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| Undercover officer testifies in 2004 bomb plot case |
| 2006-05-18 |
| An undercover police officer testified yesterday that a Pakistani immigrant charged with plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station in 2004 had said two years earlier that he hoped Al Qaeda operatives would blow up New York City and "the American people." Prosecutors called the officer as a witness in United States District Court in Brooklyn in an effort to undermine the case presented by lawyers for the immigrant, Shahawar Matin Siraj, 23. Mr. Siraj, who testified in his own defense over the last two and a half days, and his lawyers have argued that he was entrapped by a paid police informant. The lawyers have contended that their client, whom they portrayed as an inept dupe, was not predisposed to commit an act of terrorism until he met the informant, Osama Eldawoody, 50, in late 2003. They have said the older man was the driving force behind the plot and inflamed Mr. Siraj with pictures, including some of American soldiers abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But yesterday, the officer, a slightly built man wearing a dark gray suit, a pale blue shirt and a luminous crimson tie, testified about a series of conversations he had with Mr. Siraj between 2002 and early 2003 in which he said the young man talked supportively about terrorism. The officer testified that Mr. Siraj had said that America would be attacked again soon. "The mission was not completed on 9/11," he reported Mr. Siraj saying, because "Wall Street was not attacked." The officer, who is expected to continue his testimony today, identified himself only by a pseudonym, Kamil Pasha, saying that he remains involved in undercover operations. The defendant had testified earlier that the man he knew as Kamil was of Bangladeshi descent, but the officer provided no details about his background and few about his work history. He said only that he had been an officer working undercover for about three and a half years and had never before testified in court. He said that he first met Mr. Siraj in the Islamic bookstore where the young man worked in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, in November 2002. The officer testified that in December 2002, he and Mr. Siraj discussed news reports that warned of five Al Qaeda operatives entering the United States illegally from Canada. "The defendant said he was happy that they were here and he hoped that they blew up the city and the American people," the officer said. The officer also testified that Mr. Siraj had defended suicide bombings in Palestine, saying they were acts of revenge committed by people whose family members had been raped and killed. "The defendant said that if anyone did that to his family, he would do the same thing, meaning a suicide bomb," the officer said. Mr. Siraj's lawyers, who rested their case after his testimony ended yesterday, had asked the judge to bar the officer's testimony, contending that the statements he would cite by Mr. Siraj were protected by the First Amendment, essentially as political views. But Judge Nina Gershon of United States District Court ruled that they were admissible to rebut Mr. Siraj's claim that he was induced by Mr. Eldawoody. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |