A Yemeni sheik accused of funding terrorist organizations boasted of his ties to Osama bin Laden and Palestinian militant leaders on surveillance tapes played Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court. "He used to say that I'm his sheik," Mohammed Ali Hasan al-Moayad said of bin Laden on the tapes secretly recorded in a German hotel room. "I used to teach him some of the Islamic laws," he added.Defense lawyers said al-Moayad made idle boasts to wheedle millions of dollars from an FBI informant posing as a militant Islamist. The informant had proposed giving al-Moayad $2.5 million to divide between terror groups and al-Moayad's Yemeni charities. On the tape, al-Moayad describes his relationship with bin Laden as limited to the days before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. "I sat with him before all these crises happened - a long time ago," al-Moayad said in Arabic. But the Yemeni cleric went on to describe ongoing relationships with a Hamas leader and other militants. He also talked of his support for the families of Islamic "martyrs."
Defense lawyers said Hamas is a legal group in Arab countries and al-Moayad's expressions of solidarity never rose to the level of supporting or conspiring to support terrorism, the crimes with which he is charged. "Arabic culture is on trial," al-Moayad attorney William Goodman said outside the courtroom. "Everybody knows somebody in Hamas who's living in their countries. Does that mean you're giving them material support? No." Al-Moayad and his