A Yemeni sheik fighting charges that he helped finance Al Qaeda once claimed that a bitter dispute had led Osama bin Laden to issue an edict, or fatwa, to kill him, an F.B.I. agent testified yesterday. But the agent, Brian Murphy, testified in Brooklyn Federal Court that the fatwa remark was made as the sheik and an aide gave accounts of their activities that the agent said included contradictions, falsehoods and claims of failed memory. Mr. Murphy was testifying in the third week of the trial of the sheik, Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad, and the sheik's He interviewed the sheik and Mr. Zayed on an airplane as they were being extradited to the United States from Germany on Nov. 16, 2003. In those interviews, Mr. Murphy told the jurors, he confronted the men with statements suggesting an interest in financing jihad that both defendants had made during secretly recorded conversations in a Frankfurt hotel the previous January. Mr. Murphy testified that Sheik Moayad had claimed on the plane that because of his diabetes, "he was having a difficult time remembering" details and at times flatly denied statements on the tape about agreeing to give money to Al Qaeda and other groups.
Mr. Murphy, who supervised the entire investigation, said the sheik claimed that he had seen and been frightened by armed soldiers at the Sheraton hotel at the Frankfurt airport and "would say anything" during the meetings, which were recorded on hidden devices in his suite. Prosecutors have suggested that there were no soldiers at the hotel. Mr. Murphy testified that Mr. Zayed was caught separately in a series of contradictions. At first, Mr. Murphy said, Mr. Zayed had claimed that he had not been in the room when jihad was discussed and had been in the bathroom. Mr. Murphy said that when confronted with his statements from the Frankfurt tapes, Mr. Zayed "got extremely angry and said he'd rather die for Allah than cooperate with us."
