight data recorders on the

45. http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article18681 Steve Paterno is a Sudanese residing in the U.S.A., and he can be reached at <a href="mailto:stevepaterno@yahoo.com" stevepaterno@yahoo.com46. www.sudancommission.org/downloads/Part_One.pdf

helicopter was recovered in good condition, while the other, which registers technical functions (Flight Date Recorder), was reportedly destroyed: The photo tape media that was found inside the FDR was melted on the receiving spool. The FDR would have allowed the altimeter readings to be examined. The altimeter is equipment that shows you how far above the ground the chopper is flying. Assuming poor visibility and failure of other navigation equipment, the altimeter would allow the chopper to continue flying without coming dangerously close to the ground. Whether or not it was functioning is something the investigators would have been keen to determine, because those who have gone through the information gleaned from the other black box have claimed that the co-pilot had at one time during the journey complained about proximity to the ground though the altimeter reading was indicating they were high up above the ground. The data from the Advance Moving Maps System was also lost. This is an instrument with a combination of GPS, multiple mode radar that captures the terrain as far as 100km. The equipment also has an audio warning system. So in case of failure of the altimeter and in poor visibility, the AMMS should be able to guide the plane above the ground safely giving warnings of any approaching obstacle at a minimum of 300 meters and a maximum of 100km away. The pictures taken by the investigators from the crash site show the chopper crashed into a cliff within the Kidepo valley before the fateful impact. Indeed, the pictures also show that the left wheel makes the first contact before the propellers cut through trees. The fuselage and tail (which had broken apart) of the chopper and three bodies were found at a location about 300m away. The circumstances have cast doubt in the minds of the investigators as to whether the chopper benefited from either the altimeter or the AMMS.47 The Cockpit Voice Recorder revealed, within I minute 53 seconds the pilot asked the copilot 7 questions about:

1. G.P.S? - exactly on track sir;2. Miles remaining? - we are remaining 14 miles sir;3. Look and tell me how many?- bearing now 018;4. How many more until now?5. How high are we? - height 5500 ft sir;6. Check, my friend, the altimeter?- Altimeter still above 300 where it stopped;7. Distance? - Distance 11 miles bearing 018;Screaming Voice (DANGER).

Investigators’ concluded that the crash was not caused by technical malfunction based on English conversations in the cockpit and between the pilot and the dispatcher, describing them as “standard” until the crash. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said crash may not have been an accident, however, the Sudanese Commission ruled that it

47. http://africaspotter.6.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=282

was the result of pilot error. The findings attributed the cause of the accident to a combination of the following:

The Captain’s failure to maintain horizontal and vertical situational awareness of the helicopter’s proximity to the surrounding terrain, resulting in inadequate clearance and controlled flight into terrain; The Captain’s decision to continue visual flight into deteriorating weather conditions; and Inadequacies in operational systems.

The late Colonel Peter Nyaikiru was an officer of proven competence and one of the most experienced pilots in the Ugandan Air force, hence a reason for him being chosen as the president’s personal pilot. How are South Sudanese expected to believe the story that the pilot was faulty and that he insisted on applying visual flying rules instead of using onboard instruments while it was dark and the weather was bad and cloudy as reported earlier? The pilot had all options available at his disposal. He was at liberty to fly back to Entebbe airport where he took off or land at Gulu town in Northern Uganda, which is not very far from the scene of the crash. Alternatively he could again radio Entebbe, if the weather condition proved unmanageable. There was no communication between the pilot and the control tower at Entebbe suggesting difficulties in navigating the MI 172 chopper.48

On September 5, 2005, Sudan Commission’s Chairman, Ambassador Sirajuddin Hamid interviewed the Ambassador of Norway in Kampala. On September 7, 2005, Hamid and Napoleon Adok Gai met with the American Ambassador in Kampala, Jimmy Kolker accompanied by his deputy, William Fitzgerald and his counselor, Mr. Nathan Holt. The Sudan Commission requested the US Ambassador to ask Dennis Jones to come to Kampala to join the Joint International Technical Commission. On September 8, 2005, Ambassador Hamid interviewed Yoka Brandt, the Ambassador of the Royal Kingdom of the Netherlands, in Kampala. On September 9, 2005, Hamid and Gai interviewed the Ugandan Minister, Agar Didi who saw off Garang on his Entebbe-New Site flight. Mr. Agar emphasized that the First Vice President stayed in the airport for a brief time. On September 9, 2005, in Nairobi Hamid and Gai interviewed Rebecca de Mabior, wife of the late Dr. John Garang de Mabior. It was convenient having Hamid as Chairman of the Commission as he had helped effectuate the assassination of this infidel leader.

In July 1992 the INS generated a document about Mohammed Saleh entitled, “Record of Deportable Alien” that indicated Mohammed Saleh had last entered the United States in August 1991 when he returned from a trip to the United Arab Emirates. Mohammed Saleh listed his occupation as “Sunoco gas station attendant.” The narrative in the report stated: “Subject presented himself to information center at Hartford on July 13, 1992 to obtain extension of Temporary I-551…Deportability established. Subject presented a copy of a false Temporary I-551 belonging to another person to obtain the extension. Subject claims to have obtained the original (which was lost) in Miami through his employer, Miami Construction Company, where he worked as an engineer…It appears subject is involved in a document fraud scheme.” The FBI 48. http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article15148

would soon discover that Mohammed Saleh had attempted to broker an arms transaction that involved the shipment of rocket-propelled grenade launchers from Jordan through Palestine to Egypt, yet the Brother was allowed to remain in the United States.

By this time the FBI knew that Sheik Rahman had foreknowledge of the first World Trade Center attack, but allowed him to remain free so that they could spy on those who visited him. The U.S. issued a statement to the effect that the jailing of the Sheik would be too costly. In a letter written by an acting Attorney General, it was stated, “In view of Rahman’s poor health and incidental requirements for medical attention, his confinement, pending disposition of his appeal of the exclusion order would impose a significant burden upon Government resources. In the absence of concrete evidence that Rahman is participating in or involved in planning acts of terrorism, the assumption of that burden is considered unwarranted.”49

FUNDING: HAMAS, IRAN

Siddig Ali explained to Emad Salem that Mohammed Saleh, “supports, gives things to Hamas…The Sudanese Brothers introduced me to him who are in the Sudanese Islamic Movement and I learned that he is an important figure in Hamas faction, the Islamic struggle movement.” When Salem was asked to testify about Mohammed Saleh’s membership in Hamas, Mohammed Saleh’s attorney John Jacobs stated:

Let’s talk about Hamas. It’s interesting, as you just heard the tape CM 31 in English, where Emad Salem announces to the FBI that Mohammed Saleh is a member of Hamas. You want to see how Salem lied? Let’s talk about what he and Siddig talked about minutes after that occurred, what he tells the Bureau on one hand because he needs the money, and what he tells Siddig. He tells the Bureau Mohammed Saleh is a member of Hamas and of course Emad Salem is very interested to find out if anybody has affiliations with overseas organizations because that’s what my client is charged with in the indictment, and he asks Siddig right up front, is Mohammed Saleh a follower – not even a member, now we are down to followers. But Siddig Ali says I don’t know nine times. But our boy he’s looking for money so he tells the FBI he’s a member of Hamas.50

Later in this proceeding Jacobs reacted to the fact that a bus bombing by Hamas

had just killed an American from Connecticut: “I take the following position which is the word Hamas is mentioned by my client in CM 32 in evidence and he refers to some night vision goggles. [Mohammed Saleh had shipped night vision goggles to occupied Palestine to aid in anti-Zionist operations. He told Siddig,

Some Palestinian Brothers from Hamas called me and asked me for night vision equipment; I told them I was ready to buy it for them.] I think the

49. Mary Tabor “U.S. Rejects Sheik’s Jailing As Too Costly” New York Times April 22, 1993 Page B1, 1.50. USA v Rahman TT 19905

government should not be allowed to ask my client – I assume not Salem or anybody else – what is Hamas.51

Hamas helped finance the first World Trade Center Event. AUSA Fitzgerald stated: “In the indictment we have charged that Mohammed Saleh had links to an overseas organization. That is Hamas. The government’s theory is the reason that the defendants turned to Mohammed Saleh at a time when they needed financing for terrorist activities is because of the link to Hamas. Hamas was part of what formed a voucher of trust, if you will, that they could rely upon in order to turn to Mohammed Saleh as opposed to, you know, turning to somebody else who had money.”

Siddig believed he could obtain money from Iran for his plan:

Salem: You don’t have the rest of the money.

Siddig: No, we will get it, no problem. I know few sources. I’ll ask to give the amounts to me in cash.

Salem: I am generally speaking.

Siddig: I thought strange thoughts. I thought to get an airplane ticket to Tehran. Tehran. I don’t have the ticket. But I tell them to give visa there. The most important thing is the passport. It is not necessary to use my passport. You know Ahmed (LNU) the white man did you see him? Anyway, I fly and talk with one there. He is interested to do that. I receive him in New York. He doesn’t have any contact or connection. This is the Iranian intelligence. They have the capabilities. All what I need is some technical things to go inside and get out.

Salem: Where?

Siddig: In the Big House. (The United Nations)

Salem: I thought there.

Siddig: No, they can’t do that there. I believe they can’t because it is a government [building]. But the BIG HOUSE, they have ID’s and they can go in and get out…IA52 I thought of Iraq, no, it is just thoughts.

(A noise of a hammer)

Siddig: You will need money (IA). The weapons will cost about $1,500: Three pistols and two machine guns. The powder is expensive. We need 3,000 pounds and each pound costs four or five dollars.

51. USA v Rahman TT 1733652. Inaudible.

Unidentified Male: How you reach (IA) to Iran.

Siddig: It is possible you must use another passport. Get another passport if you lost your passport.

Unidentified Male: (IA)

Siddig: No, as a Sudanese you need them to help you in issuing a new passport under another name. Even if the CIA have a list of all the Sudanese who entered Tehran, they will not find out who you are.

Salem: Do the Sudanese help?

Siddig: (IA) I obtained four or five passports in my lifetime. There was no problem in any country which I visited. The officer signs on the passport. It is public relations. Are you asking whether the big officials help us or not?

Salem: Yeah.

Siddig: I don’t guarantee them.53

LOGISTICAL SUPPORT: THE SUDAN

On the way home from a trip to Philadelphia Salem and Siddig Ali had this conversation:

Siddig: Where did I get this information [regarding a van with diplomatic plates that could be used to transport a bomb into the United Nations garage] from? I get it from the highest level.

Salem: Then who is this high level?

Siddig: I am telling you there are people from inside the embassy, Brother.

Salem: The Sudanese Embassy, too?

Siddig: I’m telling you Brother, the Ambassador, Brother.

Salem: Good.

Siddig: So these people know the details. It is not a game, they know the details.

Salem: Is the ambassador going to participate with us in this operation?

53. USA v Rahman Misc. Papers Cassette SN 38734 = 4

Siddig: No, no. (laughing)

Salem: Man I am kidding, a man in the diplomatic level comes and connects wires. (laughter)

The van was to be delivered, along with a United Nations entry pass on June 24, 1993 but our operation was shut down by then.54 Siddig Ali invited Salem to discuss these matters directly with Sheikh Rahman, but reminded him that because of the surveillance due to the World Trade Center bombing, to use caution in so doing. Caution, as defined by Siddig Ali, included phrasing statements in a broad and general manner, and assuring that Rahman was insulated from active involvement in the plot.

Salem met with Siddig Ali again on May 12, 1993 pretending that he had surveyed locations for use as a bomb-making safehouse and that he had settled on a garage in Queens that was renting for $1,000 a month. This safehouse was actually rented by the FBI, and the FBI installed video cameras and surveillance equipment in the safehouse before members of the group began using it.

Taking Siddig Ali up on his earlier invitation, Salem had a private conversation with Rahman on the night of May 23, 1993. At the bidding of Siddig Ali, Salem began the conversation by pledging allegiance to Rahman. Salem then told Rahman that he and Siddig Ali were planning to “do a job.”55

ROBERT KENNEDY: A CASUALTY OF ISLAMISM

The Learned Elders of Islam have long been hesitant to reveal our connection to the training of Sirhan Sirhan, even to our own most trusted members, but do so in light of the fact that on May 23, 1993 Sheik Rahman was overheard on a FBI listening device discussing a plan to bomb the United Nations and the New York City Field Office of the FBI. Here is a transcription of that tape:

Emad Salem: …I do wish to know in regards to the United Nations, do we consider it the house of the devil…because my strike is a devastating one and not an amateur one like the one that took place at the Trade Center, we are preparing something big, something big if God willing, that will bring its highest and lowest, so is that forbidden or allowed?

Rahman: It is not forbidden, however it will be bad for Muslims.

Salem: Not forbidden, however, will be bad for Muslims, we do it or…

Rahman: No.

Salem: Forget it.

54. USA v Rahman TT 675755. USA v Rahman Government Exhibit #311T at 3

Rahman: Find a plan to inflict damage on the American Army because the United Nations will damage Muslims.

Salem: We keep it in the Army.

Rahman: Yes, keep it, let us think, you all think of something else, because basically, the United Nations, this, they will consider it to be a center of peace and that Muslims are against peace, and will create a difficulty, and will disturb the Muslims being.

Salem: Yes, but Siddig suggested the second target will be the FBI’s center, which is 26 Federal Plaza, what do you think of this one?

Rahman: By God, I mean, postpone it a little, postpone it a little, this way because, what…

Salem: Emh, ok, fine, but we have prepared the thing now, Sheik.

Rahman: It’s ok.

Salem: We wait then?

Rahman: Wait a little.

Salem: Fine, Sheik.

Rahman: Slow down, slow down a little bit. The one who killed Kennedy was trained for three years.56

The Sheik whispered this last line to Emad Salem for fear the FBI was bugging his telephone and his apartment – which it was from February 1993 to June 1993, when the FBI ceased to do so after having searched it. Long before the PATRIOT (Providing Appropriate Tools Required To Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act was enacted, the FBI also had a “roving wiretap” on the Sheik and tapped the telephones that he used when he traveled to cities like Seattle and Los Angeles.57 There were other transcriptions of this last part of the tape: “Salem then asked Rahman what he thought of the plan to bomb the FBI at 26 Federal Plaza.” Rahman responded, “Well, uh, a little bit later. We’ll talk about this.” When Salem indicated that the plan was currently in motion, Rahman responded, “It doesn’t matter. Slow down. Slow down a bit. The one who killed Kennedy was trained for three years.” When Sister Lynne Stewart was put on trial for aiding al-Qaeda she remembered it this way, “By God," the Sheikh answered. "I mean, postpone it a little, slow down a little. May God make things right for you.”

56. USA v Rahman Document 691 pgs. 4 and 5, Peter Waldman “The Infiltrator: Ali-Mohamed served in the U.S. Army and bin-Laden's circle” The Wall Street Journal Nov. 26, 2001. 57. New York Times April 23, 1993 - Lynne Stewart quoted.

When the transcript of this electronic surveillance was mentioned during the trial of Sheik Rahman that began in January 1995, the Zionist-Jewish-hangman Judge Mukasey, the Catholic prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy, and all the defense attorneys thought, or pretended to think, that this was a reference to the assassination of John F. Kennedy and not Robert Kennedy. Listen to the dialogue in Mukasey’s courtroom when this valuable insight into the secret history of Islamism in America was discussed:

Assistant United States Attorney McCarthy: Your Honor, we are going to get CM10, a transcript that has the allusion to the Kennedy assassination in it.

THE COURT: Right. I ruled that out didn’t I?

McCarthy: No, you ruled that it wasn’t to be mentioned in front of the jury until you said one way or the other. It is our position, your Honor, that it is relevant, probative evidence of Dr. Abdel Rahman’s state of mind…The whole case is about what he had on his mind, and it makes it much more relevant that he’s mentioned the name of a United States Government official as opposed to another man.

THE COURT: No. All it does is call for all kinds of speculation that have not a great deal to do with this case by a good number of years.

McCarthy: It’s not the government’s position that he actually had anything to do with the Kennedy assassination. But it is extremely relevant, given the fact that what was being proposed were attacks on American installations, that what he is talking about is training for an attack on an American government official in a case where he has contended that he’s not involved in any kind of Jihad other than Jihad overseas…

THE COURT: “The person who carried out the Kennedy assassination trained for three years,” is a point he could just as easily have been making about a proposed act to take place overseas, as he could about a proposed domestic act. For example, if he had said “Have your escape plans ready, because John Wilkes Booth has a horse waiting out in the alley…” But if he is talking about an attack on American military installations, it will be apparent without his reference to advice based on an earlier act. If he is saying, “Wait to attack American installations because after all the person who attacked Kennedy trained for three years,” then the fact that he alludes to the person who attacked Kennedy doesn’t add anything. On the other hand if he says wait to train to assassinate Mubarak because the person who assassinated Kennedy trained for three years, that doesn’t make a proposed assassination of Mubarak somehow a more American act…

McCarthy: Perhaps the name Kennedy, – it has a danger of unfair prejudice that an appropriate substitution or to an instruction from the court with the transcript left intact that the government doesn’t make any contention that any defendant on trial had anything to do with that incident.

Defense Attorney Lynne Stewart: Could you read it aloud, Judge? I don’t have it in front of me, just as it would be without the word Kennedy, that sentence.

THE COURT:

Rahman: The man who killed X was training for three years. We don’t want ah –

Salem: No, no we will do a good job God willing.

Rahman: OK

Stewart: The problem is John Wilkes Booth –

Defense Attorney Amsterdam: Without being funny, there is the tension. I am extremely concerned with spillover prejudice as to any inference in front of this jury that somebody even remotely connected with this group had something to do with Kennedy. On the other hand if you substitute it with a blank there is some suggestion that a recent assassination was actually committed. So from her [Lynne Stewart’s] point of view, I think that she will almost take the Kennedy because it is so far away in time that she couldn’t possibly have been involved in it. From my point of view I will take anything other than Kennedy. I think from that point of view Lincoln…

Stavis: Or President Garfield.

THE COURT: Let’s take another step further. Instead of just blanking out Kennedy, why not blank out kill also, and leave it as the man who was redacted was training for three years.58

This was what the jury heard and read:

Rahman: The one who [redacted] [redacted] was training for three years, we don’t want uh.

Salem: No, no we will do a good job, God willing.

The Assistant United States Attorney summed up this conversation:

58. USA v Rahman TT 4822

Those are the words he spoke in the kitchen. Keep it away from the United Nations, put it right at the Army itself. The FBI: Slow down. Do it right. Those words are not words he wanted anyone but Salem to hear. He whispered them. The last people he wanted to hear those words are you. But you will listen to them right now. Cue it up you can listen on your headphones, it will play out loud, but you can hear it much better on your headphones, because it is whispering. (Audiotape played.) When we talk about corroboration that is what corroboration is. Someone tells you he said these words, he whispered them in a kitchen. You have it on tape. That is the side he never wanted people to see.59

All praise to Allah! The Sheik’s indiscretion was excised from this tape!

After the Sheik was sentenced to life imprisonment he glossed over his reference to this event that had far reaching consequences on America’s history:

When he then countered with a plan for FBI headquarters at 26 Federal Plaza I told him to slow down, take time – all to dissuade this insistent hot-headed individual, who I know now only had thoughts of money and his master’s glory. The attack on American military bases here, supposedly suggested by me on tape was nothing more than an instantaneous reaction to a person I thought to be either unbalanced or an Egyptian spy. It was said to set out an impossibility, and thus relieve myself of his unwelcome presence.

SIRHAN SIRHAN

On June 5, 1968 Sirhan Sirhan assassinated presidential candidate Senator Robert F. Kennedy. With all praise to the Almighty, this conspiracy was written off as the act of a lone gunman, a deranged individual, a 1960’s version of how Nosair was first perceived, when in reality, like the Kahane assassination, it was our work of carried out in the name of the Ummah.

Sirhan Sirhan was born in 1944 in al-Quds60 and in 1948, he and his family moved to Old Jerusalem after half of the city had been stolen by the Jews, where they remained until coming to the United States in 1956. Throughout his eight years in Old Jerusalem there were intermittent bombings perpetrated by the Zionists. Sirhan’s family resided in a one-room apartment with grossly inadequate toilet facilities. He often said “the Jews have kicked us out of our home” and was also told of the Deir Yassin massacre in which the Jews slaughtered 250 people including women and children. Sirhan elaborated, “While living in Old Jerusalem I went to a well for some water, and when the bucket came up it contained a hand and this sickened me. On one occasion I saw the exploded remains of a grocer I knew. Another time I came across the body of a neighbor hanging on the barbed wire on the street in front of our home. Once a Zionist truck drove through our street carrying a number of young Arab girls whose breasts had 59. USA v Rahman TT 1866560. Jerusalem.

been slashed. I was four years old at the time and I told my mother ‘Look at the blood, mommy!’”61 In 1956 he heard about aggression by the Zionists against the Arabs in the Suez Canal. In the 1960’s Sirhan asserted that violence was the only means by which the American Negroes would achieve their goals, and that the State of Israel had taken his home, and that the Jewish people were on top and directing the events in America.

These experiences made it easy for a small group of Islamists led by Dr. Mehdi

to train and groom the Christian Sirhan Sirhan, and lead him back to the Islamic tradition that had run through his blood for ages. In court, during his trial, Sirhan Sirhan burst out that he had killed RFK “willfully, premeditatively, with twenty years of malice and forethought. I am willing to fight for the Arab cause. I am willing to die for it.” On June 1, 1968 Ben Herrick, the owner of the Lock, Stock and Barrel Gun shop in San Gabriel, California, sold Sirhan the ammunition he used to assassinate Kennedy. Herrick stated that two Arab Brothers accompanied Sirhan.62 Larry K. Arnot, who worked at the store at the time refused to talk about the incident.63 Sirhan repeatedly stated that he carried out this assassination alone, however, a fellow inmate with Sirhan in San Quentin from 1972 to 1973 claimed that Sirhan was involved in the prison murder of inmate Ronald Woods who had gone to the FBI and told agents there that Sirhan had admitted to him that others were involved in the RFK assassination.64

SIRHAN AND MEHDI

Sheik Rahman was in Egypt when Robert Kennedy was assassinated and did not know Sirhan Sirhan, however God, in his divine wisdom put Mehdi the Elder in contact with Sirhan Sirhan. Mehdi, who was in touch with Sheikh Rahman, received a fatwa from him authorizing the assassination. After the Robert Kennedy assassination the FBI failed to investigate a connection between Sirhan Sirhan and the West Coast office of the Arab Information Center in San Francisco, founded by Dr. Mehdi, despite the fact that Sirhan stated at his trial “that he read everything about the Arab-Israeli situation that he could lay his hands on, including publications from the Arab Information Center in the United States.”65 Dr. Mehdi had left San Francisco in 1963 to direct the New York Office of the Center, but the office on the West Coast remained in operation and Mehdi and Sirhan visited it. Sirhan reportedly collected intelligence for the Arab Information Center by reading publications such as the B’nai B’rith Messenger, and attending Jewish meetings and parades.

After Sirhan Sirhan performed his service to the Ummah, Dr. Mehdi visited Sirhan in prison numerous times66 and issued a statement that Sirhan might have been motivated to attack Robert Kennedy because Robert Kennedy had promised to sell sophisticated bombers to Israel. Mehdi talked honestly of the

61. Douglas Robinson “Sirhan Tells Court He Killed Kennedy” New York Times March 4, 1969.62. “Shell Purchase by Sirhan Noted: 2 Were With Accused Killer, Gunshop Owner Says,” New York Times June 16, 1968 Page 32, 1.63. Larry K. Arnot 626-358-878764. Philip Melanson “The RFK Assassination” Shapolsky Press 1991 page 11765. Robert Kennedy FBI Files Part 1 of 9 FBI 77-51387 http://foia.fbi.gov/rfk/rfk1a.pdf66. Conversation with Ghazi Khanken October 7, 2003.

“frustration of many Arabs with American politicians who have sold the Arab people of Palestine to the Zionist Jewish voters.” When Sirhan was arrested, a newspaper article that stated Senator Kennedy favored aid to Israel, with arms if necessary, was found in his pocket.67 Dr. Mehdi visited with Sirhan after Sirhan was incarcerated, under the pretext of writing a book on the Robert Kennedy assassination that was printed by the New World Press in 1968 and titled Kennedy and Sirhan, Why? The New World Press was located in Dr. Mehdi’s apartment.

In this book Mehdi justified Sirhan’s action:

Kennedy, the dove on Vietnam, who had called for the de-escalation of the war, was a hawk in the Middle East and had proposed sending fifty Phantom jets to Israel; Israel having been created because Palestine was destroyed and its people shattered and Sirhan being a member of that destroyed and shattered nation of Palestine, it was clear why he would consider Kennedy as one of his enemies. As soon as the identity of the assailant was discovered, the Action Committee on American-Arab Relations issued a statement in New York explaining that his act ‘reflects the frustration of many Arabs with American politicians who have sold the Arab people of Palestine to the Zionist Jewish voters.’ Furthermore, the Action Committee condemned ‘the fact that Senator Kennedy had kowtowed to the Zionist pressure to the detriment of America.’ President Johnson, who sends American planes to bomb North Vietnam, is a legitimate target for the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. To say that the Viet Cong should not attack Johnson and should direct their fire only at the GI's would not make sense. If the Viet Cong could get Lyndon Baines Johnson, to them he is a fair game. By the same token, when Robert F. Kennedy supports Israel against the Arabs, he is assuming the role of an Israeli high-ranking official. To say that the Arabs should direct their fire only at Israeli soldiers, but not at those who have supplied the soldier with arms and economic and political strength and thereby created the Israeli war machinery - this too does not make sense…Sirhan has raised some other questions of greater theoretical and philosophical interest. He has raised the question of political assassination and conventional morality; His decision raises the questions of the use of force: whether ‘organized’ use of force is moral and ‘individual’ use of force immoral. Whether the American politician, whose policies, statements and actions affect the lives of millions of people the world over, should be accountable only to the American voters, or as he affects the destiny of other people, he should be equally accountable to these others…On the question of prevention of greater evil, if the death of one person has prevented the sending of Phantom jets which might kill and destroy the lives of, say, fifteen thousand human beings, then possibly a greater evil was prevented even though a great tragedy took place.

67. David Lawrence Pasadena Evening Star News - May 26, 1968.

In another book, Terrorism Against America, Why? Mehdi wrote: “Robert Kennedy, of course, was not interested in killing Arabs. But his action in the course of the elections resulted in the death of thousands of Arabs. Indeed, Robert Kennedy can be considered as the man responsible for the arms race in the Middle East. The Israeli occupation of Sinai, annexation of the Golan Heights and war in Lebanon might be traced to Bobby Kennedy’s desire to become the President of the United States.

Was Sirhan able to appeal to Kennedy in any way whatever so that politician Kennedy would not push for giving Phantom jets to Israel? In Sirhan’s own words, if he had wanted ‘to lick Kennedy’s boots, pleading with him not to send the phantom jets to Israel, Kennedy would not have even stopped to have his boots licked’ by Sirhan. Sirhan, of course, committed an act of terrorism. But Robert Kennedy’s pushing for arms to Israel has led to hundreds of acts committed by Israel terrorists, resulting in the death of tens of thousands of Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese and other Arabs. Kennedy was responsible for acts of war terrorism and other horrors in the Middle East. Sirhan, of course, could have appealed to the American people to pressure Kennedy not to send arms to Israel. But in the absence of the capability to affect American public opinion peacefully to prevent Kennedy from supporting Israel, an act of terrorism was committed by Sirhan in reaction to Kennedy’s promotion of war in the Middle East.

ISSA NAKHLEH

The Arab Higher Committee for Palestine instructed its New York representative Issa Nakhleh to offer all possible assistance to Sirhan, and Nakhleh became a consulting attorney at the Sirhan Sirhan trial.68 Born in Palestine Nakhleh, another Christian by birth, was a graduate of London University, a Barrister-at-Law of the Honorable Society of Lincoln Inn, London, and a Member of the Palestine Bar. He represented the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine (also known as the Palestinian Arab Delegation) a pro-PLO

group in New York from 1947 to 1948. He then became Representative of the League of Arab States with the rank of Minister Plenipotentiary for Latin America with an office in Buenos Aires, Argentina. For the last 32 years he had represented the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine in New York. He attended more than 15 Sessions of the United Nations General Assembly, and made more than 50 speeches in the Special Political Committee on the Problem of Palestine. The Justice Department reported that Palestinian Arab Delegation is registered with the Foreign Agents Registration Board as a representative of the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine: “The registrant engaged in meetings at the United Nations for the purpose of winning support of the United Nations Delegations for the cause of the Palestine Arab people.” The Delegation received $24,000.00 for the six-month period ending June 26, 2001 from the Palestinian

68. “Arab Agency Orders Aid Offer to Sirhan” Associated Press June 23, 1968 published in New York Times.

Authority.69 The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin el-Husseini, whose spirit guided Brother Nakhleh, had originally formed the Palestinian Arab Delegation.

AL-HUSSEINI THE ELDER

His Eminence Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, was born in Al-Quds in 1893 and served in the Ottoman Army during World War I, where he fought against the British-dominated Western powers. The Mufti engineered the bloody attacks against Zionist settlements in 1929 and 1936. Sheik Rahman had this to say about him: “He who negotiates or permits the land of Islam or permits it to be handed over to the enemies of Islam is kafir. And Jerusalem’s spiritual leader decreed the

same thing -- if I recall correctly it was Sheik Amin Al-Husseini, may God’s mercy be upon him.” Attorney Ron Kuby had this analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict:

A man jumps out of a burning building and lands on another man walking below, and the two men of course can fight, and they can fight endlessly about who has what rights, certainly the man jumping from the burning building had the right to jump, just as of course the Jewish people had the right to jump from the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. But the Palestinian walking beneath had every right to walk and live his life and not be jumped upon by another man. After all, it was the Nazis and not the Palestinians who built the gas chambers. The Palestinians did no less than the rest of the peoples to rescue the Jews during the Holocaust.”

Kuby forgot that the Mufti totally comprehended the kinship Islamism shared with the National Socialist Party of Germany, who, although, worshippers of the ancient Nordic deity Odin, did the work of the Islamists as regarded the Jews, in perhaps the most effective fashion to date. The Mufti’s contribution to Nazism was the recruitment of tens of thousands of Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania to the Arabic Waffen SS, the Handschar, which participated in the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of partisan Serbs, Jews and Gypsies. In 1943 there were 20,000 Muslims under arms in the Handschar. An Imam was assigned to each division. The Mufti was already a part of the Abwehr, the German counter-intelligence and sabotage agency, and he had a cordial meeting with the man who changed the course of Jewish history, Adolph Hitler. In 1947 Nakhleh attempted to counteract Zionist propaganda about the Grand Mufti and wrote a letter to the Washington Post in which he stated,

The Grand Mufti occupies in Arab hearts the same position General George Washington occupied in American hearts…It is not only untrue but it is willful misrepresentation to say that the Grand Mufti had ‘contacts with the Fascist powers in the early thirties and had arms guidance and funds.’ The Arab national movement was never financed by any foreign power.

69. http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fara/Fara1st01/COUNTRY/PALESTIN.HTM

His Eminence the Grand Mufti did not go to Germany by his own free will as the British pursued

him from one country to the other. When he was in Germany, he refused to act as a Nazi tool as falsely alleged by the Zionists. He never took part directly or indirectly in the alleged extermination of Jews or had anything to do with any of Hitler’s plans. His eminence is one of the most noble and human leaders of our time.70

Nakhleh was a participant in the 1982 conference of the Institute for Historical Review and he gave speech entitled, “Palestinians and the Israeli Wars of Aggression.71 In 1991 Intercontinental Books72 published Nakhleh’s The Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem. Nakhleh was a legal adviser of the Saudi Arabian Mission to the United Nations before his death on March 29, 2003.73

SPEAR S. SAYEGH

Spear S. Sayegh, a member of Sirhan’s support group, came to the attention of FBI when a witness overheard him discussing the Sirhan case on the telephone at his place of business. Sayegh was an Arab and in active in the Los Angeles Arabic community. Sirhan was friendly with a student named Anwar John Sayegh. An FBI investigation into the matter revealed that the telephone call to Sayegh was probably a request from John Lawrence in New York for Sayegh to assist in Sirhan’s defense. John Lawrence worked for Mohammad T. Mehdi. This was how the FBI reported the incident: “Mrs. Lois Garner entered the GPS Pharmacy in Temple City on approximately June 7, 1968, and observed the pharmacist on the telephone. She stated she overheard him say, ‘But I had to! We will have to call an emergency meeting. We must band together and stand behind him.’ The pharmacist observed Mrs. Garner and said: ‘I have to go now,’ and he hung up the phone. Mrs. Garner believed the conversation was related in some way to Sirhan Sirhan and reported the incident to the Temple City Police Department.

On July 8, 1968, FBI Agent Lloyd Johnson interviewed Spear Sayegh at his place of business. Sayegh stated that he had never met Sirhan Sirhan and knew nothing of him. He stated that he was acquainted with most Arabs in the Los Angeles area and that he had met [Sirhan Sirhan’s brother] Adel Sirhan when he had seen him as a musician at the Shaker’s Oasis Bar and The Fez Bar. Sayegh was president of the American Jordanian Society that he formed, for two years. He was presently president of the United States Organization of Medical and Educational Needs. The organizations were both charitable and not political in nature.

Sayegh stated that he and most Arabs of his acquaintance had warm feelings for both John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. He said that it was

70. Letters to the Editor Washington Post September 14, 1947.71. Spotlight November 8, 1982 IHR Advertisement72. Simon and Schuster also had a subsidiary known as Intercontinental Books, but it only published children’s titles. The Chinese had a publishing house known as Intercontinental Press.73. Letters to the Editor “Saudi Arabia: America's Friend”Washington Post February 3, 2002.

the opinion of many Arabs that Zionists had induced Sirhan to assassinate Robert Kennedy. He personally did not have evidence of this belief.

Sayegh does not recall the specific conversation Mrs. Garner referred to but stated that it could have been any number of people due to his involvement with different organizations. He did recall several calls from John Lawrence requesting that he (Sayegh) arrange a defense for Sirhan. Sayegh stated that he declined because he thought that Sirhan was guilty and should be executed. Lawrence was identified as the executive secretary of the ‘Organizing Committee for Clemency for Sirhan’ in New York City.

For decades al-Qaeda was able to use non-profit charitable organizations to raise money for Jihad. After September 11th this subterfuge was no longer viable. Nevertheless, we thank Allah [subhanahu wa ta’ala] for allowing us to raise funds through organizations such as the United States Organization of Medical and Educational Needs. Alfred Lilienthal, whose articles have appeared in the Revisionist Journal of the Institute of Historical Review, spoke before the Organization of Medical and Educational Needs.74 The Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee listed the Organization of Medical and Educational Needs75 as being identical with the Palestinian Refugee Fund.76 The Mercy Relief of Singapore supported the Palestinian Refugee Fund. The Government of Kenya deregistered Mercy Relief International in September 1998 as they had been found to be working against the interests of Kenyans in terms of security according to the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) Coordination Board, the government body that oversees the activities of locally registered NGOs. No further details were given, although the Kenyan Police and the FBI raided Mercy Relief International as part of their investigations into the August 7, 1998 bombing of the American spy-nests in Kenya and Tanzania. Documents were taken in that raid, but no arrests were made, however, during the 2001 trial of the Brothers who carried out these activities the traitor Jamal Ahmed Mohammed al-Fadl was asked:

Q. And during the time that you were in Nairobi were you familiar with a charity or relief organization known as Mercy International Relief Organization?

A. Yes.

Q. And were there any al-Qaeda people affiliated with the Mercy International Relief Organization?

A. Yes, the people of al-Qaeda they were dealing with the Mercy International.

74. Alfred Lilienthal Lecture Brochure 147 W 55 St New York, New York.75

. United States Organization for Medical Educational Needs Attn. Az Nashashibi Tel. 415-665 0830 Fax. 415-284 3225 2 Plaza Drive P.O. Box 16308 San Francisco, CA 9411676. http://groups.google.com/groups?q=United+States+Organization+of+Medical+and+Educational+Needs&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&selm=8s60fp%241c3r%241%40pencil.math.missouri.edu&rnum=1

Q. Who were those people? Which al-Qaeda people were dealing with Mercy International?

A. Bin Laden, Mohammad Masry.

Brother Abu Jihad called Sayegh in February 2003:

Abu Jihad: My name is Abu Jihad and I am graduate student doing a PhD. thesis on Sirhan Sirhan. I came across a document about someone having overheard a telephone call you received at your pharmacy.

Sayegh: Ray Jollo is in charge of my life history. R-A-Y J-O-L-L-O.

Abu Jihad: Who was this guy Lawrence you were talking with? Was he connected to Dr. Mehdi?

Sayegh: Yes, Dr. Mehdi was his friend too.

Abu Jihad: He was a very great man, Dr. Mehdi.

Sayegh: Yes he is. I can’t help you I am sorry sir.

Abu Jihad: Did Mr. Lawrence know Mr. Mehdi?

Sayegh: Yes he knew him.

Abu Jihad: The organization you were talking to regarding Sirhan was connected with Dr. Mehdi?

Sayegh: Yes.

Abu Jihad: There was a friend of Sirhan who had the same last name as you. Was that any relation?

Sayegh: No.

Abu Jihad: You were with the United States Organization of Medical and Educational Needs? This foundation, was this similar to the Holy Land Foundation? I know that after the bombings an affiliate in Kenya of the Organization of Medical and Educational Needs was kicked out of that country.

Sayegh: I have no idea about it now. It was a long time ago.

Abu Jihad: The money you raised wasn’t going to any militant organizations?

Sayegh: No, no, to Palestinian refugees. I have to go.

It was Brothers like Nakhleh and Sayegh, who hated the Zionist occupiers and had connections, directly and indirectly, to organizations comprised of Nazi’s posing as historians, who provided support for Sirhan Sirhan’s action.

Doctor Mehdi was placed on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List released to the public by the Department of Injustice. Dr. Mehdi died on February 28, 1998, may God have mercy on his soul for he was a key player in the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Meir Kahane. When Sirhan was asked who killed Robert Kennedy he responded, “Sirhan Sirhan I suppose, no other person.”77 To be sure our sponsorship remained a secret Abu Jihad called Ghazi Khankan in October 2003 and asked him about Dr. Rahman’s reference to killing Kennedy. “What? That’s very very farfetched. Dr. Mehdi was only a translator for Sheik Rahman in a court situation.78 Sirhan was a Christian he has nothing to do with any…Dr. Mehdi used to go there to see to visit him in the jail to see…he was calling for his parole. Dr. Mehdi worked for the League of Arab States. The Arab Information Center was not his. He was director for a few years in the 1950’s.”79 The League of Arab states funded the Arab Information Center.80

The Sheik was not the only figure in the Arab world to link the RFK assassination to so-called “organized Arab terrorism.” The Saudi Ambassador to the United Nations, Jamil M. Baroody, in a speech to the Security Council hinted, “When the Palestinians, who have been robbed of their property, of their homeland, chased out of their country, are desperate and try to express their despair by such acts as we hear of, whether it is in the airport at Athens81 or elsewhere, or even in Los Angeles where one of the leaders of this country was assassinated because he supported the Israeli cause for political reasons, these people are called ‘murderers.’”82

On March 2, 1973, in Khartoum, Sudan, members of the Black September group captured five diplomats, including the American Ambassador Cleo A. Noel and outgoing Charge d’Affairs G. Curtis Moore. The Palestinian freedom fighters said they wanted to exchange them for Sirhan Sirhan. When the Americans refused these men were executed! The Brothers who executed this event served 16 months in a Sudan prison and were released to the PLO in June 1974. They were to complete their two-year sentences in a West Bank prison but there is no evidence they ever did so.83

SIDDIG’S TARGETS: BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

77. “Sirhan Says No One Helped to Kill Kennedy” New York Times June 16, 1983 Page A18, 1.78. The Washington Post of August 16, 1993 described Mehdi as “a close advisor of the Sheik.”79. Tape Recorded conversation with Ghazi Khankan October 14, 2003.80. Washingon Post February 20, 1976 “Arab Center, Leader Named in US Suit.” The USDOJ filed suit against the Arab Information Center for failing to file a Foreign Agents Registration Act Statement as the Center worked on behalf of the League of Arab States.81. On December 26, 1968 the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine killed on Israeli during an attack on El-Al Airlines at Athens airport.82. “Arab Envoy at UN Cites RFK Murder” Washington Post January 1, 1969 page A24 83. Jim Hoagland “Sudan Releases Envoy’s Killers to PLO” Washington Post June 25, 1974.

Salem recounted his conversation with Sheik Rahman to Siddig Ali, regarding hitting the FBI and the U.N. Siddig Ali stated that when he had discussed the United Nations issue with Rahman, Rahman had been in favor of the plan. Subsequently, in discussing the plan to bomb the United Nations with Hampton-El, Siddig Ali told him that he had received an “official fatwa” from Rahman regarding the plan.84 Siddig Ali stated that Rahman’s approval was necessary whenever one did something “basically unlawful,” which would be wrong unless the “mission [was] under the flag of God and his messenger.”85

Over the next few days, Siddig Ali and Amir Abdelgani (once accompanied by

Salem) drove together to the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the United Nations, and the Federal Building in Manhattan to scout the targets and examine traffic conditions. Salem recorded their conversation:

Siddig Ali: Fine, now we are entering the tunnel, there are two lanes, one lane on the right and one on the left. The hadduta86 will be placed on the right lane always which is close to the water, because the left lane is close to the opposite lane.

Salem: Maya, it is called maya.

Siddig Ali: Maya (laughing). You want me to speak to you in Egyptian, I will speak Egyptian, in the name of God the merciful, the Almighty…There is a police officer, don’t worry about him, don’t pay him attention, you have to concentrate on your assignment, it is wrong to get police attention, if you look at them 1, 2, 3, times, they will be wondering why? It is going to be a catastrophe at the end. Look it says hazardous material checkpoint, the inspection point is the checkpoint. They inspect any hazardous material, means dangerous oil, hawadith.87 Any material.

Salem: But we are carrying weapons, it does not matter.

Siddig: No, no, it does not matter.

Salem: It is not important. (laughing)

Siddig: It is called children’s toys man.

Salem: Okay, where do you want to place the haddoutha? So that I can concentrate on the line.

Siddig: Yeah, always.84. USA v Rahman Govt. Ex. 315T at 7-985. USA v Rahman Govt. Ex. 320T at 7-986. The codeword used for the bombs was the Arabic word “Hadduta,” which literally means a child's bedtime story when translated from Arabic. 87. Events, changes

Salem: At this line, stop so I can tape.

Siddig: From here, this is the location of the hadduta.

Salem: Then you tell her to sing.

Siddig: I will tell her to sing Ashra Baladi as you have it in Egypt and in Sudan we call it Dallauka let her sing Dallauka.

Salem: (Laughing) Ah yeah yeah.

Siddig: Or it better be to let her sing Noba songs and mention the name of God, let the hadduta pray, the name of God.

Salem: No God, but God.

Siddig: I will let the hadduta pray for God, there is booth on the left, there is nobody in it, there is no man in it, empty (UI) homework (UI) we will review this film (UI) I am going at a speed of 20 miles, here is a second booth, third, fourth, fifth, on the left another one, empty, there is no monkey in it…The man who is going to place the hadduta, he will get out here, of course he will ride with his Brother. This one thing, it will be sing, sing, sing is the one who is going to place the hadduta.

Aside from the Holland tunnel other targets included Grand Central Terminal, the Empire State Building and Times Square. During one of these scouting trips, Amir Abdelgani suggested that they consider bombing the diamond district in Manhattan because that would be like “hitting Israel itself.”88 “We continued talking about bombing the jewelry district, and once we put the bomb, the whole front windows will shatter and the jewelry, the diamonds will be all over, and everybody will pick up, and that’s what happening.” At the United Nations, Siddig Ali noted that a bomb detonated at the entrance would topple the building. The men later gathered at the safehouse to discuss the operation.

On May 30, 1993, Hampton-El met with Siddig Ali and Salem at Hampton-El’s safehouse, which he used for conducting business. Siddig Ali and Salem explained that they needed detonators, and Hampton-El said he would try to locate some for them. Hampton-El sought detonators and “clean” guns from Garrett Wilson, who became a cooperating witness for the U.S. Naval Investigative Service. Hampton-El explained to Wilson that he wanted to train a group of people in commando tactics and discussed training techniques and bomb identification.89 On June 4, 1993, Siddig Ali arranged to go with Salem to meet Mohammed Saleh. SIDDIG LETS MOHAMMED SALEH IN ON THE PLAN88. USA v Rahman Govt. Ex. 323T at 6-989. USA v. Rahman et. al. TT 10748-60. TT 10758-59

Mohammed Saleh was the owner of two gasoline stations in Yonkers, New York, always a good job for a Brother. During dinner at Mohammed Saleh’s house, Siddig Ali, who knew Mohammed Saleh through their mutual friends at the Sudanese mission, explained the bombing plan to him, noting the different targets on a piece of paper. These plans included the bombing of domestic American targets, the murder of the Secretary General of the United Nations as a “must”, trafficking in firearms, murder for hire, and enhancing Mohammed Saleh’s relationship to Hamas.90 Salem was asked by Siddig Ali to eat the piece of paper once Siddig Ali felt that Mohammed Saleh understood the plan. Many members of our cell had links to Sudan including Amir Abdelgani, Fadil Abdelgani, Tariq Elhassan and Fares Khallafalla, however even after this knowledge became public, the Clinton Administration was hesitant to place the Sudan on its list of nations that support “terrorist” acts. The House Republican Task Force on Terrorism disagreed and reported that much of Sudan’s training of our forces was being carried out with help from Iran.91

SIDDIG RECRUITS VICTOR ALVAREZ AND TARIQ ELHASSAN

Over the next few weeks, Siddig Ali brought Victor Alvarez and Elhassan into the group. Various members of the group began to collect the items they believed were needed to prepare the bombs. On June 13, 1993, Salem and Fares Khallafalla purchased two timers for the bombs in Chinatown. Salem suggested that the bombs should be detonated remotely by purchasing a beeper and substituting a filament for the bulb that flashed when the beeper was called. On June 15 and 18, 1993 Hampton-El left messages for Siddig Ali indicating that he was still searching for detonators, which were harder to obtain than the materials to assemble the Improvised Explosive Device. Siddig Ali indicated that they needed fertilizer, fuel, and stolen cars.

Amir, Alvarez, and Salem attempted on the evening of June 19, 1993 to buy stolen cars to deliver the bombs and to use as getaway cars during the bombing. Although they located a source for stolen cars, they did not have sufficient funds to purchase the cars. Our source for the stolen cars was Mohammed Saleh.

That same day, Elhassan met with a friend who was an engineer to discuss the feasibility of blowing up the tunnels and to determine where the weakest points of the tunnels were located. Elhassan told Salem that he asked someone to do a study of the strong sides and the weak sides of the tunnels and bridge to be bombed and indicated that he wanted to share this information with the al-Fatah Organization, the Sudanese and Hamas.92

On June 22, 1993, after buying five 55-gallon steel barrels from a Newark drum business, Siddig Ali and Amir Abdelgani went to Mohammed Saleh’s gas station to get fuel for the bombs. Mohammed Saleh agreed over the phone to provide the fuel. Belhabri, who was Mohammed Saleh’s employee, filled two of the drums with $140

90. USA v Rahman GXt93T91. R. Jeffery Smith “US Review of Sudan Terrorist Links Gain Urgency” The Washington Post June 27, 1993 page A.21.92. USA v Rahman CM 58 p1-2

worth of diesel fuel. Siddig Ali and Amir did not pay for the fuel, but Belhabri made out a receipt on which he recorded the license plate of the van. Siddig Ali wrote a phony signature on the receipt. At the same time, Siddig Ali and Salem were purchasing more fertilizer for the bombs.

Victor Alvarez gave Siddig Ali a 9mm semi-automatic rifle with an empty 25-round magazine. Siddig Ali and Salem took the gun from Alvarez’s apartment in New Jersey to the safe house. At a little after 8 p.m. that evening Amir Abdelgani and Fadil Abdelgani arrived at the safe house with the fuel. Amir Abdelgani then washed down the van so that there would be no traces left of the fuel. Fadil Abdelgani was asked whether he would participate, and he responded that he had to perform an Istikhara prayer.93 After going to the mosque to pray, Fadil Abdelgani met Elhassan and Alvarez, and they drove back to the Queens safehouse where Amir Abdelgani began mixing the fuel and the fertilizer, and watched the video showing the tunnels that had been shot earlier in the day by Siddig Ali and Salem. Elhassan, Alvarez, and Fadil Abdelgani then returned, joined Amir Abdelgani, and began stirring the fuel and fertilizer together. They discussed the timers and the placement of bombs. Carson Dunbar wanted Salem to neutralize the timer that Salem had supplied to the Brothers, but Salem refused for if this would have been detected Salem would have been executed!

At about 2:00 a.m. on the morning of June 24, 1993 FBI agents raided the safehouse and arrested the Brothers, seizing the fuel and fertilizer mixture and the cardboard diagram Siddig Ali had periodically used to sketch the bombing plan. A few hours before arrests were made at the FBI sponsored “bomb factory,” FBI agents arrested Mohammed Saleh at his apartment in Yonkers. United States Secret Service Special Agent Brian Parr reported that Saleh was hiding under his bedcovers while fully dressed when he came to arrest him. At FBI headquarters, Mohammed Saleh denied having sold fuel to the men but said that Salem had come to his station demanding fuel on two occasions. About a week later on July 5, 1993, Mohammed Saleh called one of his employees from prison and instructed him to tell Belhabri to destroy the two receipts documenting the fuel given to the Abdelganis and Siddig Ali. Mohammed Saleh said that it would be “dangerous” for Belhabri if he failed to follow these instructions. Mohamed Saleh was convicted of 3 counts including seditious conspiracy, bombing conspiracy, and attempted bombing. Saleh was sentenced to 35 years of imprisonment and 3 years of supervised release.

DR. RAHMAN SURRENDERS

On July 2, 1993 Sattar and Sheik Rahman barricaded themselves in the Abu Bakr Mosque then surrendered following a tense 20-hour standoff with authorities that suddenly had decided to revoke Rahman’s parole on immigration charges, however the Sheik was convinced he was being arrested on the same conspiracy that his followers had been charged with the previous week and he told the crowd who formed a human chain across the street from the Mosque, “I might not stand in front of you again. We are not conspiring against America even though we disagree with American policy.”94 93. A prayer seeking divine intervention to guide one's decision in a course of action94. Allison Mitchell “Sheik to be Held While Fighting Deportation” New York Times July 3, 1993 Page 1,2.

Mohammad T. Mehdi was present and reported that Sheik Rahman asked him, “Is America becoming another Egypt [complete with administrative detention]?” Sheik Rahman, who was suffering from numerous illnesses, including a non-contagious form of tuberculosis, was helicoptered to Otisville Federal Prison in upstate New York. There, he was hospitalized after he began to suffer from higher than normal blood sugar levels as his medication had been taken away from him for security reasons.95 The warnings to the Americans began, “We have issued statements warning the Americans never to touch Dr. Omar Abdel Rahman and now they will see our response.” Montassar al-Zayyat added that the Sheik’s extradition could “set off a wave of violence.”96

On July 3, 1993 State Department official Robert H. Pelletreau, was informed by Amr Moussa who is now head of the Arab League, that the Sheik had been ordered arrested by the Fayoum High Security Court. In a television interview July 4, 1993 Secretary of State Warren Christopher said he knew that Egypt wanted Abdel Rahman returned and that the United States would take “a sympathetic view” if an extradition request was received for the charge of inciting to riot. During his immigration hearing Sheik Rahman was asked:

Q. What do you think would happen if you went back to Egypt?

A. They will set up various charges against me in order that they may order me, remand me in the prison or to kill me. When I was in the United States in November or December 1991, I tried to return to Egypt, but the Minister of Interior sent me a delegate, threatening me that if I returned then I will face the prison and detention or at least house arrest. I gave my lawyer the name of the witness, if necessary.

Q. Who was the delegate that was sent to you?

A. A person whom I know that is acquainted with the Minister of Interior. His is Dr. Mustafa Mouman. I prepared myself to return to Egypt and this Mustafa Mouman came to New York and contacted me, and I went to him and he told me what Minister of Interior said.

Q. How did-how did the Egyptian government know you were going to return to Egypt?

A. I didn't say that they Egyptian government knew that I was going to return. It was my intention to return.

Q. Well, but why did the Egyptian government happen to send this delegate to you coincidentally at the same time that you were planning to return?

95. Joseph B. Treaster, “Sheik Hospitalized at Federal Prison” New York Times July 7, 1993 Page A1, 3.96. Joseph B. Treaster “Lawyer Says Sheik Plans Fight Against Extradition” New York Times July 6, 1993 Page B2, 1.

A. I had no intention of returning at that particular date, but I was thinking of returning.

Q. Do you know if Dr. Mustafa Mouman he works for the Egyptian government?

A. You mean as a spy?

(Off the record. On the record.)

JUDGE FOR THE RECORD: The last answer was I don't think so.

On July 4, 1993, Amad Sattar told the media "we haven't decided the time or place, but our Muslim community will definitely demonstrate its outrage at the arrest of the Sheikh and that if anything happens to the Sheikh, we will hold the American administration responsible. Something very bad could happen." On July 10, 1993 the Immigration Board of Appeals upheld Meisner’s determination and rejected the Sheik’s application for asylum. Doctor Mehdi commented, “The Sheik is exceedingly disappointed. I understand that he is improving and taking some of his medication but he is demoralized and this was before the Board rejected his appeal.”97 Sheik Rahman was offered asylum by the Sudanese. Then Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of Afghanistan stated, “We are willing to give him refuge, it will not cause a problem.”98

August 27, 1993 was a day that sealed the fate of the United States. The Islamist scholar, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, whose only crime was having correctly interpreted the Qu’ran, was brought before a federal magistrate and charged with conspiring to wage a holy war against America.

During his incarceration the Sheik took his immigration case to the United States Appellate Court which ruled: “Based on this court’s review of the administrative record, this court concludes that the Board of Immigration Appeals decision, as well as that of the Immigration Judge, on the application for asylum and withholding of deportation is supported by substantial evidence in the record. Fear of persecution, the basis for asylum, is not to be equated with an expectation of prosecution. The latter is not a ground for asylum. The unclassified summary opinion of the State Department Office of Asylum Affairs, Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, notes that: ‘We think that his acquittal in Egypt [in the Anwar Sadat assassination trial] reflects the practice of the Egyptian courts whose judges we respect and who enjoy a reputation for independence in their wish to hold government to a high standard in bringing charges against individuals for security breaches and for fomenting sectarian violence.’ This court also concludes that the Board of Immigration Appeals and the Immigration Judge had reasonable grounds for regarding the Petitioner as a danger to the security of the United States and therefore were required to deny his application for relief. Petitioner next argues that he was deprived of his right to a full and fair hearing on the ground that the Immigration Judge improperly considered ‘classified’ information despite the Judge’s 97. Joseph B. Treaster “Immigration Board Rejects Sheik’s Plea for Asylum” New York Times July 10, 1993.98. “Sheik Offered Refuge” New York Times, August 1, 1993 Page 39, 1.

representation on the record that he would not. Before reaching the merits of this argument this Court notes that it has declined, for policy reasons noted below, to receive the classified documents for in camera review [however] the undersigned received Secret level security clearance and [now] has the authority to read such a document. Although the undersigned has authority to base his decision on the classified information contained in the advisory opinion, the undersigned has not considered the classified information in reaching a decision in this case…The undersigned notes that the information contained in the classified document is relevant to the case and is a more detailed account of applicant’s alleged activities that are set forth in the unclassified U.S. Department of States advisory opinion, dated October 23, 1992…99 In fact, the Board of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs advisory opinion noted that it was accompanied by a classified letter ‘which summarizes information available to the U.S. concerning the continuing involvement of [the applicant] in terrorist activities which would have detrimental foreign policy and security consequences for the U.S. Government.’ The regulation specifies that the agency that provides the classified information may provide an unclassified summary. The immigration judge found that the Board of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs opinion did adequately summarize the classified information and provide the applicant an opportunity to offer opposing evidence.”

MICHAEL B. MUKASEY

The imposition of a judge, Michael B. Mukasey, in the Rahman trial, who is a Zionist Jew, whose wife is the principal for the Ramaz School,100 that wishes to see the immigration of all Jews in Manhattan to Israel, and who is a regular visitor to Israel, over the trial of ten men, all Muslims, with eight of them of Arab heritage, was a travesty of justice. This was akin to a Hamas member presiding over the trial of Baruch Goldstein, the settler who opened fire on a mosque full of Palestinian worshippers.101

In 1972, Mukasey joined the U.S. attorney’s office, eventually serving as chief of the official corruption unit from 1975 to 1976. He left to join the law firm of Patterson, Belknap and became a partner in 1978 along with former the former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. At the firm, Mukasey represented the homosexual Jew Roy Cohn during his legal disciplinary hearings. Cohn soon died of AIDS. In 1987 Mukasey was a member of the four-lawyer panel that cleared transit police officers of killing graffiti artist Michael Stewart. That year, Mukasey, a Republican, was recommended by Senator Alfonse D’Amato for a federal judgeship. An allegation had arisen that had plotted to kill D’Amato.102

We asked Mukasey to recuse himself but he refused. Mohammad T. Mehdi filed

an Affidavit in Support of Motion to Disqualify in which he wrote: “As a civil libertarian, I have been a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union for the last forty years. My friends are all races, nationalities and religions including Jews,

99. USA v Rahman Doc 682100. Archives of the Mayor's Press Office For Immediate Release Date: Tuesday, October 27,1998 Release #496-98.101. http://www.islam.co.za/saiin/abdulrahman.html102. Peg Tyre “Judge Up to Job” Newsday January 30, 1995.

Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Chinese, Russians, Hispanics, etc. As a Muslim, I judge persons on the bases of their deeds, not their creeds. Both the National Council on Islamic Affairs and American-Arab Relations Committee and myself personally have appeared before courts of judges of various persuasions and have been defended by lawyers of various backgrounds. We have never suggested that any judge should be disqualified because of his religion, ethnicity or his politics. When the late Rabbi Meir Kahane’s right to his passport was challenged by the State Department the National Council on Islamic Affairs and American-Arab Relations Committee and myself personally submitted an amicus curiae to the Federal Court in Washington in support of Rabbi Kahane’s right to his American passport. On the basis of the above, the National Council on Islamic Affairs and American-Arab Relations Committee and myself request permission to submit the attached amici curiae in support of the motion filed by Ronald L. Kuby and William M. Kunstler, Attorneys for the defense, asking the Honorable Judge Michael B. Mukasey to consider to disqualify himself from the case of U.S.A. v Rahman et. al.”103

Kunstler commented: “This is a judge who is, I think, openly Zionist and very

friendly to Israel. And he’s Jewish. And he’s gonna have rough time with people who are accused of conspiracy to blow up Jews, for example, on 47th Street. If the shoe was on the other foot and we had a Muslim judge for this trial, you know that he would never serve. We appreciate he may have strong views toward Israel, strong views toward Zionism, which he’s perfectly able to have. I don’t criticize him. But what I do criticize, he’s the wrong judge for the case. And he wasn’t selected for this case initially. It was a maneuver to get him in.”

Mukasey, later promoted to Chief Judge, would rule that prosecutors had the right to detain our members to testify before grand juries, reversing Jewish Judge Shira Scheindlin, who called it an illegitimate use of this statute.104 In October 2002 Mukasey rejected a request by Assicurazioni Generali of Italy to dismiss about a dozen lawsuits that were filed against it by Jewish holocaust survivors more than five years ago, insuring the Jews will get amounts of money they do not deserve.

THE RAHMAN SHOW TRIAL AND VERDICT

The Sheik was never extradited nor allowed to voluntarily move to Afghanistan; instead a show trial involving the Sheik and his cell was staged beginning in late January 1995 that was a total farce, since the Sheik had not lifted a finger to make the bomb.

On July 6, 1995 Lynne Stewart wrote a letter to Andrew McCarthy of the U.S. Attorney’s Office proposing that Vincent Cannistraro be allowed to testify for the defense:

103. USA v Rahman 93CR181 Doc #167104. Benjamin Weiser ”US Judge Clears Detention of Witnesses for Grand Jury” New York Times July 12, 2002 Section B, Page 4, Column 1.

He will state that for approximately 25 to 30 years, Dr. Rahman has been solely focused and worked for bringing an Islamic government to Egypt by any means necessary…in Mr. Cannistraro’s expert opinion, Dr. Rahman has never been viewed as a threat to the institutions or the U.S. government within U.S. boundaries and further, any such focus would be contrary to and dilute Dr. Rahman’s Egyptian agenda…Finally, Mr. Cannistraro will testify on the Jihad Organization as alleged in the indictment. He will state that in his professional opinion there is no information to support the contention of an International Jihad Organization under the direction of Sheik Rahman and that although there are a number of nationally diverse (Iran, Algeria, Sudan, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt etc.) based groups with shared goals and outlooks but with no single hierarchy or organizational head.

This was disrespectful to Usama bin Laden. Believe it or not from January 1987 to October 1988 Cannistraro was a Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs where he served as United States Department of Defense representative on inter-agency committees on special operations, covert action and foreign policy chaired by the White House. Cannistraro was Chief of

Operations and Analysis, Counter-terrorism Center, CIA, from October 1988 to November 1990.

THE VERDICT IN THE RAHMAN SHOW TRIAL

The verdict, handed down by a jury of three whites seven blacks and two Hispanics on October 1, 1995, came after only 36 hours of jury deliberation, highly unusual in a trial in which there are ten defendants, 200 witnesses, and 1,000 exhibits. Rahman was convicted uniformly on each and every count, even though the evidence on some, such as the count charging him with solicitation to murder Hosni Mubarak, was meager at best, even by government standards. Sheik Rahman was also convicted of soliciting an attack on American military installations. All the Brothers were found guilty of bombing conspiracy except Nosair and El-Gabrowny.

On or about January 21, 1996, a statement, issued in the name of the Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, responded to the sentence of life imprisonment imposed on Abdel Rahman by threatening, “All American interests will be legitimate targets for our struggle until the release of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and his Brothers. As the American Government has opted for open confrontation with the Islamic movement and the Islamic symbols of struggle, al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya swears by God to its irreversible vow to take an eye for an eye.”

Sheik Rahman commented on this farcical event:

And the judge granted the government all their requests and did not give the defense anything, and the judge refused every motion that was put forward by the defense. And the judge even evaded the responsibility that is internationally agreed upon. The defendants are entrusted to the judge, and the judge only gave us one day when it came to our own feast, and we had the right to four days. And he gave himself two days when it came to his own feast…And William Kunstler asked the judge to recuse himself from the case, for reasons all of us know, and Kunstler was right and the judge refused that, and actually did not allow Kunstler to be in the case. And Kunstler, after having the experience of fifty years, said that any Muslim who is facing trial in the country will not have a fair trial. And Kunstler met his God, and his words remained as a stigma against American justice…The American media, the one that is very angry, is propagating the idea of the Muslim danger, according to them all over, and it takes the front lines: Islam and the sword, the Muslim dagger, the rabid Islam, the threat of Islam to the West, Black Emmanuel. It is like an X-rated movie as a background it puts the call to prayers instead of the background music in the movie…

The President Nixon put the choices as such: We have to liquidate the Muslim current around the world, and whatever does not melt, we will liquidate and finish it…And President Nixon, irrespective of his enmity to Islam, say that the winds of change in the Muslim Orient, it has reached the stage of a typhoon that cannot be stopped. Islam came to stay, and the Qu’ran was given so that it will be the rule. The American intelligence found in Abdul Nasser their man of the future, and that horrible revolution took place in Egypt in 1952, and they promised to practice certain things, three things. First to hit the Islamic movement and to finish off the existence of Al-Azar and to guarantee the security of Israel, and officers executed that precisely. Many Muslims were killed and tens of thousands ended up in jail. In the year 1964 the CIA presented Abdul Nasser with a report there is a Muslim undercurrent and the Muslim movement should be hit again. And after that Nasser declared from the top of Lenin’s tomb that we have arrested 17,000 young men and we shall not forgive them. And President Nixon said it is incumbent on Russia and America that they should have a decisive co-operation to hit Muslim fundamentalism…

[Now] Muslim fundamentalism took the place of communism being the basic tool for violent change…And America loved Mubarak because he ruled Egypt with an iron fist, and he ruled it with a police regime, and he ruled Egypt with emergency laws, and he disgraced and insulted justice, and he referred the cases to military tribunals, and it is not courts but it is slaughterhouses. The judge in it is a butcher. They have condemned many young Muslim men to death. But God is revengeful. And America crowned all this kind of corruption by convening the Convention on Population in Egypt, to destroy the Muslim family and to spread corruption

and homosexuality and spread AIDS and encourage abortion and birth control and the destruction of the family, and all the diseases that are found in the American community. With all that I did not conspire to kill Mubarak, and I have not instigated anybody against him. And how could this happen from a person who actually calls for press conferences to attack him in the open?

America has surrounded Iraq and they have starved its Muslim people, and within forty days they killed 110,000 Iraqi soldiers. And America dropped thousands of tons of explosives on Iraq, an amount of bombs equivalent to seven and a half times the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. And they destroyed the drinking water networks. They destroyed grids and railway tracks, bombarded the cities and petroleum plants. And after that America asked Iraq to pay compensation, from $70 to $100 billion…And then America went against the Libyan people. They barricaded the country to starve them to hunger and to destroy their economy. And America also surrounded the Sudanese people and starved them, and they accused them of having harbored terrorists, and instigated its neighbors to fight with it, and send millions to the secessionists in southern Sudan in order to spread hunger. And America sent the Marines to Somali…

This allegation Jihad Group is that one that says America is kafir - It is the word of all the Muslims around the world. One thousand million Muslims around the world agree that the United States of America is a kafir country, kafir when it comes to all measures. It is kafir or disbeliever with all its organizations and its institutions. The Congress itself is kafir. The White House is kafir. The Pentagon is kafir. This courtroom is kafir. Nobody disagrees on that except those who are tails to the United States of America, like the King Hosni Mubarak, and whoever is a tail of his, too, and like the clerics, the chief, the clerics of the state and of religion. That is what the holy Qu’ran says. I did not want to mention the fact that the United States of America is a kafir country. It was thanks to the American prosecutor who actually brought this up. Number two. Why was it considered kafir? One thousand million Muslims answered that by saying America is an kafir country because its system and its society and its way of life never said there is no God but God and Mohammed is his messenger. That is what the holy Qu’ran says.105

When he was sentenced to life imprisonment Sheik Rahman did not beg for mercy:

Today when I am faced in a few minutes time with a life sentence in jail, or more than that, injustice, unlawfully, with that I am facing I am honored to join those who are in jail for God’s cause, with the martyrs and good doers and the saints. I am disagreeing with my attorney when she tries to make

105. USA v Rahman p171 - 181

the jail sentence a little less. I am refusing any mercy or pleading for having less time in jail. And when I was put in jail, since 31 months America is putting me in jail in solitary confinement. I am also under surveillance 24 hours a day and officer sees me even when I am sitting in the toilet. And this is against my beliefs. God is great and he will be revengeful. Justice is clear and injustice is flaky. And justice will continue no matter how much America resists it.106

EL-GABROWNY THREATENS MUKASEY

The jury convicted the other Brothers on counts for which there was virtually no evidence. One of the most blatant examples of this was: Defendant Ibrahim El-Gabrowny was charged with assault of a police officer. Although the officer did not appear to testify against El-Gabrowny as expected, El-Gabrowny was convicted of two counts of assault on a federal officer; assault impeding the execution of a search warrant; five counts of possession of a fraudulent foreign passport, and one count of possession with intent to transfer false identification documents.

El-Gabrowny could not be linked to the bomb – after receiving a post arrest admonition not to wash his hands, he asked to use the bathroom. He was taken to the bathroom in a holding cell, where he urinated and then plunged his hand into the urine-filled toilet bowl, covering all traces of nitrates. There were no tapes of him conspiring with Salem:

Anticev: Did you ever tape anything between you and El-Gabrowny talking about the bombs and stuff like that?

Salem: You told me don’t.

Anticev: Yeah, but maybe you did it on your own anyway. You have all the machinery there to do it.

Salem: I know, but since you told me don’t, I didn’t.

At his sentencing El-Gabrowny told this to Judge Mukasey:

Neither me or the people in the government or you or the judges in that appeal court would be able to make it the historical record of staying in this life forever. Some day, I will pass away the same to you and them. When you move to the other side, none of us will carry his title that he had in this world. I would like you now to make believe that me and you are standing in front of Allah. You are no judge anymore. I’m not a defendant anymore. I’m raising my claim that the government used you to oppress me and I will have my record with my hand to support my claim. I don’t mean the record which the stenographer writes. I would ask for the record

106. USA v Rahman TT 162

of your thoughts, any phone calls, any conversation, any idea came to your mind since 1993 to today. I will face you with that. I claim my innocence now and I will claim my innocence in front of Allah. Do you think you have answers for all my questions in the other court? Remember, you’re not going to be a judge like now. You are not going to have the same power like what you have now. You have been repeating speculations. I can prove to you that that is wrong.

You can get away with it now. What you are going to do in the other court Mr. McCarthy and the others will not be with you in the other court. And even if they are going to go there, they are not going to be able to support you. Not concerning about me, Judge, concerning about yourself. Imagine yourself over there in the other court. I am raising my claim, concern about the consequences of whatever being -- whatever you have been doing for me. I’ve been oppressed through this trial. None of these speculations is right. I can prove it. You don’t give me a chance. None of this allegations is right, even the assault. I have no role in any criminal activities whatsoever. I never shared with anybody any criminal agreement whatsoever. I was total political sacrifice in this case. I’m totally innocent. I’m claiming it now. I will claim it forever. That’s it.

Mr. Ricco interjected:

Judge, may I say one thing? Judge, for five years, I’ve represented Mr. El-Gabrowny. I know that the Court has to impose sentence, and the Court is also human. Mr. El-Gabrowny expresses himself oftentimes in a way of a person who deeply believes in his religion. So, on his behalf, I want the Court to know that his speech is not a threat against Your Honor.107

Defendant Victor Alvarez was shown by defense experts to be borderline retarded; strong evidence existed in his favor, which was not rebutted by the government. Alvarez was, nonetheless, was convicted of facilitating the bombing conspiracy by shipping a firearm in interstate commerce and using and carrying a firearm in relation to a crime of violence, and attempted bombing.

All the defendants were convicted of seditious conspiracy; additionally Hampton-El, Amir Abdelgani, Fadil Abdelgani, Fares Khallafalla, Elhassan, and Mohammed Saleh were convicted of attempted bombing. Hampton-El’s108 wife has started a campaign to free her husband in which she states that he is related to Fred Hampton, a Black Panther assassinated by the Chicago Police Department. Hampton’s son, Fred Hampton Jr. was sentenced to 18 years in prison for firebombing two Korean Stores during the height of the Rodney King rebellion and released in 2001.

107. United States Court of Appeal Southern District NY 00-01401108. Hampton-El #34854-054 USP Florence, POB 7500, 5880 State Highway 67 South Florence Co 81226. Dr. Abdur Rashid will be free, the stuggle continues, victory or paradise, freedom or death!

The Justice Department, unhappy with the verdict of the Brooklyn jury in case of the assassination of Rabbi Kahane, convicted El-Sayyid Nosair of two counts of attempted murder and one count of murder in furtherance of a racketeering enterprise; attempted murder of a federal officer; three counts of use of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence; possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

The United States Attorney’s Office claimed that in an August 3, 1993 article in the New York Post Nosair blamed Rahman for the Kahane assassination, but later retracted this statement. An examination of this article proved this was untrue, however, Nosair did say that the World Trade Center and Bridge and Tunnel operations would not have been carried out without “the blessing” of the Sheik.

Nosair hated the Jews and he believed: “We are from the east side of the river; they are from the west side of the river. We will kill all of the Jews.”109 After Nosair was thrown in the “hole” after the September 11 th attack he softened up considerably. In August 2002 he wrote, “The formation of the federal state of Abraham in Palestine is the ‘only’ just and proper way to fix the crisis. It is just for all the Israelis as well as the Arab Palestinians. I call it the federal State of Abraham since Abraham is the father of both Israelis and Arabs, and for religious reasons for all the Jews, Christians and Muslims.” Nosair, however, also wrote, “There are two kinds of ‘terrorism’. One is ‘Good Terrorism’ and the other is ‘evil terrorism.’ The later comes by those who break the law (of justice) for their unlawful aims. But the first; (Good Terrorism) is used against those who violate it.”110

HAGGAG: DID TIME TO SPY ON THE BROTHERS

Abdo Haggag did not immediately surface as an Egyptian intelligence agent. He cover was deep and he spent several months in a Federal detention facility in Manhattan – MCC. Ultimately he received a reduced sentence of time served. Haggag and his family were entered into the witness protection program. Aside from committing arson, Abdo Haggag worked hard to win the trust of Sheik Rahman. When the Sheik was under house arrest in Egypt, Haggag sent him stun guns to him to be used in an escape attempt. Haggag agreed that Mubarak ought to be killed and suggested that Sheik Rahman fax an order so stating to the Egyptian military. He later helped obtain a false divorce certificate for the Sheik to help him avoid the immigration consequences of his bigamy. Haggag found the Sheik an apartment next door to his own at 115 Fairview Avenue in Jersey City. He arranged for the Sheik’s marriage to an American citizen in case the Sheik encountered trouble obtaining a Green Card. He corresponded with Hassan al-Turabi, the former strongman of the Sudan. In order to win the trust of Siddig Ali Haggag agreed with him that killing Senator D’Amato and Congressman Schumer was a good idea and did not report this plot to the authorities. He gave Siddig Ali a book so that Siddig Ali might learn to construct letter bombs to be used against Jewish targets. Then he accused Siddig Ali of being an informant putting Siddig Ali’s life in danger.

109. USA v Rahman p11460110. Nosair v. USA Louisiana Western Federal District Court 02-Civ-1806

Abdo Haggag was truly a mole. During the time that Haggag knew Siddig Ali was plotting to kill Mubarak in New York City, he refused to co-operate with the FBI. Later, he lied to the United States Government about his relationship with Egyptian intelligence and falsely denied he received payment from that intelligence service. He was an illegal immigration overstay, he did not report all of his income while working in the restaurant business for ten years and he engaged in automobile insurance fraud. He didn’t even pay the $2500 fine to which he had been sentenced when he testified.111 But all this was forgiven as being “part of his cover” when he agreed to snitch not only for Egypt but for America!

On the other hand, there was something not quite Halal about this man. Haggag showed great enmity for Sheik Rahman and this should have been a clue to his schizophrenic personality. When Siddig Ali visited a mosque in Queens frequented by Haggag he was told: “Your Sheik is a CIA man and you are an FBI one.” Siddig Ali told Salem: “

By Allah the Great all this happened. What is worse is that Haggag hurts the Sheik. I do not, and I say it out loud and I don’t care if someone doesn’t like it, let who ever doesn’t like it drink the saltiest water I don’t like anyone to touch this man. Haggag is the intelligent guy who will get people into trouble. Okay, we are all Brothers, we can have a fight and be fine again, but what about his man, we value and count each day of his life, he is second to none and you want to creep on his shoulder? Pardon me, this is to say, like he creates issues…Sheik Rahman’s problem is his frankness - the Sheik is a truthful person. If he tries to prove one way or the other that the Sheik is otherwise…

Salem interjected:

I think he wrote a book, Brother. You know what he named it? The Fake and Profanity in Sheik Rahman’s Personality.” Yes, by Allah, he finished one third of it. He says the Sheik is a hypocrite, he lies…I am talking now behind his back but I am ready to face him when we sit together. Bombs will explode. How can you say that about the Sheik then polish the apple and tell him ‘We want to do some heroic act but stay away from this bad man, that is Siddig. We are heroes.’ You draw near to him at the same time you write a book about him….

SIDDIG CO-OPERATES

Before he was arrested Ibrahim Siddig Ali said,

Whoever works for the FBI should be killed. Whoever I find out that he works with the FBI against us, by God, I will kill him, by God I will kill him with my hands.” He also proclaimed his willingness to die for Allah

111. USA v Rahman McCarthy to Muk 6.17.98

[subhanahu wa ta’ala] and when it was pointed out that the U.N. mission might be a suicide attack he said, “We say that we are ready to sacrifice anything. We enter and don’t get out.112

Siddig predicted the Mubarak mission might entail suicide since there would be a high likelihood the conspirators would be killed since the area around the hotel would be filled with law enforcement and other security personnel. After his arrest Siddig Ali declared his innocence before United States District Court Judge Michael Mukasey, and he said he intended to retain attorney William Kunstler. Then he made this statement that was widely quoted: “Of course, don’t forget God said in the Qu’ran, in times like this, everything is lawful to the Muslim, their money, their women, their honors, everything. I give you as example Mubarak, a tyrant. He is killing people, good Muslims. We’ll be called sinners in the eyes of God if we don’t do something about it...kuffar must be killed...and the Muslim when he dies it is the way to heaven. He becomes a Shaheed. A Muslim will never go to hell by killing a kafir.”

Siddig Ali did in fact retain the team of Kunstler and Kuby as did Ibrahim El-Gabrowny and Sheik Rahman, however Judge Mukasey said it would be a conflict of interest for the two to represent all three and designated El-Gabrowny and Siddig Ali as their clients.

Beware of those who loudly boast of their courage: in February 1995 Siddig Ali dropped Kunstler and Kuby as his attorney and pleaded guilty to all charges against him for his role in a plot to bomb New York City landmarks and to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 1993. As a result of this Mukasey barred them from representing El-Gabrowny citing a conflict of interest because they had represented Siddig. Kunstler and Kuby the only Jews whose deviousness could have saved the Sheik, were thrown off the case by an even more devious Jew.113

It would be Siddig’s testimony that helped prosecutors convict the others for their heroic roles in our noble undertaking, by corroborating that of Salem and Haggag. In order to get a lesser sentence Siddig would have sworn to Federal prosecutors that we were planning to destroy our own mosques! He was a habitual liar who said he flew out to Chicago and that he and another person killed a man by the name of Francis Dane, yet Francis Dane was alive and well. Salem was questioned about this:

Q. He said that during the assassination of Francis Dane he had used a machine gun. Do you recall that?

A. Yes, he said that.

Q. As you sit here today, do you know whether or not Francis Dane is still alive?

A. I don’t know who is Francis Dane, ma’am.112. Tape recorded conversation with Emad Salem May 7, 1993.113. Joseph P. Fried “Kunstler, in a Lesser Role, Has His Day at Terror Trial” New York Times July 12, 1995.

Q. Isn’t it a fact that he said to you that he could get a -- that he used a silencer on a machine gun?

A. I don’t think that he said that.

Q. And you told him: I looked in the newspaper, I didn’t see anything about it. And he went on to tell you: Well, they hushed it up and they said that his family killed him. Correct?

A. What you saying, it’s not what I had said. He didn’t say his family killed him. That’s not happened, ma’am, or did not happen.

Q. He went on to say that they had, that the papers had said that the political opposition or his family had been accused of killing him, right? But Siddig said it was actually him who had done it, right? Siddig said it was he that had done the assassination. Did you believe him?

A. Absolutely.

Q. He said Boom, boom, boom, boom, and two in the driver and four in him. Meaning he shot Francis Dane and his driver, correct? And you say: Who was the shooter? And he says: A Brother. You say: Yes, God bless?

A. Yes, ma’am.114

This note was found at our Dona Josefa safehouse in Manila – “To: Brother Mohammad Alsiddiqi. We are facing a lot of problems because of you. Fear Allah, Mr. Siddiqi, there is a day of judgment. You will be asked, if you are very busy with something more important, don’t give promises to other people. See you in the Day of Judgment. Still waiting, Khalid Shaikh, and Bojenga.”

If you have listened carefully to my report on this attempted military activity against Jews and Crusaders bridges and tunnels, Siddig Ali was the leader of the cell, co-coordinated most of the participants and planned the attack, yet, in return for becoming a snitch, he received the lightest sentence.

RAHMANS UNINDICTED CO-CONSPIRATORS

The United States, dissatisfied with having imprisoned many of our soldiers and our spiritual guide, issued a blacklist of over one hundred and seventy “co-conspirators” in the Trade Center bombing.115 The Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List was 114. USA v Rahman TT 6808115

. Feb. 2, 1995. Co-Conspirators’ List in the case of USA v Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman. (S5) 93 Cr.181 (MBM). Mary Jo White, US Attorney Signed by Andrew C. McCarthy, Assistant US Attorney 1 Ahmed Muhammad Aasran 2. Mohammed Yousef Abbas 3. Jamal Abdelgani 4. Mohammed Hassan Abdou 5. Emad Abdou 6. Amad Elden Abdou 7. Abdalhele A. Abwalannen 8. Dawud Adib 9. Hosni Ahmed 10. Mohssen Ahmed 11. Nasser Al Din Alamani 12. Majdi Alghamrawi 13. Hekmat Alhadashek 14. Abd Al Hafez Mustafa Ali 15. Atif Ahmed Ali 16. Hamdi Ali 17. Samy Ali 18. Sharif Ali 19. Mike Alkam 20. Bilal Alkasi 21. Hassan

denounced as neo-McCarthyism, guilt by association, by the Muslim Public Affairs Council: “Christians are not treated in this manner because of a few who bomb abortion clinics or assassinate physicians who perform abortion, and Jews are not associated with the extremist behavior of the Jewish Defense League. The premature and unwise step in releasing names as a tactic of combating terrorism exposes the lack of effective measures in the policy on terrorism.” Who ever heard of a criminal indictment with 170 co-conspirators? In reality, had the FBI and CIA indefinitely detained, arrested or even thoroughly investigated the Brothers on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List it would have been very difficult, if not impossible for al-Qaeda to resume its operations. But America’s attention was focused on the War on Drugs, not the War on so-called Terror. Usama bin Laden’s name was on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List but was overlooked; his name surfaced only once during the trial of Sheik Rahman when defense witness Khaled Ibrahim, an Egyptian born Islamic who worked at the Al-Kifah Refugee Center was asked:

Q. Are you familiar with the person by the name of Osam Ben Laden, O-s-a-m B-e-n L-a-d-e-n?

A. Yes.

Q. Have you ever met him?

A. No.

Q. Have you ever passed messages from Osam Ben Laden to anyone else?

Karim Allah 22. Abu Abdullah 23. Othman Abdullah 24. Abu Abdulla Alnagar 25. Raef Alwishe 26. Saleem Amin 27. Hiam Arazy 28. Mustafa Assad (Boriqua) 29. Moneeb Ashraf 30. Mohammed Atiyah 31. Sami Atiya 32. Amin Awad 33. Mona Awad 34. Abdellah Azzam 35. Mohammed Azzam 36. Ahab Ashraf Abdul Azziz 37. Hasab el Rasoul Mohamed Babiker 38. Abdul Basir (Tito) 39. Ahmed Bilal 40. Adnan Constantine 41. Fawaz Damra 42. Ahmed Al Dalta Daota 43. Halim Abul Efni 44. Moustafa Elaebrak 45. Mahmud Elder 46. Nimmer Elder 47. Ahmed Mansour El-Eslah 48. Ali El-Gabrowny 49. Mohammed El-Gabrowny 50. Ahmed Elganainy 51. Moustafa Mohamed Elnore 52. Ali Al Faqueer 53. Shawki Abd Al Fariz 54. Umar Faruqq 55. Abu Al Walid Gizeh 56. Abdel Hafez 57. Sahied Hahmad 58. Mohamed Ahmed Al Haj 59. Isam Abdul Hakim 60. Saad Hanafi 61. Esteshamel Haque 62. Quazi Haque 63. Hameed LNU (In April 2004 Moinuddeen Ahmed Hameed, 40, admitted conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business in New Jersey. He was charged after FBI agents arrested suspected UK arms dealer Hemant Lakhani in New Jersey for allegedly trying to sell the missiles that he tried to obtain from the Russians. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3645113.stm) 64. Hesham El Hamamey 65. Hammid Hammid 66. Jack Hamrick 67. Mohammed Al Hanooti 68. Fathy M. Hassan 69. Sabri Hassan (John Kinard) 70. Ibrahim Higazi 71. Nasser Homosany 72. Khalid LNU 73. Alaa Ibrahim 74. Khalid Ibrahim 75. Mamdouh Ibrahim 76. Muhammad Shawqi Islambouli 77. Abdel Rahman Jafar 78. Al Sayyid Sami Jamal 79. Mahir Al Jamal 80. Kamal Al Jayh 81. Ali Abdul Kareem 82. Ahmed Kazalek 83. Abdel Khalek 84. Walid Khalid 85. Yah Yah Ibn Khalid 86. Muhammed Khalifa 87. Ashraq Kahlil 88. Samir Khalil 89. Abd Al Khaliq 90. Atif Mahmood Khan 91. Ahmed Khatteria 92. Tareq Khatteria 93. Lawrence L. Khidr 94. Y'aqub Kursam 95. Osama Bin Ladin (sic) 96. Khalil Lahoud 97. Yousef Maani 98. Mokhtar Mahmoud 99. Adel Mahroud 100. Hamam Sayeed Mahseen 101. Ahmed Abd Al Majeed 102. Abd Al Manam 103. Abd Al Halimi Mansour 104. Said Mansour 105. Hassan El Mansouri 106. Safullah McNeil 107. Ahmed Megali 108. Mohamed Mehdi 109. Ali A. Mohamed 110. Arioua Mostafa 111. Adel Said Mohammed 112. Ashraf Mohammed 113. Mouaki Benani Mohammed 114. Mohmoud Mohmoud 115. Hassan Mousa 116. Mohammed Mousa 117. Sami Mousa118. Ahmed H. Moustafa 119. Assan Muhammad 120. Hanif Muhammad (Abu Hanif) 121. Moustafa Muhammad 122. Ahmed Muneer 123. Daniel Murteza 124. Raymond Murteza 125. Hamdi Musa 126. Omar Mohammed Musa 127. Majed Mustafa 128. Adel El Nasser 129. Mustafa Dauod Mustafa Nassar 130. Walid Abu Al-Noor (Waleed A. Noor) 131. Kamal Muhamad Omar 132. Bilal Phillips 133. Fatahi Qoura 134. Nabig Ragab 135. Mikial Abdur Rahim (Richard Smith) 136. Nabir Abu Abd Al Rakhi 137. Frank Ramos 138. Abu Obaida Rouas 139. Yehyeh Sabor 140. Hussein Saffan 141. Mustafa Saif 142. Saifuldin 143. Tharwat Saleh 144. Tariq Mustafa Salem 145. Muhammad Samir 146. Ahmed Samy (Samy Mohammed Ali) 147. Ahmed Abdel Sattar 148. Sabir Shakir 149. Mustafa Shalabi 150. Mustafa Al Shareef 151. Hisham Al-Shihuri 152. Ali El Shinawi 153. Osama El Shinawi 154. Kelvin Smith 155. Abu Suliman 156. Yahya Abu Ubaidah 157. Abdul Wahhab 158. Sirraj Wahhaj 159. Sudanese Mission to the United Nations 160. Abdul Wali 161. Madha Warda 162. Seraj LNU 163. Shawkat M. Wehidy 164. Khalid Younis 165. Nasser Younis 166. Ahmed Yousef 167. Mahmud Yousef 168. Yousef Bin Yousef 169. Zakariah 170. Badre Zhony 171. Ahmed Zidan

A. No.

Usama bin Laden was also found on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List under his nom de guerre “Abu Abdullah” which would still be utilized: When Heni Lased (left) was arrested in Germany a major part of the evidence came from wiretaps made by Italian police in Milan during which Heni Lased and his associates discussed “a suffocating liquid that kills people efficiently.” Heni Lased wanted to “die a Shaheed”, while using poison gas to suffocate worshippers in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in

Paris. The gas was to have been released with the help of a rudimentary bomb made from a converted pressure cooker. In another conversation, months before the September 11th Victory Heni Lased hinted that the “Sheik Abu Abdullah” was planning a major attack: “He is planning something because he has wished for a goal and he wants to carry it out. It is not a small thing.”116

On November 29, 2001 Italian investigators shut down the Milan-based Islamic Cultural Center that follows the teachings of Omar Abdul Rahman and is al-Qaeda's logistical center for European operations. The Center's key financial supporter, Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, a wealthy businessman and Kuwait's former honorary consul in Milan, was a Director of Al Taqwa Trust. The United States Treasury Department knew for many years that Al Taqwa has long acted as a financial adviser to Usama bin Laden. But only after the September 11th Victory of Allah, did Bush the Younger publicly say: “Al Taqwa is an association of offshore banks and financial management firms that have helped al-Qaeda shift money around the world.” If Jamie Gorelick had not issued the 1996 memo quashing any pro-active investigation of Gama’a al-Islamiyya’s Brooklyn / Jersey City cell the FBI’s Usama bin Laden Squad might have been formed much earlier in the game and our plans thwarted.

NOUR AND EL-ATRISS

Waleed Abouel Nour was on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List. Waleed Nour and Egyptian Mohamed el-Atriss were incorporators, registered agents and directors of Sphinx Trading Company located at 2828 Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City that was founded in 1987. Sphinx Trading provided check cashing, mailbox services and international wiring services for the Gama’a al-Islamiyya’s Brooklyn / Jersey City cell. Brother Nosair had a mailbox there. Siddig Ali Siddig’s translation service

was located at Box 161 2823117 Kennedy Boulevard. El-Atriss claimed he met Nour while both were cab drivers in Newark, New Jersey and not through an Islamist network. Sphinx Trading was next door to the Afghan Refugee Services Center, a front

116. John Miller “The Milan Connection” ABC News, November 1, 2002. On September 4, 2001, pictures of the World Trade Center were saved as temporary files on one of the computers at the Via Quaranta Mosque in Milan. Alexandra Salomon ABC News, Rome May 8, 2003.117. A typographical error as there is no maildrop at that address.

group for Gama’a al-Islamiyya’s Brooklyn / Jersey City cell and the Al-Salaam Mosque, where Sheik Rahman preached. These outposts of Islamism were both located at 2824 Kennedy Boulevard.

Mohamed el-Atriss also ran a fake-document mill called All Services Plus on Paterson, New Jersey's Market Street that sold false identification papers to illegal immigrants and false international drivers licenses. El-Atriss provided September 11th

Shaheeds Abdulaziz Alomari Khalid al-Midhar with some bogus identification. The FBI believed he did so unwittingly. Maybe he did

but the Brothers went to Paterson for a specific reason, namely because they were aware of el-Atriss’ connection to what was left of the Gama’a al-Islamiyya’s Brooklyn / Jersey City.

When New Jersey authorities raided Mohamed al-Atriss’ operation in July 2001 he fled to Egypt but returned to the United States August 20, 2001 and was released on bail and went back in business. When the Paterson Police learned that documents from All Services Plus, El-Atriss' company, were uncovered at an apartment where some of the September 11th Shaheeds lived, the local police obtained search warrants for his al-Atriss’ home and business. He initially denied selling to the hijackers, but when further confronted apparently agreed after a download of the names of the September 11 th

Shaheeds was found in his office with the names he sold the ID to underlined. Detective Ernst was a major witness against al-Atriss:

We initially started to investigate Sphinx Trading Company as a potential money laundering operation. We identified ties to Middle Eastern countries, specifically Egypt and Saudi Arabia. We were asked to not pursue the investigation any further by a specific federal agency, who indicated to us that they had interest in that as well. We began to investigate -- we did a check through the Federal HIDTA System, which is a drug enforcement agency, intelligence system. They work with an intelligence gathering system called the EPIC System, which is the El Paso Information Center that provides intelligence to federal authorities. Through the EPIC System they classify, they being the FBI and U.S. Customs in a joint task force, have classified Waleed Abouel Nour, as a terrorist. When I specifically asked the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force to confirm that, they indicated to me that they would have to get back to me on that. And it's been several months and I haven't heard. But the initial indication from the EPIC System was that the FBI classified his partner in this incorporation as a terrorist. Mr. El-Atriss is listed on the bank records as the principal of the company. Also of interest, the location Sphinx Trading Company, 2828 Kennedy Boulevard is also red flagged by the FBI as a known location that was involved in the first bombing of the World Trade Center with the Blind Sheik Rahman. He had received mail at that location. And it was also indicated to me by the FBI that several of the

hijackers involved in the September 11th Events also had mailboxes at that location.

After this raid, the FBI questioned El-Atriss on September 19, 2001. On November 19, 2002 a secret bail hearing was conducted to consider evidence against el-Atriss in order to determine if his bail should be raised or revoked. The hearing excluded the suspect and his lawyer because of National Security concerns. After this hearing Superior Court Judge Marilyn Clark doubled his bail to $500,000 after finding out that there was substantial evidence that el-Atriss was connected to the Sphinx check cashing company with large amounts of cash flowing through it, and could conceivably use this money to finance life as a fugitive. At least that was what she wrote in her ruling. Her real reason for raising the bail was Nour. In February 2002 Mohamed el-Atriss pleaded guilty to one count of selling simulated documents and was released from jail on $50,000 bail pending sentencing. Originally el-Atriss had been charged with racketeering and a number of counts of selling false documents. El-Atriss had spent six months in prison then had received only three years probation.

WHEN DID AL-ATRISS BECOME A FBI INFORMANT?

When he was first arrested he told an unnamed witness that he felt his family was in grave danger in the United States. Was he a FBI informant prior to September 11th who intentionally withheld information from the Bureau because he was protecting an operation yet another triple agent? During his bail hearing the question arose as to when he first made contact with the FBI as it was unusual for local authorities to beat the federal authorities to a case like this one.

THE COURT: It was my impression that the FBI had gone to him, not him going to the FBI. As far as your information is concerned what is your opinion, your best-informed opinion at this point as to who made the contact first?

MR. BRIZEK: It's impossible for me to determine. There has been speculation one-way or the other, but it's merely speculation. The only testimony that there is on the subject comes from Detective Ernst; and the discussion I had with the investigator that I referred to that took place yesterday was a discussion with someone who was not privy to the kind of details that Detective Ernst described during the course of his testimony.

THE COURT: Based upon that is it fair to say that your information seems to indicate that the FBI was led to Mr. El-Atriss following the execution of search warrants which uncovered documents?

MR. BRIZEK: That's what Detective Ernst says and that's what I expect occurred. One of the items in Detective Ernst’s testimony dealt with the downloading of a list of names, which downloading apparently occurred, according to Detective Ernst's testimony, before Mr. El-Atriss’ initial

contact with federal authorities, and in that downloaded list of names he underlined a few names, among whom were hijackers to whom he sold identification. So whether that suggests that Mr. El-Atriss’ then reached out to federal authorities or they had reached out to him without regard to what he had done with this downloaded information is simply unknown to me…[I do know that] seized in a search warrant and subsequently provided to the FBI after the service of the search warrant we uncovered a list of names that were downloaded from a public web site on the Internet in his desk in his office at 152 Market Street found there during the execution of the search warrant. The list is a list of the hijackers as identified.

THE COURT: And this document was downloaded on September 15, 2001. And are there particular hijackers' names that Mr. El-Atriss appears to have zeroed in on and taken note of?

MR. BRIZEK: Well, yeah. This is a complete listing of the 19 hijackers. And there are specific names that are underlined. One specifically is circled and that's Khalid Al-Midhar. THE COURT: Notwithstanding who made the first contact, it appears that the evidence, if true, indicates he continued to actively sell phony documents to people who had come into his business, is that correct, up until his arrest?

MR. BRIZEK: Yes. We have the contact by the federal authorities occurring shortly after September 11th, and without abating from that point until the time the search warrant is executed in July 2002, his business of selling the so-called international driver licenses and other forms of identification continued. Detective Ernst indicated that Mr. El-Atriss did, in fact, admit to having sold documents to at least two of the hijackers. I have had a subsequent discussion with an investigator who described to me in further detail, although he was somewhat sketchy about what had actually occurred because he was not the prime mover in this operation. He described to me that a week after the September 11th incident he, together with a federal agent, visited Mr. El-Atriss' office. Apparently there had been a prior arrangement for that visit to take place. Who initiated the contact between the federal authorities and Mr. El-Atriss is not clear to me. In any event, the investigator and the federal agent went to Mr. El-Atriss' office, and he co-operated by providing the applications that were submitted by the hijackers. I believe he also turned over a photograph that was used in the preparation of one of the documents and it appeared, from my understanding of the investigator's discussion with me, to have co-operated with respect to his contact with those hijackers in connection with the sale of these documents. The details beyond that are not known to me. I am making efforts to follow-up on what I just learned yesterday

from this particular investigator to see if I can get reports or other information that will fully flush out the nature and extent of Mr. El-Atriss' co-operation in this connection. There is another matter that may have involved Mr. El-Atriss' co-operation with federal authorities, and this is extremely sketchy. Through the investigation of this matter it became known to the Passaic County Prosecutor's Office that Mr. El-Atriss was involved in an investigation relating to the possible sale of stinger missiles by certain individuals in Jersey City, I believe, and was in a position to co-operate in an effort to get to the bottom of that potentially dangerous situation. I'm very vague in describing what the nature of that investigation was and Mr. El-Atriss' possible participation and co-operation in it because I have no further details. This is something that was learned in passing over the last several weeks and it has not been really possible to get further information with respect to this possible co-operation as well. It was something someone alluded to which was not elaborated upon to any great extent.

THE COURT: Okay. All right. So are you indicating that to date this was not articulated simply because you do not know –

MR. BRIZEK: I do not know. It's fair to say that federal authorities were in contact with Mr. El-Atriss at least beginning shortly after the September 11th incident, and it appears that there was some contact between Mr. El-Atriss and federal authorities between that time and the time of the execution of the search warrant by the Sheriff's Department on July 31, 2002. Details regarding that contact, the nature and quality of any relationship that may have developed between Mr. El-Atriss and federal authorities is really not known to me. All right.

THE COURT: Mr. Brizek, based upon the totality of information that you have given me, I believe that there has been some sense during these hearings, although not articulated, that Mr. El-Atriss may, and I underline may, have had some relationship at some point with the FBI. If, in fact, he did, in the interest of completeness and making sure that I know all relevant information, I would want to know that. I realize you may not be sure. You may only be speculating yourself. But I would like to hear your thoughts on that. I realize that there has been some tension between the federal authorities and the State authorities and that you have said before on the record that you are not being given a lot of information…

MR. BRIZEK: The FBI alleged to the U.S. Attorney that we had impeded an investigation that we had interfered with an ongoing FBI investigation. Even though up to that point we had no indication that they were going to pursue any charges. On the contrary they indicated to us that they were not going to pursue any charges. And they really had no further interest in All Services Plus.

THE COURT: Did you ever receive any instructions from the FBI or U.S. Attorney's Office not to proceed any further with any of the information that you had developed and placed on the record today?

MR. BRIZEK: Subsequent to the execution of the search warrant, yes, we did.

THE COURT: Could you just describe the manner of this communication?

MR. BRIZEK: We met at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark with representatives from the Joint Terrorism Task Force, specifically Kevin Klein from the Joint Terrorism Task Force, Chris Setabrino (phonetic) from the Joint Terrorism Task Force, myself, Chief Coberetto (phonetic) from my department, Lieutenant Robert Weston and Assistant U.S. Attorney -- Stu Radnor. At which time we were told not to proceed with any of the investigations that had any ties at all to Mohamed El-Atriss until we got clearance from the -- from the FBI.

THE COURT: And based upon this communication that was -- that you received from the U.S. Attorney's Office, did you honor their request up to this point?

MR. BRIZEK: Yes, we did. We were -- we were prepared to execute additional search warrants. We had identified other locations where they were performing basically or provided the same services to the community, fictitious documentation, I.D. cards. We had reason to suspect that some of the people involved in these -- involved at these locations might have ties to some of the other things we uncovered in Mohamed el-Atriss’ office.118

MUSTAFA ELNORE

On July 7, 1999, Mustafa Elnore, another Brother whose name appeared on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List, was arrested on charges of lying before a federal grand jury investigating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1990 assassination of Kahane, and related violent activities in the United States. A ten-count indictment charged Mustafa Elnore with providing false testimony concerning his attendance at firearms training and participation in bomb making activities while a member of the Al-Salaam Mosque.119 The FBI believed Elnore was a link between Sheikh Rahman and Usama bin Laden.120 It took almost five years, and two explosions

118. Superior Court of New Jersey Passaic County Courthouse 03-01-95-A119. USDC SDNY 99CR0617120. Colum Lynch and Vernon Loeb “Bin Laden's Network: Terror Conspiracy or Loose Alliance?” Washington Post August 1, 1999; Page A01. http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/bincon.htmhttp://www.terrorismcentral.com/Library/Incidents/USEmbassyKenyaBombing/Indictment/Count287-308.html

in East Africa, for the FBI to arrest Mustafa Elnore, who was also an unindicted co-conspirator in the Embassy bombings.121

Others on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List were arrested quicker. Abu Obaida Rouas was taken into custody on February 22, 1995. Even though he was dead, Sheik Abdallah Azzam was on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List. We believe that [Sami] Hosni Ahmed was arrested then killed in his homeland of Egypt because he appeared on this Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List.122

IMAMS ON THE RAHMAN UNINDICTED CO-CONSPIRATOR LIST

Imam Dawud Adib, who worked for the New Jersey Department of Correction as a chaplain at Northern State Prison was on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List 123 as was Imam Sirraj Wahhaj (also spelled Siraj Wahhaj) of the Al-Taqwah Mosque. In 1991 Wahhaj, a CAIR advisor recited an invocation (opening prayer) in front of the United States House of Representatives. He was the first Muslim to do so. Imam Siraj Wahhaj is one of the most revered Muslim leaders in America. Imam Wahhaj had met often with

Mayor Dinkins of New York City. He has not been co-opted and not only calls for replacing the evil U.S. government with a caliphate, but served as a character witness for Sheik Abdel Rahman and Hampton-El at their landmark trial, and also testified for the defense at the African Embassy bombing trial.124 Members of the Al-Taqwah Mosque provided security for the Brothers during the trial of Nosair.

“The Al-Taqwah Mosque is an inner city, it’s in Bedford-Sty,” said Wahhaj

A few years ago it was surrounded by 15 crack houses, but we were fortunate enough working with the authorities to get rid of those drug houses, so now it’s a residential business area. I graduated from the High School of Music And Art, seems like a thousand years ago. I went to New York University where I studied math education. In 1978 I went to a training program at the University of Saudi Arabia in Mecca, studied Islamic studies. I’ve been the Imam of this particular Masjid since 1980. In 1987 Louis Farrakhan made some statements that were considered to be very negative to the Jewish community. The Jewish community was very angry and threatened to blow up any building that this particular minister was speaking at. Nobody talked about freedom of speech at that particular time. I don’t see the press saying that Salman Rushdie offends Muslims, or that he made some very profound (sic) statements against the religion of Islam, against the prophets.125

121. USDC SDNY 98 CR 1023 LBS122. “Egypt human rights report, Egypt Culture,” ArabicNews.com March 16, 2001.http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/010316/2001031631.html123. US District Court for State of New Jersey, Newark, New Jersey Hall v Adib 93Civil01722124. Daniel Pipes National Review February 21, 2000 “In Muslim America: A Presence and a Challenge.”http://www.danielpipes.org/article/329125. Newsday February 23, 1989.

SIRAJ WAHHAJ

Imam Sirraj Wahhaj is the Vice president of the Islamic Society of North America. The Islamic Society of North America is linked to Leesburg’s Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences that trains Muslim clerics, including those who will serve in the U.S. military.126 At least nine of the 14 chaplains in the U.S. military received their religious training from this institution. The Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences was founded by Taha Jabir Al-Awani and is its president. Taha Jabir Al-Awani is also president of the Fiqh Council of North America. The Fiqh Council of North America evolved from Religious Affairs Committee of Islamic Society of North America after the founding of the Islamic Society of North America in 1980. We are one entity under the aegis of Islam. Taha Jabir Al-Awani was an unindicted co-conspirator of Professor Sami Amin Al-Arian.127 A letter dated November 6, 1992, from Taha Jabir Al-Awani that was seized by the FBI, made reference to the following Brothers:

1. Sami Al-Arian, head of the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad in America.

2. Dr. Khalil Shiqaqi, a prominent Palestinian sociologist with a degree from Columbia University and co-founder of Al-Arian’s World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), a front for Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

3. Bashir Musa Mohammed Nafi, a leading member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad responsible for much of its ideology. Nafi was close with our Syrian Brothers and served as a communication link to them, however, he was deported from the United States to England in 1996. Nafi became a professor of Islamic

studies at Birkbeck, University of London, and was finally accused by America in February 2003 of being a leader of Islamic Jihad. The U.S. has charged Nafi with racketeering, however the status of the proceedings remains unclear.

4. Ramadan Abdullah Shallah a resident of Damascus, Syria, and Secretary General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad since October 1995 and a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad's Shura Council.

5. Abd Al Aziz Awda, who is a founder and spiritual leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.128

126. Phillip Kurata “Islamic Leaders Issue Fatwa on U.S. Muslim Soldiers Fighting Terrorists U.S. Muslim soldiers need to defend

their country and combat terrorism.” US Department of State Press Release October 16, 2001.http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/01101611.htm127. Washington Post September 25, 2003.128. http://reports.tbo.com/reports/alarian/ Tampa Bay on Line.

Taha Jabir Al-Awani wrote that these scholars were an extension of his group and promised to send the remainder of the money he had previously pledged to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Taha Jabir Al-Awani instructed Dr. Sami Al-Arian that he could use the money regardless of the party or the façade for which the money was designated.

The Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, a truly prestigious institution, issued this fatwa in conjunction with the Fiqh Council of North America regarding Muslim service in the American military: “We abide by every law of this country except those laws that are contradictory to Islamic law...”129 but deserves only partial credit for this fatwa: It was co-authored by Mohammad Al-Hanooti,130 another of Sheik Rahman’s unindicted co-conspirators, and a member of the Fiqh Council of North America. In July 2002 the FBI leaked a document to the press that called Al-Hanooti a big supporter of Hamas who raised more than $6 million for the group. The document reported Al-Hanooti took part in a three-day meeting in 1993 designed to devise ways to defeat the so-called Oslo Accords. The FBI bugged the meeting but, of course, the fools were afraid to act. “It was mentioned that the United States provided them with a secure, legal base from which to operate,” the FBI report stated. Al-Hanooti is now the Imam of the Islamic Center of the Capital District near Albany.131

Federal Agents raided both the Fiqh Council of North America and the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences claiming they were searching for evidence of money laundering and tax evasion as well as possible ties to a worldwide private financial empire that Western governments have long suspected of funding our activities.132 The thieves called this Operation Green Quest.

BILAL PHILIPS

Bilal Philips converted thousands of American soldiers to Islam since the 1991 Gulf war. Philips was himself a convert to Islam who was once a member of the Jamaican Communist Party and whose name appeared on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List.133 As evidenced from this tape made by the FBI, Phillips was a conduit for funds that were given to the Brothers by the Saudis. Emad Salem asked Siddig Ali Siddig about Mustafa Shalabi’s funding:

129. Phillip Kurata US DOS International Information Program October 16, 2001 “U.S. Islamic Leaders Issue Fatwa on U.S. Muslim Soldiers Fighting Terrorists.” http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/01101611.htm Sergeant Hasan Akbar, an Afro-American convert to Islam and a soldier in an engineering unit that participated in the second invasion of Iraq, was accused of tossing a grenade in a tent filled with his superiors. Brother Akbar followed this fatwa, and refused to murder another Muslim. Akbar was named Mark Fidel Kools at his birth but his mother, Qu’ran Bilal, changed his name to Hasan Akbar after she converted to Islam. In 1988 he enrolled at the University of California at Davis and graduated nine years later with degrees in aeronautical engineering and mechanical engineering. Akbar's attended Masjid Bilal Islamic Center that was partially funded by Saudi Arabia's Islamic Development Bank. The Brother was not allowed to fight in the first Gulf War because he was a Muslim, but this rule was changed. Two infidels, Americans with murder in their hearts, died thanks to this Brother’s sacrifice. Bless him. Deanne Stillman “What's the U.S. military doing about radical Muslim soldiers? Not enough.” Slate March 27, 2003,http://slate.msn.com/id/2080770/130. Mohammad al Hanooti Director Islamic Center of New Jersey 2780 Kennedy Boulevard New Jersey 07304131. “Religious Leader Tied To Terror,” Albany Times Union June 30, 2002 page A1. 132. Brooke A. Masters Washington Post, May 3, 2002; Page A09 “Virginia Muslim Groups Want Property Back Evidence Also Sought by Organizations, Individuals Raided in Terror Probe.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A24729-2002May2133. Harvey Shepherd “Muslim scholar calls for unity” The Gazette, Montreal, Saturday, January 17, 1998. Dr. Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips http://www.islaam.com/bp/interview.htm

Siddig: No, no the money was at hand, it came from there.

Salem: From Saudi Arabia.

Siddig: It was too much money. Although, the money was available, he took from the poor Brothers.

Salem: Is that means, that Saudi Arabia gave the money to this man directly or give it to you?

Siddig: Originally, there is certain service, Saudi Arabic, is not the government. Brothers.

Salem: Such as the system of....

Siddig: No, I don't know who are they. Brothers, like that. They have money in Saudi Arabia.

Salem: Okay, with the blessing.

Siddig: Thank Allah. That means, the government has no idea. The government will be scared from such thing. So he collects the money and make the Council, the American Brothers there in Saudi Arabia. One of them, whatever his name is, (IA) a very good Brother, Allah bless him. He is a scholar from Saudi Arabia. He speaks Arabic very well. (IA) his name is Bilal Philips.

Salem: He was American?

Siddig: Yes. Also some of the Brothers whom they are well known. So these people meet in Saudi Arabia and they are studying there. They are staying there, they met and collect this money, and they established their council. They chose Abdel Rashid to be in charge of the camp, to help the Brothers in Bosnia.134

The FBI stated the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences was the major funder of Sami Al-Arian’s University of the South Florida-affiliated think tank, WISE, which was shut down after the FBI confiscated its files in 1995. WISE was a front for Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

SHEIK AL-MOAYAD AND THE AL-FAROOQ MOSQUE

Amin Awad who counseled inmates in the city’s Rikers Island jail was on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List. Awad was forbidden to have contact with

134. USA v Rahman Misc. Files Cassette #41

inmates and was reassigned to administrative duties.135 Amin Awad was also the President of the Board of Trustees at Al-Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn. In 1988 Sheikh Abdullah Azzam addressed a conference at the al-Farooq mosque, exhorting the faithful to carry out holy war wherever they are. Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman served as Imam at the al-Farooq Mosque for two months in 1990. After this the Al-Farooq Mosque was linked to Gama’a al-Islamiyya’s Brooklyn / Jersey City cell but it did not matter as the Clinton Justice Department quashed any pro-active investigation of Islamists as it might have interfered with the Oslo Peace Accords.

Brothers continued to raise money at the al-Farooq136 – millions of dollars – and some of the money reached the charities of Sheikh Muhammad Ali Hassan al-Moayad who had held a position in Yemen’s Ministry of Religious Affairs and was the Iman at the Al-Ihsan Mosque in Sanaa, Yemen. The Sheikh’s charitable foundations did not just exist on paper - they fed six thousand needy Yemenite families each day as Sheikh al-Moayad had established a non-profit bakery to give bread to the poor instead of giving them money, which could be used for qat.137 He gave money to widows. During Eids, he gave the orphans clothes. In the winter he gave blankets to the poor. Once a family came back from Saudi Arabia and he paid the rent on their apartment two years in advance. Furthermore, he paid all of their living expenses. There was only one qualification to receive the Sheik’s largesse: you had to be a card-carrying member of the Islamist Reform Party138 or Yemeni Islah Party (YIP).

The Muslim Brotherhood established the Yemeni Islah Party in September 1990 “to be the lively continuation of the modern Yemen reform movement and a framework for all who seek to reform and change the current situation to a better one guided by Islamic faith and Shari'ah.”139 It is an opposition party to the regime of President Ali Abdullah Salah and is similar in its thinking to Hamas. In August 2006 Yemen’s Speaker of Parliament, Sheikh Abdullah bin Hussein al-Ahmar, a leader of the Yemeni Islah Party, condemned the capture of his Palestinian Hamas counterpart Aziz Dwaik by Israeli forces.140 Sheikh Abdullah bin Hussein al-Ahmar worked with an exile from South Yemen named Sheikh Tariq al-Fadhli. A member of a former ruling family of South Yemen, Fadhli had taken up Islamist causes as a youth in Saudi Arabia and, funded by Osama bin Laden, he eventually “divided his time between Iran, the northern borders of Pakistan, and Afghanistan.” Brother Fadhli fought as a member of bin Laden’s Afghan-Arabs against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. At the end of that war, he returned to Saudi Arabia, and with the continuing patronage of bin Laden, quietly filtered back into Yemen as head of its Islamic Jihad Organization with aims of exacting revenge on his Marxist 135. Associated Press March 21, 2003 Muslim New UK “Muslim Chaplain barred from counseling NYC inmates.” http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news.php?article=4476136. The al-Farooq Mosque will always be a stronghold of Wahbism. In a book published by the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs, and distributed at the Al-Farouq Mosque the late Abdul-Aziz Bin Baz, authorized Muslims to kill converts to Islam who violated sexual mores on adultery and homosexuality: "If a person said: I believe in Allah alone and confirm the truth of everything from Muhammed, except in his forbidding fornication, he becomes a disbeliever. For that, it would be lawful for Muslims to spill his blood and to take his money." http://www.nysun.com/article/8445137. A leaf that is chewed because of its stimulating properties138. http://www.yobserver.com/cgi-bin/yobserver/exec/view.cgi/22/10592139, http://www.al-bab.com/yemen/pol/islah.htm140. http://www.yobserver.com/cgi-bin/yobserver/exec/view.cgi/22/10697

adversaries then sharing power with President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the newly unified Yemen.141

By December 1999 Islamists felt confident enough to have a close associate of Sheikh Abdullah bin Hussein and Sheikh Moayad, former Islah Party Member of Parliament Abdullah Satar, fly to New York City and speak openly at the al-Farooq Mosque and other hotbeds of Islamism about his desire to raise money for “needy families.” Due to the USS Cole Operation in Yemen in October 1999 throughout this trip the FBI followed Abdullah Satar who was driven to his destinations by Numan Maflahi, a New Jersey gas station owner. Maflahi would be sentenced to five years in prison for lying to the FBI about this episode. Soon after Abdullah Satar left the United States he visited with Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed in Milan, Italy.

ABDELKADER MAHMOUD ES SAYED

Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed was a Gama’a al-Islamiyya Brother convicted in Egypt in connection with the 1997 executions of 58 foreign tourists at Luxor, Egypt who was granted political asylum in Italy and headed al-Qaeda's documentation committee in Milan. In a recording made in November 2000 by the Special Operations Directorate of the Milan police, Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed recounted how he had fabricated his request for asylum by falsely claiming that he would be subject to political persecution if returned to Egypt: "I told them I was wanted, I told them I had been wrongly persecuted, that my wife had died in a road accident orchestrated by the Egyptian intelligence. It all sounded good, the whole thing corresponded to their idea of persecution, and consequently, I was granted asylum." In December 1999, his request for asylum in Italy having been granted, Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed moved to Milan from Rome. The same month, the Special Operations Directorate of the Milan police began following Es Sayed and planting microphones in his apartment, car and in a local mosque where he served as an Imam, the Islamic Cultural Institute, which the Milan cell used as its headquarters and which the U.S. Treasury Department has since labeled Al Qaeda's main "station house" in Europe.

ABDULSALAM ALI ALI ABDULRAHMAN

On August 12, 2000 Abdulsalam Ali Ali Abdulrahman a 42-year-old Yemeni national who entered Italy with a Yemeni diplomatic passport paid a brief visit to Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed in Milan. Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed picked up Abdulsalam Ali Ali Abdulrahman in a bugged Citroen, at the Bologna airport. According to transcripts of the conversations Abdulsalam Ali Ali Abdulrahman told Es Sayed about a massive strike against the enemies of Islam involving aircraft and the sky, "This will be one of those strikes that will never be forgotten...it will be written about in all the newspapers of the world. This is a terrifying thing. This is a thing that will spread from south to north, from east to west. The person who came up with this program is a madman from a madhouse, a madman but a genius. He is fixated on this program; it will leave everyone turned to ice. It will wreak such a great havoc and leave them all

141. http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=400&issue_id=2933&article_id=23672

dumbfounded.” The Italian authorities say they lost track of Abdulrahman in early 2001 and have not been able to pick up his trail. Nor have they confirmed that Abdulrahman is an officer of the Yemeni intelligence service, only that he was close to the Yemeni government. 142

In May 2001 the police in Milan received information about Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed's involvement "in an unspecified criminal project that had U.S. citizens or diplomats as its objectives." Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed role in the project included a plot to bomb targets in France, involved supplying false identity documents obtained from "an unspecified Tunisian." In July 2001 the police were able to obtain a warrant to search Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed's house. No false documents were found. But police did discover a fax, sent by someone in Sudan, providing a precise itinerary for the grueling 20-hour journey by taxi and other "means of transportation" from Mashad, Iran, to Kandahar, Afghanistan. The police didn't arrest Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed, who in their view still hadn't committed a crime. Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed fled Italy to Afghanistan in late July 2001, after Italian police rounded up Brothers in a Tunisian-

dominated network accused of plotting against US targets. Before his arrest in Milan, Italy, cell member Essid Sami Ben Khemais, (left) a 33-year-old Tunisian, obtained “an extremely efficient liquid that suffocates people...It is difficult to transport but we want to transport it in tomato cans which can withstand pressure. As soon as you open this liquid, it suffocates people.”143

In December 2001 Al Hayat, an Arabic language newspaper published in London, reported that Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed had been killed "during the recent bombing of Najran in Afghanistan" by American forces however, his body has never been recovered. Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed was named in an April 19, 2002 order by the Treasury Department blocking the assets of suspected terrorists and he was wanted in Italy on charges of conspiring to traffic in arms, explosives, chemical weapons and identity papers and aiding illegal immigration.144 Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed was convicted in absentia in Milan in January 2004 of criminal association with Al-Qaeda. His location is unknown although there are reports that he was apprehended and is now among the disappeared.145

MOHAMMED AANSI

Sheikh al-Moayad had the misfortune to have one Mohamad Al-Aansi (or Aansi) pray with him at the Al-Ihsan Mosque. Al-After Al-Aansi became the America

142. Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed was overheard expressing his intentions to permanently leave Italy but explaining to

associates "that he had been convinced to remain in Milan by an unspecified American man.”http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/showcase/chi-0206300380jun30.story?coll=chi%2Dnews%2Dhed Al Qaeda `sleepers' may be in U.S. Italy's eavesdropping on terrorists hints at infiltration beyond Sept. 11 groupBy John Crewdson and Tom Hundley Tribune correspondents June 30, 2002143. Finn and Delaney, op.cit. Tribunale Civile e Penale di Milano, Ufficio del Giudice per le Indagini Preliminari,N13016/99 RGNR; N.6652/99 RGGIP, p. 44, 45.144. http://www.news24.com/News24/Archive/0,,2-1659_1191770,00.html145. http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F1071EFF3B5F0C738DDDAE0894DC404482http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen021103.asp

Government’s chief witness against the Sheikh he was asked about his relationship with Sheikh al-Moayad at the Sheikh’s sham trial:

Q. Now, when did Mr. Al-Moayad tell you he was involved in supplying money, arms and recruits for Mujahideen fighters for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and separatist groups in Chechnya and Kashmir?

A. In 1996 or 1997.

Q. Where did he tell you that?

A. In the mosque.

Q. Was anyone else there?

A. Me and him alone.

Q. He confided in you because you were a friend of his, is that right? Did you at that time tell Mr. Al-Moayad that you were involved in terrorist activities?

A. Sheikh Moayad asked me if I knew volunteers that can go to Chechnya. I told them I don't know any.

Q. Then he told you right out that he raised money, arms and fighters for Chechnya, Kashmir and Afghanistan?

A. He told me he helps Al Qaeda with money and arms and he send Mujahideen to Chechnya and Afghanistan.

Q. Who was fighting in Afghanistan then, 1996?

A. I don't know. He told me that. Ask him.

The Sheikh and Aansi worked together in transmitting funds used for Jihad because between 1993 and 2001 as it was alleged that Mohamad al-Aansi ran a multi-million dollar hawala operation in Brooklyn. In this capacity he sent money through various means, including couriers and overnight mail, to a business partner in Yemen. Both Mohammed Aansi and his partner were paid a percentage of the transmitted amount for this service. Mohammed Aansi maintained ledgers and records of these transactions that were seized by the FBI.146 In June 2001 Mohamad al-Aansi immigrated to the United States. Al-Aansi began defrauding Islamic organizations and charities in the U.S., stealing their property, running up phone bills, using public and private services of individuals and masajid for his and his family's luxury. A few months after his arrival he pleaded guilty to bank fraud but was not deported.147 Mohamad Al-Ansi found 146. USDC EDNY Cr-03-133 “Declaration in Support of Application for a Post-Indictment Restraining Order” filed February 7, 2003.147. Transcript 1629

an escape hatch, contacting FBI Agent Robert Fuller, one who had just joined the Terrorism Task Force and was eager to find targets as he had missed some prior to 9-11 thanks to his lax predecessors. In August 2001 two Brooklyn supporters of Sheik Moayad moved about $500,000 into or out of their bank accounts in small sums, a technique used to skirt the federal requirement that transactions of more than $10,000 be reported. FBI Agent Robert Fuller described his relationship with Aansi:

Since approximately November 2001, I and other agents have been working with Mohammed Aansi, a Yemeni citizen who has resided in the United States since approximately June 2001. I and other agents have worked with Mohammed Aansi in connection with three federal investigations. During this time, Mohammed Aansi has provided information that has proven to be reliable and contributed, in part, to the arrests of 20 individuals and the seizure of over $1 million.”

In December 2001, Mohammed Aansi told the FBI that Sheikh Al-Moayad the Iman at the Al-Ihsan Mosque in Sanaa, Yemen, and a leader of the Islah Party was laundering and transmitting money to Usama bin Laden. In March 2002 Al-Aansi identified several individuals and businesses that operated as unlicensed Hawala148 money remitters that sent funds to Yemen in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1960, operating as an unregistered money-remitting business.

On September 19, 2002 Sheikh al-Moayad hosted a mass wedding for young Yemeni men who were about to join the Jihad. At the wedding festivities, Mohammed Siam, one of the founders of Hamas, gave a speech. After thanking al-Moayad for inviting him to the wedding, Siam praised a Hamas operation that had just occurred in Tel Aviv, Israel. Siam suggested that the organizers of the wedding, i.e., al-Moayad, must have known of the Hamas mission because they planned the mass wedding to coincide with that “wedding there,” referring to the Hamas operation. Siam told the wedding guests that they would read about the operation in the newspapers the next day. Siam triumphantly reported that many of the occupying invaders were hurt during the operation. On September 19, 2002, at approximately 1:00 p.m. a shaheed detonated a bomb on a bus in Tel Aviv, killing five people and injuring over 50 people. Hamas claimed responsibility for the bombing.

Siam is a well-known Hamas leader with a noble history of raising money to support Hamas’ activities. In December 1994, Siam was a keynote speaker for a Muslim Arab Youth Association Conference held at a Hyatt Regency hotel in Los Angeles, California. Siam was introduced as “head of operations of Al Jihad Al Islamia in Gaza, the Hamas military wing.” During his keynote address, Siam told the audience, “I’ve been told to restrict or restrain what I say. I hope no one is recording me or taking any pictures, as none are allowed because I’m going to speak the truth to you. It’s simple. Finish off the Israelis. Kill them all! Exterminate them! No peace ever! Do not bother to

148. Hawala, which derives from an Arabic word meaning “trust” is an alternative or parallel remittance system. It exists and operates outside of, or parallel to traditional banking or financial channels. Hawala systems pre-date western banking systems and are based on trust and the extensive use of connections such as family relationships and regional affiliations. Transfers of money take place based on communication between members of a network of hawala dealers and makes minimal use of any sort of negotiable instrument. This system is cost effective, efficient in moving funds to remote areas, reliable and, if unregistered, free from government scrutiny. Developed in India, Hawala is currently a major remittance system used around the world.

talk politics.” Following his speech, a Hamas leader exhorted the audience to contribute money. $207,000 was raised for the cause. An FBI informer was in the audience yet the American Justice Department looked the other way and let Hamas continue its fund raising activities because Israel and America would be at peace with Hamas soon and all of this would be moot.149

In December 2002, Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement-led

investigation in Detroit150 resulted in 10 search warrants, five seizure warrants, and six arrest warrants were executed for the illegal transmission of funds to Yemen. In addition, five bank accounts were seized, totaling $234,000, along with a quantity of narcotics. In January 2003 the charges against many of these men were dropped.151 Mohammed Aansi was a busy desert rat.

In late December 2002 Mohammed Aansi traveled to Yemen where he had conversations with the Sheikh about making a contribution to aid Jihad. He told the Sheikh he knew of an ex-Black Panther who had access to millions of dollars and wanted to make a large contribution to the Jihad. Most ex-Black Panthers ended up dead or in prison, not millionaires or friends of millionaires but the Sheikh did not know this as in many ways he was a provincial man. Aansi’s “Black Panther” (actually an FBI agent) was named “Said Sharif bin Turi” and was said to be an American-born convert to Islam who did not speak Arabic.152 Aansi told the Sheikh that he would travel to Germany where would purchase counter-surveillance equipment for the Reform Party, including a “Quartz Controlled Ball Point Pen” and that he should join him there if he wished to meet this potential donor. On January 7, 2003, Sheikh Al-Moayad and his aide-de-camp Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed flew from Yemen to Frankfurt, Germany, to meet with the two bogus Islamists. The bogus ex-Black Panther claimed to have worked for Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and was roughly modeled after Hampton-El and a man Hampton-El said was his cousin, deceased Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton.

Mohammed Aansi: I talked a great deal about you [to Said Sharif bin Turi] and about Sheikh Mohammed Zayed for the many things that you have accomplished...such as your support of Afghanistan with lots of money, as well as your support…

Sheikh Moayad: Me and him were…

Mohammed Aansi: to bin Laden.

Sheikh Moayad: Bin Laden. [Chuckles]. Tell him, that I sat with him –

Mohammed Aansi: With whom.

149. USDC SDNY 03-MJ-0016150. http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/bank/hba88332.000/hba88332_0.HTM151. Peter Thierjung “Charges Dropped Against Yemenis in Detroit” The Militant - February 3, 2003.152. The Yemeni press reported that the purported evidence offered by the U.S.A. against al-Moayad said that al-Moayad acknowledged to a CIA agent that he has offered constant aid on different occasions to al-Qaeda and Hamas.

Sheikh Moayad: Bin Laden.

Mohammed Aansi: Oh! With money?

Sheikh Moayad: Yes, financially yes, and I sat with him like now, we talked and chatted like normal people. I am more knowledgeable than him in the Islamic Law.

Mohammed Aansi: Excuse me?

Sheikh Moayad: I am more aware than Usama with the Ulum Al Sharia, and I used to teach him some of the Islamic Laws. He called me "His Sheikh." He used to say that I'm his sheikh.

Said Sharif bin Turi: Allah Akba, Allah Akbar!

Sheikh Moayad: I just wanted him to know that I sat with him. But, I sat with him before all these crises happened, a long time ago.

Mohammed Aansi: Yes…

Zayed: In the eighties, it was in the 1980’s.

Mohammed Aansi: It was before the crises: prior to the latest incidents.

Sheikh Moayad: Back in the days of Afghanistan with the Russians.

Mohammed Aansi: He [the bogus ex-Black Panther] is saying that he was extremely proud to have people from the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, they were supporting and they still are supporting Sheikh Abd Al Rahman Omar's attorneys.

Sheikh Moayad: Omar Abd Al Rahman?

Mohammed Aansi: Yes, Dr. Omar Abd Al Rahman, he was, of course, among many who supported those brothers in order to fulfill their duties. Therefore he is proud of that, he also said-

Zayed: Take our picture with him.

Mohammed Aansi: Huh?

Zayed: Take our picture with him.

Mohammed Aansi: Sure, God willing. And he also said that he is always in touch with his [Sheikh Rahman’s] lawyers-

Sheikh Moayad: Uhum.

Mohammed Aansi: -in order to make his sentence much lighter.

Sheikh Moayad: God willing. Omar Abd Al Rahman.

Mohammed Aansi: Sheikh Omar Abd Al Rahman, yeah. Have you met him sheikh?

Sheikh Moayad: - one time in Mecca, a long time ago.

Mohammed Aansi: He [Said Sharif bin Turi] says that he is very comfortable that the goal and the intent are the same. He will tell you the names of the people he did Jihad with, and whom he supported.

Sheikh Moayad: God willing, we ask for God's approval. And I tell him for the second time now, he should not mention his good deeds so God could reward him for it.

Mohammed Aansi: He says: "I'm very careful, very careful to the extent that even my closest friends don't know what I do, on my private matters at all, at all." I said to him that even your very very close friends, even families they don't know. They don't know. He says even his wife doesn't know what he does or his secrets. He says that no one knows about this, except for the people on the straight path, and whom he knows and he sends them to run errands. And even they don't know his secrets. He sends them on certain missions and they don't even know each other...Surat Al Mustaqim [Those who are on the straight path]. They don't know anything at all. Each one is on his own mission.153

Despite the fact that Aansi could not get Sheikh Rahman’s name right, during one of these meetings with Mohammed Aansi, al-Moayad identified five individuals in New York who were sending money from the United States to al-Moayad and he provided Mohammed Aansi with contact telephone numbers for these individuals. He also told Mohammed Aansi that he received money for the Jihad that was collected at the Al-Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn. Mohammed Aansi called al-Moayad and his assistant in Yemen while Mohammed Aansi was in the United States, and this is being used as a basis for American jurisdiction.

The German authorities arrested the Sheikh and his aide. All of this alleged activity took place in Yemen and Germany and the Speaker of the Yemeni Parliament, Sheikh Abdullah bin Hussein accused the United States of America of violating other states’ sovereignty and imposing its will in open disregard for international laws and resolutions: “The Sheik must be charged according to Yemeni law rather than other

153. USA v Moayad Transcript February 2, 2005 page 361

legislation. All his speech and actions were done while in Yemen, and Yemen is an independent country with its own sovereignty; it is not an American state. The President of the Republic has given instructions to pay a sum of US $50,000 to cover the costs of defending Sheik al-Moayad in Germany.” Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh protested the Sheik’s extradition to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder during a visit to Germany in June 2003 to no avail. The Brothers were extradited to the United States in November 2003.

Brother Zayed and Sheikh al-Moayad were denied access to their Yemeni-sponsored lawyer, Khaled al-Anesi. Khaled Al-Anesi is executive manager of HOOD the Yemeni National Organization for Defending Rights and Freedoms, and group dedicated to freeing the Yemeni mujahedeen held at Gitmo. Instead he had the senile communist Jew from William Kunstler’s Center For Constitutional Rights, William H. Goodman, as his attorney. On November 15, 2004 the mental case Mohammed Aansi set himself on fire in front of the White House.

During his trial, U.S. District Court Judge Sterling Johnson refused to admit an application for a mujahedeen fighter for entry into an al-Qaeda training camp that listed Sheikh al-Moayad as that fighter’s sponsor in order to make it seem as if the Brothers were getting a fair trial. FBI Agent Brian Murphy testified that the Sheikh had told him that Usama bin Laden had issued a fatwa calling for his death because of a dispute between them regarding how much room there was in Islam for democratic principles. Sheikh al-Moayad also told Murphy that based on the same fatwa bin Laden killed an associate of his, whose name was transcribed as “Maqubil Alwada.” On February 28, 1998 two people were killed and three injured when a grenade exploded outside the al-Rahman Mosque in the Mansurah district of Aden while Sheikh Muqbil bin Hadi al-Wada'i, a prominent Salafist, was giving a sermon. A security source suggested it was an accident, claiming that a man had been "fooling around" with a hand grenade that exploded, killing him and one of the Sheikh's bodyguards. This explanation was not widely believed. Previously a man had blown himself up along with another bodyguard while attempting to plant a bomb in the sheikh's car.154 On April 24, 1998 two men were killed and 27 injured in an explosion as they left al-Khayr mosque in Sana'a after Friday prayers. The mosque, in the Bir 'Abid district, is known for its links with Salafism. Sheikh Muqbil al-Wada'i and his religious opponent, Ibrahim Ahmad Abdel Majeed al-Reemy [Abd al-Majid al-Rimi], have been waging an audio war, circulating accusations against each other on cassette.155 Those injured included a number of foreigners: Libyans, Somalis and two American passport holders of Arab origin.156 In May the editors of the weekly opposition newspaper al-Shura, were sentenced to 80 lashes each after they were convicted of writing and publishing a series of articles critical of Sheikh Abdul Mejid Al-Zindani, a leading politician in the Al-Islah Party.157 The Ministry of Justice suspended this judgment while reviewing its conformity with law and judicial procedure. Unlike Sheikh Moayad, Sheikh Muqbil al-Wada'I had been critical of the ruling coalition and was targeted by Usama bin Laden. Sheikh Muqbil al-Wada'I adversary, Ibrahim

154. Al-Quds al-Arabi, 2.3.98; AP 28.2.98155. Cassettes are often used for religious and political propaganda in Yemen because of the high illiteracy rates156. http://www.al-bab.com/yemen/data/incident98.htm157. http://www.hrw.org/wr2k/Mena-11.htm

Ahmad Abdel Majeed al-Reemy, was a Yemeni closely linked to Osama bin Laden and was the organizer of the attempted bombing of the Interior Ministry building and the Special Emergency Forces headquarters training unit at Riyadh on December 29, 2005. The bombings and related clashes with Islamist militants accounted for a total of 90 injuries and the death of one bystander. The cost to the mujahideen was five killed during the bombings (three of whom from suicide detonations) and a further 10 hunted down in gunfights. Ibrahim Ahmad Abdel Majeed al-Reemy was one of seven militants killed in a shootout with Saudi security forces in Riyadh. Reemy, who did not make the Saudi kingdom's most-wanted list, is the link between the organization in Saudi Arabia and bin Laden himself.158

Sheik al-Moayad protested that the Government had offered him millions of dollars if he collaborated with them. Stanley Cohen, who recently visited Yemen, met Sheikh al-Moayad's family in Sana'a and got a power of attorney to defend Brother Zayed and Sheikh al-Moayad. The US Court of Appeals will hear the case of al-Moayad shortly.159

THE JURORS WERE CONVINCED THE DEFENDANTS WERE TERRORISTS BEFORE HEARING THE EVIDENCE

The following exchange took place within Judge Sterling Johnson’s chambers:

Juror: This is too big a risk for my family. This is crazy. This is crazy. You drop -- every morning you pick me up at the same spot, drop me off at the same spot. If anybody wanted to follow me, they could follow me to where they drop me in the van. And you can give numbers, descriptions, colors, they will find out where I live in 10 minutes.

THE COURT: Step outside a second. (Juror leaves chambers.)

Ms. Moore: Your Honor, I think under the circumstances, it would appear appropriate to release the juror. My concern is that I'm afraid that jurors as they start vanishing through the days will think oh, I can come in and get off too.

THE COURT: I'm afraid of that also but I have to deal with this situation right here.

Ms. Moore: With respect to him, I can't see any way to get around it.

Mr. Goodman: My client can't get a fair trial from this juror, absolutely.

THE COURT: We'll release him but in a situation where he won't contaminate the juror.

158. http://www.jamestown.org/news_details.php?news_id=84159. http://www.mhryemen.org/archive/archive_detail_en.php?n_no=2002

Mr. Marks: Exactly.

Ms. Moore: Perhaps we can do it in the guise of he of upset.

A Juror: Yes, sir.

The Court: There is nothing to be upset by. One of the things that we do, the only concern that any of us have is the media. That is why they have all the jurors together and they pick you up and drop you off.

A Juror: Sir, she is talking about Al-Qaeda, the terrorists and the people that are killing people left and right. I have a family at home. Four years in the marines. What they did to me before I had kids, I didn't give a damn. I have to worry about my kids. These guys can go after my family. Come hell or high water, I'm not going to risk my children.

THE COURT: I was in the Marine Corps too and if anybody was going to do anything, it would be the prosecutor or the defense counsel. They are not concerned with you.

A JUROR: I can't risk that. I can't. I'm sorry. That is crazy, we're all going to happily gamble as to whether my family is safe? I can't do that. You want to throw me in jail, throw me in jail but I'm not going to stand down one way or the other on people that she is telling me are blowing people up. You are confirming that these people are terrorists and now you are telling me to put my family on the line.

THE COURT: We didn't say they were terrorists.160

ABAD ELFGEEH

Maflahi, prosecutors charged later, was his driver, and the two were watched as they made at least one stop at Carnival French Ice Cream.

But not in Brooklyn where Abad Elfgeeh pleaded guilty to a federal felony and said he received Jihad money for collected at the Al Farouq mosque and reluctantly admitted his association with Sheikh Al-Moayad161 then changed his plea and went to trial. Abad Elfgeeh was convicted of unlicensed transmission of funds and no mention of “terrorism” was made at his trial. How did CI-1 know so much about the hawala business?

Iman Abdul Wali was on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List. Wali preached at the Al-Farooq Mosque. In 1987 a FBI spy observed weapons at this mosque, however no wiretap was put on the phone by the Justice Department because of our work in Afghanistan. The excuse that was used was “there was no evidence of a

160. Sealed Proceedings In Chambers p127 USA v Moayad161. Tom Hays “As terror war spreads into money-moving network, an ice cream shop takes center stage.”Associated Press November 9, 2003.

criminal conspiracy.”162 It was a miracle that the FBI did not investigate the Al-Farooq sooner, with so many Brothers linked to it.

Imam Fawaz Damra, spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Cleveland was on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List. Fawaz Damra was one of the speakers at an International Committee for Palestine meeting, and a regular guest at International Committee for Palestine’s conferences, stated that International Committee for

Palestine is “the active arm of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and we like to call it the International Committee for Palestine here for security reasons.” Damara stated, “Terrorism and terrorism alone is the way to liberation.” Sharing the podium with Professor Sami Al-Arian, he also called for “directing all the rifles at the first and last enemy of the Islamic nation and that is the sons of monkeys and pigs, the Jews.” Brother Sami Al-Arian told the audience, “Jihad is our path. Victory to Islam! Death to Israel.”163 On December 16, 2003 Imam Damra was indicted by a federal Grand Jury in Ohio for failing to disclose his membership in the Al-Kifah Refugee Center, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Committee for Palestine.164 The mosque leaders of the Islamic Center of Cleveland wanted Damra ordered to cease all spiritual duties. In June 2004 Damra was convicted for lying about his connections and commitment to Islamism and was convicted and sentenced to two months in prison – he could have gotten five years. Michael Dahan, a professor of political science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem was a defense witness for the Imam. Dahan was to testitify that “As unquestionably hate-filled and thus morally reprehensible as such language is, when Palestinians refer to Jews as ‘descended from apes and swine,’ or encourage support for those who ‘kill Jews,’ they do so with the reasonably justifiable self-image of victim and persecuted, not of victimizer and persecutor. The statements Fawaz Damra made on the tapes were examples of political rhetoric frequently used by Palestinians during that time period." Damra was found guilty in the US of lying about his past on his US immigration form, and hiding his links to jihadi organizations. Other charges and allegations brought by the Zionists against Damra included a link to Osama Bin Laden, a counterfeiting operation at mosque he led in Brooklyn (the FBI showed Damra printed currency inside his own mosque, but the details are classified) working with Sami al-Arian to raise money for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, money laundering, funding families of suicide bombers, and obstructing an FBI investigation, and associating with El Sayyid Nosair. Damra was released from prison then arrested the next day in front of his home to face deportation charges. He immigrated to Palestine where the PA granted him asylum165 after having been arrested by the Israelis.

OTHER BROTHERS ON THE RAHMAN UNINDICTED CO-CONSPIRATOR LIST

Mohammed Hassan Abdou was on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List. In 1999 Abdou was charged by the United States Department of Justice with having

162. Steven Emerson American Jihad Free Press Page 24 February 2003.163. ADL Backgrounder: Sami Al-Arian February 20, 2003 http://www.adl.org/Terror/terrorism_al-arian.asp164. USDC for the Northern District of Ohio Eastern Division O3-CR-484 Indictment165. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=6872

obtained a false passport under the name of Edward K. McCants. On June 8, 2001 Abdou was allowed to visit Saudi Arabia. Abdou’s attorney wrote: “The Government has given careful consideration of this request before agreeing. My client is aware of the potential danger to his safety under the present climate but he feels that it will be safe…It is respectfully requested that this be kept under seal.” Judge Loretta Preska wrote: “Travel approved so long as Abdou provides itinerary. This shall be filed under seal.”166

Kahlid Ibrahim was on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List. In 1998 Ibrahim was charged in New York and New Jersey with “having made, forged, altered or counterfeited an oath, affidavit required of aliens to wit submitted an affidavit falsely claiming he had known Mohammad Salameh to be living in the United States since in and about 1981 when in truth and fact Kahlid Ibrahim never met Mohammad Salameh until in or about 1989. The New York case was dismissed on the grounds of double jeopardy. AUSA Charles McKenna handled the New Jersey case.167 Ibrahim was sentenced to three years probation and paid a five hundred dollar fine.168

Moustafa Abdalmot Elaebrak was on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List. He was sent to federal prison and fined $50 for reasons that were sealed for having declared under oath that he lived in the United States since 1981 when in reality he lived in Egypt since 1989. Elaebrak was released in January 1998.169

Said Mansour was on the Unindicted Co-conspirator list. In August 2005 Danish police made Mansour, 45, a Moroccan-born Danish citizen, the first person ever

charged under an anti-terrorism law enacted in 2002 that forbids instigation of terrorism or offering advice to terrorists. Mansour was charged for distributing CDs that contained inflammatory jihadi speeches and gruesome images. Monsour had been close friends with Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman.170

Ahmad Sattar was on this Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List. Why he was not indicted will always be a mystery to us, however, the FBI did obtain a FISA warrant (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – allows the FBI to obtain Secret Warrants from a Secret Court in terrorism cases) on Sattar and recorded thousands of hours of his conversations. During the trial of Sheik Rahman, AUSA McCarthy presented testimony that Sattar would not discuss sensitive matters with Rahman unless he was sure the room was not bugged: “Your Honor, there is discussion between Mr. Sattar and Sheik Abdel Rahman about Salameh. Sattar reports to Sheik Rahman that Salameh called me yesterday. The Sheik responds why? What is the story? Ultimately Sattar says to him I’ll talk to you about it in the mosque.” Sattar let his guard down after he realized there were no immediate or foreseeable repercussions for those on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List.

166. USDC SDNY 99cr0515167. USDC SDNY 98CR00253168. Federal District Court Newark, New Jersey 99CR00085169. USDC SDNY 87CR01161170. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/28/AR2005082800899.html

Abdu Wali Zindani, head of Brooklyn’s Al-Kifah Refugee Center was on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List. Zindani stated: “Allah, the most high and exalted, ordered us to kill the idol worshippers, the enemies of Allah... Fight the idol worshippers wherever you find them. Pursue them and finish them off.”171 Mustafa Shalabi was on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List, even though he was dead. Now Specially Designated Global Terrorist Muhammad Shawqi Islambouli a leader of Al Gama’a al-Islamiyya was

on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List. Islambouli was tried in absentia in Egypt along with one hundred other Brothers for offenses against the state. Montassar al-Zayyat represented these men.172 A Hanif Muhammad was on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List. In August 2003 Taliban spokesman Muhammad Hanif told the Associated Press by satellite telephone that Afghan government troops launched two separate offensives against guerrilla fighters in the mountainous Dai Chupan district. “It was a massive force of the government who wanted to kill and arrest the Taliban but they were not successful,” he said.173

Samir Khalil was on the Rahman Unindicted Co-Conspirator List. In 1991Khalil

pleaded guilty to insurance fraud and spent eight months in federal prison. According to court documents, Khalil denied FBI allegations that linked him to the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

After Ali-Mohamed switched loyalty to the Americans he said this at his sentencing hearing: “In 1995, I obtained a copy of the co-conspirator list for the Abdel Rahman trial. I sent the list to el-Hage in Kenya, expecting that it would be forwarded to bin Laden in Khartoum.”

171. http://www.terrorismvictims.org/terrorists/Jihad-in-america.html172. “Mass Trial of Suspected Militants Begins” Middle East Times http://www.metimes.com/issue99-6/eg/mass_trial_of.htm173. The News International Pakistan August 26, 2003 “Fifty Taliban Killed in Afghanistan” http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/aug2003-daily/26-08-2003/main/main5.htm