8 May 2001: Today the Court Reporter reissued the transcript for Day 40 to correct page numbers. This is now the corrected version.
7 May 2001
Source: Digital file from the Court Reporters Office, Southern District of
New York; (212) 805-0300.
This is the transcript of Day 40 of the trial, May 7, 2001.
See other transcripts: http://cryptome.org/usa-v-ubl-dt.htm
5687
1 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
2 ------------------------------x
3 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
4 v. S(7) 98 Cr. 1023
5
6 USAMA BIN LADEN, et al.,
7 Defendants.
8 ------------------------------x
9
New York, N.Y.
10 May 7, 2001
9:55 a.m.
11
12
13 Before:
14 HON. LEONARD B. SAND,
15 District Judge
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
5688
1 APPEARANCES
2 MARY JO WHITE
United States Attorney for the
3 Southern District of New York
BY: PATRICK FITZGERALD
4 KENNETH KARAS
PAUL BUTLER
5 Assistant United States Attorneys
6
SAM A. SCHMIDT
7 JOSHUA DRATEL
KRISTIAN K. LARSEN
8 MARSHALL MINTZ
Attorneys for defendant Wadih El Hage
9
ANTHONY L. RICCO
10 EDWARD D. WILFORD
CARL J. HERMAN
11 SANDRA A. BABCOCK
Attorneys for defendant Mohamed Sadeek Odeh
12
FREDRICK H. COHN
13 DAVID P. BAUGH
Attorneys for defendant Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-'Owhali
14
DAVID STERN
15 DAVID RUHNKE
Attorneys for defendant Khalfan Khamis Mohamed
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
5689
1 (In open court)
2 THE COURT: Mr. Schmidt had faxed me on May 4th that
3 his time computation is he's got 45 minutes left of the four
4 hours he requested, and so he will be allowed the 45 minutes.
5 Any reason not to bring in the jury?
6 (Pause)
7 MR. RUHNKE: Your Honor, while the jury is being
8 brought in.
9 THE COURT: Yes.
10 MR. RUHNKE: I received the government's response to
11 my Brady demand.
12 THE COURT: Yes.
13 MR. RUHNKE: I would like to have until Wednesday
14 morning to file a brief reply, if that's all right with your
15 Honor.
16 THE COURT: Yes, very well.
17 (Pause)
18 MR. FITZGERALD: Judge, while we're awaiting the
19 jury, with regard to Government Exhibit 6, which is a written
20 report by Agent Anticev concerning Mr. Odeh's statements, in
21 reviewing that statement we realized there were two areas that
22 needed to be redacted that we called to Mr. Ricco's attention.
23 He has agreed and he found an additional word, so we have
24 corrected the redactions.
25 Nothing has been added, just things have been taken
5690
1 out. But I just wanted to note that.
2 THE COURT: It is very important when the jury starts
3 deliberating that there is a set of exhibits in a condition in
4 which they can be sent into the jury upon request.
5 (Jury present)
6 THE COURT: Good morning.
7 THE JURY: Good morning.
8 THE COURT: Mr. Schmidt, you may resume your closing
9 argument on behalf of the defendant El Hage.
10 MR. SCHMIDT: Thank you, your Honor.
11 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
12 THE JURY: Good morning.
13 MR. SCHMIDT: I feel like I'm back at school.
14 Now, this is going to be my final opportunity to
15 speak with you. Obviously it's just a continuation from last
16 week.
17 Because of the great burden that the government has
18 on proving their case and every element beyond a reasonable
19 doubt, they get the benefit of going not just only first, but
20 also going last. While that's a great benefit, as jurors, you
21 have a very important job to do and I ask you to add a little
22 bit to that.
23 I have made some arguments to you based on reason and
24 rationale -- facts, lack of facts, evidence, lack of
25 evidence -- on Thursday, and I will continue to do it today so
5691
1 you will understand, hopefully, that my arguments hopefully
2 have made it clear to you, so when the government raises any
3 kind of point of evidence, any kind of argument, any kind of
4 inference, any kind of assumption, you should be able to know
5 what my response would have been if I had an opportunity to
6 respond to the government. And I ask you to raise that for
7 me, to raise that for Mr. El Hage, because we don't have that
8 opportunity.
9 And I ask you to ask one additional question relating
10 to the conspiracy charges against Mr. El Hage: When the
11 government raises another issue and they say that that proves
12 he joined in a conspiracy to murder Americans, ask yourself,
13 how does that really prove that? Because that's why we're
14 here, is because the government is asking you to make
15 assumptions, asking you to make leaps, asking you to connect
16 dots that they do not have.
17 They have also said a number of things of what proves
18 Mr. El Hage was a member of this global conspiracy to murder
19 Americans, and they cited a few things. One of them indicated
20 to you -- and I tried to show you that the evidence does not
21 show it's true -- that he was a payroll master of al Qaeda in
22 the Sudan. The government also has said to you that he was
23 the leader of the cell in Kenya. Therefore, he must have been
24 involved in this worldwide conspiracy over nine years to kill
25 Americans.
5692
1 Well, if you look at one of the government exhibits
2 carefully, it's a tape recording that has been translated as
3 GX208A-T, for the transcript, a call between what appears to
4 be Saif al Islam and Harun. In that, at the bottom of page 3,
5 Saif al Islam says, "How is our brother Mustafa?" meaning also
6 Abu Jihad. Harun says, "He is good, and he is the one who is
7 in charge after Mr. Karim was gone, may God have mercy on his
8 soul."
9 That means Karim is likely another name used by
10 Mr. Al Banshiri, unknown, clearly, to Mr. El Hage. No mention
11 of it. He is the only person that the government has alleged
12 died during this period of time. The government alleged that
13 he was a leader in Kenya and Tanzania.
14 Also, the important thing is this conversation takes
15 place in 19 -- I believe it's 1997 and Mr. Al Banshiri died in
16 1995, I believe it was. That means two years have gone by
17 with members of supposedly this worldwide conspiracy to murder
18 Americans without even having that information.
19 The government has alleged this worldwide conspiracy
20 to kill Americans by putting a little information here, a
21 little information here, and saying it's all tied up because
22 of Usama Bin Laden. And I'll get to that point, but what the
23 government has done is made allegations, and while the
24 government has the burden of proof, we have taken it upon
25 ourselves to show you where their allegations in many ways
5693
1 just simply not only is not proven but is simply wrong.
2 They made the allegation he was the payroll master.
3 That's wrong. They made the allegation that Mr. El Hage is
4 the leader of the Kenyan cell. That's wrong. They have made
5 the allegation that he was trying to bring Stinger Missiles
6 into Sudan for Somalia. We've shown the timing makes that
7 wrong. And if you recall even the testimony of Mr. Al Ridi
8 concerning the timing of it, Mr. El Hage made the connection
9 concerning the plane and he was done with it. He informed
10 Mr. Al Ridi that there were people going to be flying to Kenya
11 and he was done with it. He didn't have any more information.
12 The government did not show any more information, which leads
13 us up to the government claim that Mr. El Hage is setting up
14 the base for al Qaeda in Nairobi and that that's his role --
15 to be the facilitator. Not to be the facilitator for lawful
16 activity, for political activity, for helping Muslims, but for
17 being the facilitator specifically in a conspiracy to murder
18 Americans.
19 The government uses that word "facilitator," and
20 please be careful. The judge is going to inform you of what's
21 necessary is not facilitation, it's joining a conspiracy,
22 knowingly, willingly, purposefully, joining in the aims of
23 murdering Americans.
24 But when you're involved, indeed, if this is a
25 conspiracy at that time to murder Americans, we're talking
5694
1 about now at that time when Mr. El Hage is in Nairobi, not in
2 1998 when Harun comes down and buys, rents the house, where he
3 does it in a manner that is quieter, more secret; he doesn't
4 let anybody in; he doesn't want Kherchtou, who is a member of
5 al Qaeda, to come into his home, or this person Mustafa, who
6 we have heard so little about who is supposedly the leader of
7 the cell in Kenya. We know so little about where he lives,
8 what he does.
9 Now that's what a person who maybe is doing something
10 wrong is doing, keeping himself quiet, keeping himself hidden.
11 And whether he's doing that because of a criminal purpose or
12 non-criminal purpose, because he knows that if he's helping
13 Islamic militants in Somalia, that he's going to get thrown
14 out of jail in Kenya. And we know that that's true based on
15 Kherchtou's statement.
16 If you recall, he mentioned Sheik Bailala, a Muslim
17 opposition leader whose followers were devout Muslims who the
18 government opposed. And if you recall, there was a phone call
19 to the apartment where Kherchtou was living in, one phone
20 call. And that's because apparently Khalid al Fawwaz knew
21 Sheik Bailala from the time that Sheik Bailala was in Saudi
22 Arabia going to school. One phone call to that apartment, and
23 the next day the apartment was raided and everybody in the
24 apartment put in jail.
25 Now, of course Mr. Kherchtou couldn't know for a fact
5695
1 that that was the result of it, but there was no other
2 information concerning why that apartment was raided except
3 for the next day, after a conversation with Sheik Bailala,
4 everyone is in jail.
5 And many many of the Kenyan authorities have to be
6 paid off to take people out of jail, not because they
7 committed crimes, because they associated with a Kenyan
8 opposition leader. Remember what I talked to you about the
9 third world is not the United States. Do not compare what
10 goes on and the motivations of people in there as you would
11 react in here, in the United States.
12 But we don't have just simply a phone call to an
13 opposition leader or from an opposition leader at Wadih El
14 Hage's home, we have members of parliament calling him and him
15 calling them. Ministers, police officers, that's Mr. Salim
16 Kheir, letters written to the commissioner of police, letters
17 written to President Moi.
18 Mohamed Ali Odeh, Oudeh, who is using the telephones,
19 who is using the computer, who is using the fax machine. The
20 other people were doing business, the two guards Rashid and
21 Ali, in and out of the home, using the telephone, using the
22 fax machine for business. We don't just simply have business
23 activity and the non-governmental organizational activity on a
24 level simply to provide a front that there is really nothing
25 going on there, we have activity swirling all around. And the
5696
1 concept of running a terrorist cell whose goals are to murder
2 Americans and having all these people around, having them
3 access to your computer just doesn't make sense. Doesn't make
4 sense at all.
5 And if you compare the computer that is seized in
6 Wadih El Hage's house, there was a hidden file prepared by
7 Harun that Wadih El Hage obviously could never have seen
8 because he wasn't in when it was prepared and seized, what has
9 the government provided as evidence of a conspiracy to murder
10 Americans out of Wadih El Hage's computer? Nothing. Nothing
11 that they have shows any intent, any knowledge, any purpose to
12 kill Americans. But that doesn't mean others may have not had
13 computers that may have military tactics, tactics that reflect
14 the possibility of criminal activity.
15 We have the computer found at Mr. Anas al Liby the
16 government going to talk about, Ali Mohamed's computer, but we
17 don't have it in Wadih El Hage. Not because that's not his
18 role, that's because there's no evidence to show that he ever
19 joined, belonged, agreed, intended to be part of a conspiracy
20 to murder Americans.
21 And the fact that people would talk a little bit
22 carefully on the telephone after the incident with Sheik
23 Bailala and what's known in Kenya and that people might not
24 tell the full truth about their activities, that's not
25 unusual. Mr. Al Ridi, who's a government witness, who had
5697
1 nothing to hide, he was scared of the Egyptian government, not
2 testifying on behalf of Wadih El Hage but testifying on behalf
3 of the United States Government, and he was still frightened.
4 Sikander Juma's friends eliminated his name from the
5 telephone book, not that he had to do with anything wrong, but
6 to avoid any contact with the Kenyan and the American agents.
7 I believe on one of the transfers of money to Mr. al-'Owhali,
8 even that person who did nothing wrong whatsoever, whited out
9 some information.
10 So, please, don't view every single suspicious fact
11 as evidence of being part of a conspiracy to murder his fellow
12 Americans when you are in a place where it's important to
13 avoid dealing with police and agents who may be corrupt, when
14 you are doing something that their government may not like,
15 when you are associated with people and have been associated
16 with people who are on a disfavored list.
17 But what has been done by Mr. El Hage doesn't show
18 that he has a guilty conscience, that he is trying to hide the
19 knowledge to the Americans that he's been trying to kill them
20 for the last seven years. It shows a consciousness of
21 innocence, a consciousness of a pure heart, a heart that has
22 done nothing wrong.
23 When the government seized all of his material, he
24 told them where to find it. He told them it went to Ahmed
25 Tawhil. Obviously Ahmed Tawhil wasn't there anymore. What
5698
1 effort did the Americans make to seek the material and locate
2 the new office of Mercy International Relief Agency? None.
3 Because after the bombing when they wanted to locate this
4 public-filed agency, like that (snaps fingers), they found it,
5 just like they found Mr. Harun's home in the Comoros. He
6 helped them. He tried to help them get his material back
7 because he had no belief that there was anything in there to
8 indicate he did any criminal activity. Because he didn't.
9 He made himself available to speak to the agents.
10 The next day he went to the hotel. Not only did he go to the
11 hotel voluntarily, but without his mother-in-law. He brought
12 back Agent Coleman's notebook that he left at the house. Now,
13 that shows a person looking to work with the American
14 government, not a person who has been trying to murder them.
15 He kept the agents informed of his travel plans. He
16 went to the Grand Jury without an attorney. He testified. He
17 went back to Texas. He didn't run away. He didn't seek to
18 flee to Afghanistan or Brazil or any other place. He stayed
19 with his family in the place he felt his family had the best
20 chance to grow up educated -- in the free United States.
21 After the bombing he did not flee. After the bombing
22 he not only spoke with agents in his home, he went down to
23 their office to speak with them. He did everything that was
24 consistent with not being part of a conspiracy to murder
25 Americans.
5699
1 Now, one thing he has made it clear both in his
2 testimony in the Grand Jury and the documents found on his
3 telephone conversations that he is a devout Muslim, and one of
4 the things that we have learned here is that Islam puts the
5 responsibility of your acts on yourself. You have the
6 responsibility to make individual determinations and you must
7 live by that responsibility.
8 It's not a responsibility of who you associate with,
9 the telephone numbers you have, who you allowed to speak on
10 your telephone and use your telephone, to stay in your home,
11 it's not whether or not you have helped people who have
12 multiple goals, including helping Muslims that you share, it's
13 individual responsibility. And that's very similar to what
14 his Honor is going to instruct you in this court.
15 We're not here to determine the responsibility of
16 Harun or Usama Bin Laden, but let's take a look a little bit,
17 though, since the government has tried to make that
18 assumption, that he is responsible for what Usama Bin Laden
19 says or writes.
20 And we know the concepts, a few of the concepts
21 involved. I will discuss it only briefly. It's fatwah and
22 bayat, two concepts other than the basic tenet of Islam, of
23 personal responsibility and personal decision-making. Again,
24 the government relies on Mr. Al-Fadl for so much, and even
25 Mr. Al-Fadl's descriptions of some of these things make no
5700
1 sense. They differ from Mr. Kherchtou and they differ from
2 the imam.
3 He says that, in answer to a question, "If a person
4 in al Qaeda gave you an order to do something that you knew to
5 be haram or forbidden, would you have to do it?"
6 "Yes, because the scholars in al Qaeda, the scholars
7 in the group, they discuss that and they make a fatwah and
8 they say it's okay." And we know based on Mr. Kherchtou and
9 the imam that that's hogwash. That's not true. Mr. Kherchtou
10 says that not only is there the individual responsibility,
11 that the religious committee in al Qaeda didn't even have the
12 standing to issue fatwahs.
13 Mr. Kherchtou says that while he was in Afghanistan,
14 while he was in Nairobi and while he was in Sudan, before
15 Mr. Bin Laden went to Afghanistan, he heard no fatwahs. And
16 he would have heard fatwahs because he knew of people while he
17 was in Afghanistan and Nairobi who were going to Somalia. He
18 talked with them. Certainly Mr. Harun had no problem of
19 saying anything he wanted, but during that whole time, not a
20 mention of a fatwah.
21 Mr. Al-Fadl, if you accept what he says, there was a
22 fatwah per week on all sorts of issues. I ask you to reject
23 Mr. Al-Fadl's statements about fatwahs because it's not only
24 contradicted by Mr. Kherchtou, it's contradicted by common
25 sense.
5701
1 And the government says that Mr. Kherchtou, well, he
2 wouldn't have heard about it, he wasn't there very much.
3 Remember this: He was going back every couple of months for
4 two weeks or four weeks and he went to check on the people and
5 he went to the meetings. So he went to, during that period of
6 time in 1994 to 1993, dozens of meetings. He went to meetings
7 in Pakistan.
8 He was unable to identify the photograph of Jamal
9 Al-Fadl, and Jamal Al-Fadl told you he went there all the time
10 because it was mandatory. Kherchtou said it wasn't mandatory.
11 Mr. Al-Fadl went to every single meeting he was supposed to
12 because he said it was mandatory, and not once during that
13 time did Mr. Kherchtou see that man or recognize his
14 photograph.
15 He also said, Mr. Kherchtou, that he never saw Wadih
16 El Hage there during his time, that he went to the guesthouse,
17 he went to the Soba farm and he knows Wadih El Hage, he knows
18 him very well, and he never saw him at any of those meetings.
19 We also know that most of the speeches against
20 American policy really occurred in the public mosques because
21 the American policy as to many, many Muslims around the world
22 was wrong. And that was no surprise and that was part of it,
23 but as Mr. Kherchtou said, there's a difference between saying
24 that America is your enemy because of their foreign policy and
25 attacking them and trying to kill them.
5702
1 As to bayat, one, there's no proof whatsoever that
2 Mr. El Hage ever took bayat. He was an early person who
3 volunteered to go to Afghanistan even before the Americans
4 were involved. He was highly respected because he dedicated
5 part of his life on three different occasions to going there.
6 It would be almost an insult to demand that he take bayat,
7 having proved himself to be a trusted and caring Muslim.
8 He also didn't take training like Mr. Kherchtou or
9 Mr. Al-Fadl. So when I talk about bayat, I don't talk about
10 Mr. El Hage. But even if a person who took bayat can say, no,
11 that's not an Islam that is -- that is unIslamic, obviously a
12 person who is there because he is trustworthy, is there
13 because he has never taken a bayat or sworn allegiance clearly
14 can say no. And as Mr. Al-Fadhl again says that:
15 "And is your responsibility the ultimate
16 responsibility as a good Muslim to make that determination on
17 your own, that this is a proper fatwah?
18 "No. No."
19 And he goes on to that on page 942.
20 It is clear from the testimony of the imam and
21 Mr. Kherchtou that you must make that individual determination
22 if something is said that doesn't sound right to you and, as
23 Mr. Kherchtou said, that he would never agree if someone said
24 to him we're going to go kill innocents, he would never agree
25 to that, nor would most people in al Qaeda agree to that. And
5703
1 if you ask him to do something wrong, "I would say no."
2 Also importantly is that when he was told that he's
3 taking bayat, he could belong to no other organizations. Of
4 course that makes sense. If you are swearing allegiance to
5 one person, how could you have allegiance to other people as
6 well? One organization. If you belong to another one, you
7 leave it to join al Qaeda.
8 Mr. al-Fadl said everybody belonged to different
9 organizations. He mentioned all these people, but remember
10 only three photographs came in, or four photographs came in
11 under him. He has his own agenda. He says what he wants.
12 Everybody is al Qaeda. He tried to present this worldwide
13 conspiracy that just simply did not exist, and he added what
14 he wanted. And fortunately Mr. Kherchtou was there and
15 available to testify here to tell you especially what Al-Fadl
16 said was not true.
17 What he did tell you was that there were
18 disagreements. Not everybody accepted what Usama Bin Laden
19 said as correct. There were disagreements. Some of them may
20 have been over minor issues, but one of the things that
21 Al-Fadl tried to do, he tried to paint this secret, hidden
22 agenda of Usama Bin Laden, of being against what the Saudis
23 were doing and the Americans and wanted to kill them.
24 There was no secret agenda. As we put in under
25 stipulation WEHXS11, there are a series of six letters written
5704
1 by Mr. Bin Laden, to the Saudi royalty, to the clergy, to the
2 army, asking, requesting, demanding that they reform, they not
3 allow Americans to stay in there, they get the Americans out,
4 they do what's right for Islam.
5 Review these, please. They are available to you.
6 They are an exhibit and they will show you that the rhetoric
7 that he has in those declarations, in those letters are
8 somewhat similar to all of his writings. But there is no
9 violence in there, there is no demands for killing and death,
10 there is no question that everybody knew that Usama Bin Laden
11 is a Saudi citizen of prominence, lost his citizenship because
12 the Saudis took it away, he was in the Sudan because he
13 couldn't go back, that he opposed the Saudi government. That
14 was no surprise. Everybody knew it. And when he ranted or
15 yelled or argued rationally about why the Saudis are wrong,
16 everybody knew that that was his position. But there was no
17 position of going in and murdering Americans.
18 These documents were seized, among others, at the
19 home of Mr. Al Fawwaz, and what we know about that is that the
20 government has put in a few of the 1998 documents from him,
21 but they haven't put in the earlier ones. The earlier ones
22 show the ongoing, slow development of Mr. Bin Laden to become
23 more and more anti-Saudi government.
24 But even if he ends up against the Saudis, as his
25 1996 proclamation did, it doesn't mean Wadih El Hage either
5705
1 knew about it, joined in it, assisted in it, had anything to
2 do with it. It was just his next demand. And it was directed
3 solely at Saudi Arabia and the protection of the holy places,
4 and even though it affected the Americans because the American
5 troops were there, it was directed similarly to the Saudi
6 government.
7 And in Nairobi, Mr. El Hage wasn't, couldn't, didn't
8 do anything to help Mr. Bin Laden with his goals of getting
9 the Americans out, and certainly nothing to do with anything
10 about murdering Americans.
11 And the only thing that he is alleged to have brought
12 back are two documents: A very political Taliban report about
13 the Taliban. That is a historical and political document that
14 really has nothing to do with the United States, it has to do
15 with how he started the Afghani people. And it also has
16 nothing -- the Somalia report has nothing to do with the
17 Americans. It's about Somalia.
18 Is it something that the United States Government
19 opposes, the training of Somali Islamists, militant Muslims?
20 Of course they do. Is it against the United States policy to
21 support activist Muslims against more secular governments?
22 Absolutely. Is there a reason for Muslims who are helping
23 Somalis, Somali Muslims try to form a more Islamic country to
24 worry about Americans? Absolutely. To worry about Kenyans?
25 Absolutely. To worry about the Egyptian government?
5706
1 Absolutely. To worry about the Saudi Arabian government?
2 Absolutely. But does that provide the evidence that the
3 government wants you to convict a man for conspiring to murder
4 Americans? Absolutely not.
5 The government makes assumptions that Wadih El Hage
6 knew about it, that he agreed to it, that he participated in
7 it, that he intentionally and purposefully and knowingly
8 joined a conspiracy to kill Americans. As Mr. Kherchtou said,
9 well, that was wrong. And as Mr. Kherchtou said, that
10 especially in Afghanistan when he went back there, what he
11 said was not necessarily supported by the people of al Qaeda,
12 certainly not as non-members, and certain things changed.
13 And the fact that Mr. El Hage went to Pakistan to
14 visit and to sell stones, may have had some contact with some
15 people doesn't make him part of a conspiracy to kill
16 Americans. Because there is certainly no evidence of that,
17 not a single thing mentioned about Somalia during
18 Mr. Kherchtou's six months with Mr. El Hage in a way that
19 would cause one to believe that -- not about Somalia, not
20 about Americans, not even about Saudi Arabia.
21 Now, the government's case is built on assumptions, I
22 submit not reasonable, rational inferences where you can draw
23 a conclusion based on certain facts, as his Honor will
24 explain, but assumptions that require a leap, a jump over a
25 void of no evidence. Assumptions, not proof, about the
5707
1 existence of a nine-year-old conspiracy. Assumptions, not
2 proof, about Somalia. Assumptions and not proof about Harun
3 being a reliable teller of what occurred, while Fadl being a
4 reliable teller. Assumptions based on the conduct and
5 possibly intent of others, some of whom Mr. El Hage knew and
6 some that he didn't know.
7 They aren't giving you proof on what he did and what
8 he said, but what others did and what others said with the
9 assumption that he had to have agreed to do it. That's not
10 sufficient and, as the evidence has shown, that those
11 assumptions are simply wrong.
12 And I want to give you an example, one of the
13 examples, sort of microcosms, sort of a condensed version of
14 how the government presented its case, and that's presented in
15 Agent Miranda's testimony. The manner he testified on
16 cross-examination was calculated to put the image of Wadih El
17 Hage as a person of hatred against the United States because
18 the Americans were in Saudi Arabia. That's how he testified.
19 And he testified that when he asked about Usama Bin
20 Laden's hatred, that Mr. El Hage, in answering that question,
21 he often switched using "he" for Bin Laden and "we" when
22 describing the hatred of the United States. That's how he
23 tried to sell that to you.
24 But what we found out is that, one, Mr. El Hage was
25 open and honest about his disagreements with American foreign
5708
1 policy, with the treatment of Muslims and Palenstinians versus
2 the Israelis, his feelings that the Americans should not have
3 a presence there. That was a person talking with a clear
4 conscience a week or two weeks after the bombing, where there
5 was evidence of Mr. Bin Laden being involved in it and people
6 in Kenya being involved in it. And he spoke about that as
7 opposed to trying to hide his true feelings, not to make
8 himself a target.
9 We also learned that the "we" changes as on one
10 occasion when he was describing about having the money to be
11 able to live a life like a good Muslim, that Bin Laden had and
12 "we," all the other people, did not. We also learned that the
13 word "hatred" wasn't Mr. El Hage's word, it was the word of
14 Agent Miranda.
15 We learned about the true believing Muslim. Not only
16 was "true believing Muslim" used to describe that any true
17 believing Muslim believes that the U.S. should be driven out
18 of the Saudi Peninsula because the Koran has reserved the
19 Saudi Peninsula only for Muslims, he also used it, which Agent
20 Miranda didn't talk about and it took a while to get out on
21 cross-examination because he didn't remember the use of that
22 word until he had to review his notes, that a true
23 believing -- withdrawn. He was asked by me, I asked Agent
24 Miranda: "You asked him," meaning Mr. El Hage, "would you
25 support Bin Laden if you learned of his involvement in the
5709
1 bombing; isn't that right?" And the answer, "Yes, sir," that
2 he asked Mr. El Hage that question. "Right."
3 "And do you recall him telling you that, as a true
4 believing Muslim, I follow the guidance of the Koran and not
5 people; if Bin Laden was involved, it was mistake; that Bin
6 Laden would be wrong in conducting such an act because there
7 was no guidance for it in the Koran and I would not support
8 him?"
9 "That's correct, sir." Agent Miranda said that
10 indeed Mr. El Hage said that. "He said that, yes, sir."
11 He also indicated he would not support Mr. Bin Laden
12 if he learned that he was involved, that he did not have the
13 right to attack innocents. He doesn't remember who used the
14 word, if it was his word or not.
15 But what we have here is a clear picture, and even
16 Mr. Kherchtou said that killing innocents -- of course,
17 notwithstanding how he got involved -- is really a no-brainer.
18 There's no support about that in the Koran under these
19 circumstances, no. And Mr. El Hage made it clear he did not
20 support the position. And it wasn't in a manner that he was
21 trying to hide his true feelings, it was in a manner that he
22 expressed his true feelings, his opposition to American policy
23 that is just everyone's right in our country to do so, and he
24 did so as an American.
25 And he answered the questions about his beliefs at a
5710
1 time when all of the United States, if not the world, was
2 looking upon Muslims, especially ones who wanted the American
3 troops out of Saudi Arabia, looking at them as possible
4 terrorists. And he didn't avoid it, he admitted it. But he
5 told him what his feelings were. Yes, he wanted them out.
6 Yes, the Saudi should get them out. But you don't kill
7 innocent people. You don't do what Bin Laden did.
8 Now, there's one other example that shows the
9 assumptions made -- more than one example, but I want to
10 finish with one example that shows the government in 1997 was
11 making assumptions about Wadih El Hage. In 1991 -- excuse me,
12 in 2001 they're asking to you make the same assumption, and
13 it's wrong. I'm going to play a very short piece of tape, and
14 I want you to listen to the voice of Mr. El Hage and the voice
15 of the agent and how they're talking and see who
16 misunderstands who.
17 (Tape played)
18 MR. SCHMIDT: This agent is surprised that Mr. El
19 Hage is telling him he's flying on El Al, the Israeli
20 airlines, because they just simply make assumptions about
21 Wadih El Hage, not because what they really know about Wadih
22 El Hage, but because he worked for Bin Laden, that he has
23 friends and associates who are Muslims who are helping the
24 devout Muslims in Somalia fight the bandits and the warlords,
25 that he wants to help the Muslims in Tajikistan and Bosnia,
5711
1 that he opposes the American support of Israel in the manner
2 that they do and they don't treat the Palenstinians correctly.
3 And because of that, to the agents, to the United
4 States Government, he must be an Arab terrorist who wants to
5 kill Americans. And Bin Laden talks about Ismailis and Jews
6 as well while they misunderstand him, because what he is is a
7 caring, devout Muslim, who cares about his fellow Muslims but
8 cares about his family and cares about himself and wants to go
9 back to America and would prefer going on the Saudi airlines
10 because he's not paying three times the price to fly American
11 Airlines. He'll go on El Al if he has to, and he doesn't even
12 consider, until later, when he is informed that, you can have
13 trouble because you're from Lebanon, you're from a Muslim
14 country.
15 Ladies and gentlemen, we're here because of
16 assumptions about Wadih El Hage. We're here because the
17 government assumes he's the type of person who would murder
18 Americans because Harun worked for him, he had communications
19 and worked for Mr. Bin Laden, he supports much of what Mr. Bin
20 Laden did, but he does not support the killing and murdering
21 of innocent people and there is nothing in the evidence that
22 should change your mind.
23 I ask you, on this very difficult case, uphold the
24 burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond a reasonable
25 doubt, before you can say that Mr. El Hage is a person who has
5712
1 agreed, conspired, intended to kill Americans. I ask you to
2 pause, I ask you to review what the government says proves
3 that, and I ask you to come back with the verdict of not
4 guilty.
5 Thank you.
6 THE COURT: Thank you, Mr. Schmidt.
7 We'll take a five-minute recess.
8 (Recess)
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
5713
1 THE COURT: Mr. Ricco, you asked for three and a half
2 hours.
3 MR. RICCO: Your Honor, we have allotted that amount
4 of time but I don't think it will be three and a half hours.
5 THE COURT: I never complain about brevity but I do
6 like keeping people to the maximum they requested.
7 (Jury present)
8 THE COURT: We will next hear from Mr. Ricco on
9 behalf of the defendant Odeh.
10 MR. RICCO: Good morning, your Honor. Ladies and
11 gentlemen. First, on behalf of Ms. Babcock, Mr. Herman, Mr.
12 Wilford and even Mohamed Odeh, we would like to thank you all
13 for paying attention to the case all the way through. From
14 time to time I would sort of look out the side of my eyes to
15 get a sense of whether or not you were still paying attention,
16 and most of you have been.
17 Now I am going to talk for the next two days about
18 Mohamed Odeh -- that's not going to happen. Let me tell you
19 this. I have this big notebook full of notes, and we spent
20 the whole weekend working on a computer disk so that we could
21 show you, you know, where somebody said this in the record and
22 show you this picture, and we were even up this morning, what,
23 about 6:00, trying to get this thing to work, and guess what,
24 it's not working. So that's OK. You know, I'm a true
25 believer that everything happens for a reason.
5714
1 I'm sort of glad that we had an opportunity not to
2 respond directly behind the fine summation that Mr. Karas
3 gave, because I think we would have spent too much time saying
4 to you, you know, Mr. Karas is a good lawyer, but he twisted a
5 word here and he twisted a word there, and showing you charts
6 where the witnesses didn't say this and didn't say that. I'm
7 not going to do that -- not that much. Instead, I want to
8 talk to you in my closing remarks about my collective thoughts
9 about this case. Those thoughts developed as the case
10 proceeded and unfolded.
11 I will tell you this, that my primary concern in this
12 case was what your expressions would be after you saw the
13 videotape. So as the videotape was playing, I was sitting
14 here watching, and I saw some of you react with your hands
15 over your mouth. Most of you reacted with revulsion and
16 disgust at the horror that was depicted there. Many of the
17 people who are here today, seated in the audience, are victims
18 or relatives of victims of that crime. I was concerned
19 whether or not as jurors you could survive watching that video
20 and still keep an open mind. My basis for that was a simple
21 one: It's hard for me or anybody else. When confronted with
22 that type of evidence, we all react viscerally to it.
23 So I thought over the weekend what would I say to
24 you. Where would I start. How would I find a place to talk
25 to you about Mohamed Odeh. I will tell you this. The best
5715
1 place to start is where the government says its proof is.
2 What I would like for you to do, rather than get involved in
3 the minutia of who said this, where they said it, what page it
4 was, how it contradicts this page and that page, I want you to
5 stay with some themes in this case when you go back in the
6 room to deliberate. The themes will take you to the
7 testimony, to the letters, to the documents, and you can see
8 it for yourself.
9 The government says that Mohamed Odeh was the
10 technical adviser to the bombing. Right? That's what
11 Mr. Karas told us, and the evidence of that, according to
12 Mr. Karas, is Mr. Odeh's statement that he gave to Agent
13 Anticev, who is also present today, seated in the back row,
14 over the 13 days he was held in communicado in Kenya. And
15 what Mr. Karas says is that Mr. Odeh danced with the truth,
16 danced around the truth. There is no evidence in this case
17 that Mr. Odeh even knows how to dance. All the evidence in
18 this case reveals that he is a man who speaks truthfully. I
19 don't say that as rhetoric.
20 This is what I want you to do. You take every
21 letter, every document that was seized from his house. Take
22 it in the back and put it on the table and start going through
23 that stuff. Not only the stuff that the government put in but
24 the stuff that we put in. You start going through the letters
25 to his family, the tapes and what not, and you see if that
5716
1 doesn't reflect the mind set of a man who dances or the mind
2 set of a man who handles and can deal with the truth.
3 I want you to remember something, and that is this:
4 That Mr. Karas says his flight and being with others proves he
5 is guilty, along with other evidence. He slips that in the
6 back. The judge is going to instruct you on the law. I am
7 not going to say no words on the law. But the judge will
8 explain to you how you deal with the evidence of one's
9 association, and I submit to you that the association does not
10 establish guilt. Physical evidence is what the government
11 spoke about. This was the trump card for the government.
12 This was the piece that got everyone on the jury looking at
13 Mohamed Odeh a little differently -- at least that was my
14 impression. What the government said was Mr. Odeh used a fake
15 passport. You using a fake passport, you know you doing
16 something wrong, right? And his clothing. The clothing had
17 PETN and TNT in it. Very important.
18 Mr. Karas also said that the tape letter and the
19 diagram -- that diagram. Where is it? That diagram shows
20 that Mr. Odeh is guilty. We blew it up big. This is the only
21 thing that -- I am sorry, we enlarged it.
22 (Laughter)
23 MR. RICCO: Excuse me, your Honor. That diagram,
24 that's it. Got you. That's what the government said, right?
25 When you look at that diagram at first blush, you sit back and
5717
1 you say they got him, there it is.
2 Mr. Wilford is going to handle a part of the
3 summation. Mr. Wilford is going to handle the forensic
4 evidence and that document. I am going to come back at the
5 end and wrap things up. I submit to you that one of the great
6 aspects of this country is that everybody charged with a crime
7 gets a lawyer. Some get more than one. But they are entitled
8 to a lawyer. And we get to ask questions about this document.
9 Like, for example, where it came from, who wrote it, is it
10 dated. How does it compare with the other documents.
11 Remember the ampersand and all the rest of it, that they can
12 prove something from an ampersand. Nobody stick this in the
13 face of an expert, you know, we found some books in the house,
14 why don't we compare that to that. Mr. Wilford is going to
15 handle that. That's it from the government's case. That's
16 what they said proved their case. What we are saying to you
17 is that the evidence in the case, all of it, every single
18 piece of it, down to the nanogram of TNT and PETN that was
19 found on his clothes, Mr. Odeh's clothes, do not establish his
20 guilt.
21 I want to share with you a story. There was a person
22 who testified in this trial. He was a young, nice-looking
23 fellow. He said he had delivered money for Al Qaeda secretly.
24 He didn't know who it was, he took money around. So he is
25 associated with Al Qaeda, right? He said I went and
5718
1 negotiated the contract for the house that was used to build
2 the bomb. OK. He said he was present at the bomb factory the
3 night before the bombing, but he was kept in the dark
4 downstairs. He didn't know what was going on. He said he
5 drove the family of Harun to the airport. You know, Harun
6 escaped, took his family with him. He helped get the family
7 out. Very important role, I would think, right? You going to
8 blow up a building in a country and you going to sneak on off?
9 I think it might be a good idea to take your wife and kids
10 with you, right? That's what he did, and this fellow helped
11 him. He said after Harun left he went and had the house
12 cleaned up. To try to get rid of what? That PETN and TNT,
13 whatever. He said after that, he cleaned the truck up that
14 was used to deliver the bomb supplies. He also told you that
15 he planted a piece of evidence in the house to divert the case
16 to somebody else and away from himself.
17 Remember that testimony? You know who I'm talking
18 about? I'm not talking about Mohamed Odeh, the technician,
19 right? I'm not talking about the guy who is sitting here at
20 this table this morning. I'm talking about a guy came in
21 through that door. His name was Sikander Juma.
22 He also told you something that was very important.
23 He said that when he first started interviewing with agents he
24 didn't tell them that he planted the evidence or had somebody
25 plant it, whichever story you feel more comfortable. He was
5719
1 dancing with the truth. Right? He was trying to make a scene
2 like this book belonged to somebody else. Remember that? And
3 when you look at the involvement of him and you say to
4 yourself, well, wait a minute, how come he's not sitting at
5 this table, well, the difference is, Mr. Odeh is a member of
6 Al Qaeda, Mr. Sikander isn't.
7 What's important, when I started this case I said to
8 you it is very important, it's crucial that you make a
9 distinction between inferences that are reasonable, they sound
10 reasonable, and inferences that are accurate. Again, looking
11 at this chart, what does it accurately depict? Not what does
12 it reasonably depict -- a circle, some boxes and a road, bomb
13 blast -- a term that Mr. Karas used, no bomb expert, he said
14 bomb blast cone. You say that sounds reasonable. Then you
15 start seeing pages ripped out. What happened to that page?
16 Whatever. Mr. Wilford will deal with it. The point is this,
17 the inferences should be accurate, not just reasonable,
18 because Mr. Sikander Juma testified to you that he had nothing
19 to do with the bombing of the embassy and he did the thing
20 with the book because he was afraid that his association with
21 others would result in people believing that he was guilty.
22 So given the world that we live in, where people prejudge and
23 make associations, he decided to help himself by planting
24 evidence and putting it somewhere else.
25 I just wanted to share that story with you, that
5720
1 testimony with you about the case. And I want to just take a
2 couple of minutes and look at an overview. But before that,
3 remember when I started I told you about who Mr. Odeh was?
4 Let's think back. Let's go back to January. I told you that
5 Mr. Odeh was a young man who left his college studies to go
6 fight jihad in Afghanistan. He was an engineering student. I
7 told you that the money that his father sent him for school,
8 he does what a lot of young people do with the money their
9 parents send him. He used it for what he wanted to do. And
10 he consulted with some scholars and he decided to go and
11 follow his conscience to Afghanistan. I told you that he was
12 a person trained -- he's not denying it. No problem. You
13 going to go to a war, you better be trained if you expect to
14 come home. He was trained in Afghanistan, trained in firearms
15 and everything else a person needs to be trained with in a
16 war. He survived Afghanistan. And when he decided to leave,
17 when things changed, he thought long and hard about joining Al
18 Qaeda. He had a concern. He said I don't want to join a
19 group that would require me to follow orders blindly.
20 Now, some men who go to war -- and women -- they
21 don't care what the orders are. Our history is replete with
22 men and women who have gone to war and have committed
23 tremendous acts of barbarism against people, right here in our
24 own nation. It was in the papers recently about something
25 that happened.
5721
1 The concept that somebody who is Islamic would have
2 those same moral scruples, is it foreign to you? That's why
3 we called Imam Siraj, because many of us don't know people in
4 the Islamic world. What Mr. Odeh said was, I believe in what
5 I'm doing, I sacrificed my studies to do it. But I can see
6 what's going on here. Got a lot of different kind of players
7 here. You saw some on the witness stand. I'm going to try to
8 find a group where I can fulfill my religious beliefs to do
9 good for people who are Muslim all over the world. That's
10 where he started, and that's the trick that they used to get
11 him out of Kenya at the end. That's me saying it was a trick.
12 That's my view of the evidence.
13 Mr. Odeh took bayat, and I told you straight up he's
14 a soldier. And you look at him. He looks like a soldier. He
15 watches everything. He takes notes. He's smiling sometimes,
16 serious at others. He is a person that I said few Americans
17 get to meet. You would meet him on a battlefield somewhere, a
18 legitimate battlefield. He has no shame in that. But there
19 are many men who fight wars who don't hate their enemies, who
20 don't shoot people in the back. Therefore many men who do
21 tremendous acts of bravery in the battlefield. They save
22 their enemy. They bring them to safe havens. Many men. And
23 what is in them? What is instilled in an individual that
24 would do that? It's your religious upbringing. It's your
25 moral values. Right?
5722
1 Some people will see an older person like Miss Allen
2 walking down the street. And Miss Allen is hobbling with her
3 cane, as usual. And her bag drops. And Miss Allen,
4 struggling so much just to get from one point to the next, is
5 not paying attention to the bag. And there's a lot of people
6 who will sit back and go, hm, opportunity. There are other
7 people would say, Miss, you dropped your bag. Of course we
8 are talking about someone more serious than someone dropping
9 the bag. But the state of mind is the same. It's a righteous
10 state of mind. So the government is right. Islam is not on
11 trial. What is Islamically correct is not on trial.
12 Mr. Odeh's state of mind, his intentions is on trial. And his
13 records and his phone calls and his taped notes to his wife
14 give you an insight into what? His state of mind.
15 He comes and he goes to Somalia and from Somalia he
16 goes into Kenya. The events lead him up to traveling to
17 Pakistan and being arrested. The government, if we go back
18 and look at the overview, the statements, the physical
19 evidence, the diagram, etc., the statement, according to the
20 government, shows that Mr. Odeh was dancing with the truth.
21 Government's Exhibit 6 is 34 pages, a single-spaced,
22 typewritten account of what Mr. Odeh told Agent Anticev. And
23 we know that he told him more, because Agent Anticev told us
24 that. He said he kept notes and that he made that statement
25 from the notes, and he told us that there were many things
5723
1 that were kind of left out and some things weren't included,
2 and we talked about some of it during the trial.
3 But you have to remember something. The FBI decided
4 not to tape these interviews. It's the FBI policy. OK. All
5 right. They didn't videotape it. That's their policy.
6 That's OK too, because their techniques are not on trial
7 either. But the evidence is on trial. So just because they
8 say they didn't want to do it or didn't do it don't make it
9 right. So when a person comes in here and starts explaining
10 to you the subtleties of what people are saying, oh, you need
11 that tape. Oh, yes, you need that video. That stuff is
12 helpful. Kherchtou told you when he was being interviewed,
13 that agency, whoever they were, from whatever country they
14 were from, they had a tape on, to record what and how he was
15 saying. Because this typewritten document is a reflection
16 back. He prepared it on the 31st of August, six days after he
17 left and 15 some odd days before the interview started.
18 He also asked him hypothetical questions and showed
19 him disturbing photographs. For example, it's not FBI policy
20 to take -- well, it's FBI policy not to use a tape, but it's
21 good FBI policy to show a person a picture of bomb victims to
22 get them to start talking. That's the policy. You have to
23 ask yourself, what's the purpose of the hypothetical
24 questions? Agent Anticev said it was to get him to start
25 talking. If you check out the report, the hypothetical
5724
1 questions don't come till page 25. So either the hypothetical
2 questions should have been at the beginning to get him to
3 start talking or he wasn't talking for the first 25 pages.
4 But as you go through his document, you will see that he
5 talked about the same stuff every day that he was there, in
6 and out all over again.
7 It is significant for everyone to realize that
8 Mohamed Odeh was in communicado. Let me break in communicado
9 down. Mohamed Odeh was kept without a lawyer, without being
10 able to see his friends, without being able to see his family
11 for 13 days. Anybody got a problem with that? No. You know
12 you don't. Because you wouldn't care if Mr. Magoo caught the
13 right people as long as they were caught. Right? Right? He
14 was kept 13 days in communicado, separated from his wife, his
15 family and his friends, and he gave his consent.
16 In addition to the 13 days he was kept in communicado
17 in Kenya, he was kept seven days in communicado in Pakistan.
18 Lovely place to be kept in communicado, for seven days there.
19 Do you get disoriented? What's the purpose of it? Is it to
20 extract statements? And when it doesn't work you start asking
21 hypothetical questions, well, if I can't get it this way, let
22 me try this way? Is that what the purpose is? Ultimately it
23 is for you to decide how reliable his statement is.
24 I submit to you, when you go in the back don't do
25 what the government did, let's focus on this paragraph and
5725
1 that -- take the whole statement and read it from front to
2 back, and read it more than once. Because I will tell you,
3 each and every one of you, that every time you read that
4 statement you find out something new about Mohamed Odeh. You
5 find out small facts about him.
6 I submit to you that Mohamed Odeh gave a truthful
7 account of his actions in detail. I submit that to you
8 because his statement is verified in every way. Each piece of
9 evidence in this case tells you that Mohamed Odeh was telling
10 the truth. Everything from his travel to Afghanistan, owing
11 his father the money, where they later find the letter in Witu
12 where he was talking to his dad about the money in school nine
13 years ago -- that's a heck of a son to say dad, I'm going to
14 pay you back the thousand dollars from nine years ago -- to
15 his decision to make bayat with Al Qaeda. It was all
16 verified.
17 And the government, I submit to you, is having it
18 both ways. Because, see, they look over in the corner at
19 Mr. El Hage and they say you know what, El Hage is guilty,
20 because El Hage had an opportunity to help the government
21 investigate this case and he went in there and lied. That's
22 what they tell you. And he lied and he slowed down the
23 investigation, he's wrong, he's unAmerican I think somebody
24 said, or something like that -- or somebody said that. I
25 don't know if the government said that. I think somebody
5726
1 responded to the government -- excuse me, Mr. Karas. What
2 they said was that he had a choice between his allegiance to
3 America and his allegiance to Al Qaeda, and he picked what?
4 Al Qaeda, according to the government.
5 Now let's look at Mohamed Odeh's 35-page statement.
6 Mr. Odeh also was at the threshold. He had to decide. Agent
7 Anticev told you, we gave him an opportunity to have a lawyer.
8 We wanted to find out about it. A pause was taken. Mr. Odeh
9 came up with a solution himself: Can I talk to the Americans
10 alone? No, not really. Go back over the testimony. Mr. Odeh
11 is coming up with, well, how can we work this out? And Agent
12 Anticev tells you that ultimately Mohamed Odeh decides to
13 speak to the agents.
14 When he was confronted at that crossroad between,
15 quote/unquote, helping the investigation or his allegiance to
16 Al Qaeda, what path did he choose? Take a look at the
17 evidence. And if he's wrong for doing what he did, how can he
18 be wrong for doing what he did? Wrong means guilty. The way
19 you make it work is that you say he was dancing with the
20 truth. Take it in the back. Go through it. And tell me the
21 name of this dance. Because what you going to find is that
22 this statement is verified by many, many small aspects of the
23 case.
24 I will tell you one. In his statement Mr. Odeh says,
25 well, I knew two Ubaidahs. Agent Anticev showed him a
5727
1 photograph. That's Banshiri. He was the boss. But when I
2 was back in the camp, there was another Ubaidah. He was a
3 bomb instructor. That's a little detail. Who confirmed that?
4 Kherchtou. Kherchtou told you that when he went to the camp
5 he had a guy that he ran with called -- I forgot his name
6 right now. But he ultimately became a bomb instructor, and
7 his name was Ubaidah. And Kherchtou told you that there were
8 Ubaidahs, one who was an instructor who was his friend at the
9 camps, and the Ubaidah Banshiri that he later found out.
10 Mr. Mohamed told you the same thing. He wasn't dancing on the
11 truth about that. Little small points.
12 So his statement, I submit to you, we submit to you,
13 is not evidence of his guilt in this case. I don't care what
14 you call it. Go through it.
15 Flight with others. The evidence will show that
16 Mr. Odeh's flight from Kenya was orchestrated by someone other
17 than himself. Nobody disputes that. He wanted to stay.
18 Nobody disputes that. The evidence in this case shows that it
19 was through a trick, telling him he had to go back and confer,
20 that they got the guy who somebody had to have some prescient
21 knowledge of. You don't want Mohamed Odeh in Kenya. Get him
22 out. Why? And why do I say that? Because the evidence shows
23 that by 1998 you had a new breed of people in the mix.
24 Remember the young hotheads? Abu Jihad, son of jihad? Harun?
25 These guys are now moving. He, Mr. Odeh, is a purist. He's
5728
1 living in a mud hut in the middle of nowhere with his Koran
2 and his wife and his child. He's not living in a fancy villa,
3 driving a car, cell phone, or satellite phones, fax, computers
4 and all the rest of that. By 1998 he's a problem. He's a
5 pain in the side. They want him out and they take him out.
6 He is a member, and he did associate with others who
7 did travel. He left with them, some of them. But his flight
8 doesn't establish guilt. His association with them does not
9 establish guilt.
10 I want you to remember that he was a member of Al
11 Qaeda, and this is important, because the government is kind
12 of having it both ways. They are kind of mixing the word Al
13 Qaeda with the conspiracy in Count 1. You got to be clear.
14 The conspiracy in Count 1 is not an Al Qaeda conspiracy. The
15 conspiracy in Count 1 is a conspiracy to kill Americans
16 wherever you find them. That means in the jury box, as
17 administrators, as judges, as lawyers. Children on the
18 street. Wherever you can find 'em, kill them. That's what
19 Count 1 charges, anywhere in the world, kill 'em. And what
20 the government has to prove to you is not that Mohamed Odeh
21 associated with Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda traveled out of Nairobi.
22 The government has to prove to you that he agreed to kill them
23 anywhere and everywhere that he can find them. And he talked
24 about that in his statement also.
25 His religious beliefs brought him to Al Qaeda, but
5729
1 even Mr. Fadhl had to admit that Bin Laden twisted religious
2 principles to justify acts of violence. Let me say that
3 again. Fadhl testified that Bin Laden twisted religious
4 principles to justify acts of violence. Many members of Al
5 Qaeda, including Mr. Odeh, opposed taking action that was not
6 supported by the Koran, the Hadith and the principles of
7 Islam. What I submit to you is that his association with Al
8 Qaeda is based on his religious beliefs, and he did not join
9 Bin Laden in twisting religious principles to satisfy acts,
10 justify acts of violence. And all them fatwahs that came into
11 evidence, and the CNN interview, in one of those interviews
12 you heard Bin Laden himself saying that these acts are not
13 from our religion but we're doing it because that's the only
14 way that you listen, Americans, we giving you back your own
15 medicine. He doesn't say there is a religious basis for it.
16 He says just the opposite. Imam Siraj took the stand. One
17 question. Is there any religious authority for the killing of
18 innocent women and children? People object, whatever.
19 Answer, of course not.
20 Physical evidence. I told you that Mr. Wilford will
21 go into that. The tapes and other documents, I've said that.
22 I've talked about Mohamed Odeh. I am going to move on. I
23 just talked about the issue of membership and it's very
24 important, because the government has to prove membership in
25 this conspiracy. They don't just get to stand up here and
5730
1 wave the flag, come on, we all Americans, we know what to do.
2 Because the government stands up here on one side of their
3 mouth and says I'm appealing to your common sense. But
4 they're really saying prove guilt by association. And they
5 say that in the absence of evidence. And when the government
6 comes up behind us, Mr. Fitzgerald comes up behind us and he
7 is talking to you about Mohamed Odeh, think to yourself, point
8 to the evidence, what evidence supports that.
9 I want you to remember this also about the membership
10 and association. Ladies and gentlemen, forgive me for not
11 flowing. I would like to be able to talk to you much faster
12 and a lot more comprehensively but it's a lot of stuff. Quite
13 frankly, I don't see how Ken Karas was able to do this for the
14 time he was able to do it. It is very difficult. I want you
15 to remember small parts, because I'm a great believer in the
16 small things. You know, remember Kherchtou -- when we talk
17 about membership and association, remember Fadhil traveling to
18 Kenya with his wife? I know he was on the stand for a long
19 time. But one of the things Fadhl told you, and the purpose
20 of me sharing this with you, I think it highlights this point
21 about membership, and you can't infer knowledge because me and
22 you happen to be together. I want to go to the evidence.
23 Remember Fadhil said there came a time when he got on a plane
24 and flew into Kenya. They took his wife. They give him an
25 envelope. He said nobody told me what it was about, but he
5731
1 assumed that him and his wife were going to stay in Kenya. He
2 said he met a person at the airport -- it wasn't Mr. Odeh --
3 and they drove him somewhere. The person got out the car,
4 came back and told him, go to Pakistan. He took his wife,
5 went back to the airport, got on the plane and went to
6 Pakistan.
7 Now, I'm smiling because most of us who are married
8 know that would be a very difficult task to accomplish. You
9 moved your wife and family all the way to Kenya to tell them
10 to go back to the airport to get on the plane to go to
11 Pakistan? And he says I didn't know what it was about, but I
12 was a member, I did it. Did you believe that? I don't know
13 if it's true or not. Is it possible? It's possible. OK.
14 So that highlights my point, because a lot of you
15 will say, Mr. Odeh was at the hotel, come on, what do they
16 talk about, what do Muslim people talk about when they get
17 together other than blowing up buildings, things like this.
18 They don't have all these conversations about their wife and
19 kids and family circumstances and things like that. Right?
20 So I raise this point.
21 The other point with Kherchtou took place Ali Amriki
22 and Hamza Liby, and the other fellow. He says that they were
23 in his apartment and they had all of this equipment set up,
24 and he said, you know, I assume that they were doing some kind
25 of surveillance because they had a camera, you know, the
5732
1 developer -- very smart. Right? He was assuming. And it was
2 the surveillance instructor from the camps. He says these
3 guys are taking pictures, they doing something. I don't know
4 if it's a drill, I don't know if it's real, but I know they're
5 doing something. But you cannot take from that that
6 Mr. Kherchtou joined them in what they were doing unless he
7 shares the same intent. He's got to know. And if he knows
8 and he does it, he's guilty. But Mr. Kherchtou told you I
9 didn't know that they were looking at the American Embassy.
10 Do you believe him? Do you? Do you think he was lying to
11 you? Government witness. Wasn't my witness. He was either
12 telling you the truth or he was lying.
13 Sikander, I told you about him. Traveling, moving
14 around, getting a house, taking people to the country,
15 cleaning up the scene. He said he didn't know. Do you see a
16 pattern here? Do you see a pattern here? Kherchtou said that
17 he was in Kenya in August of 1998, that he went out looking
18 for his friend Harun, and he said he ultimately found Harun,
19 and that they spent some time together. These were within
20 days of the bombing. He said Harun has some guys around him
21 that he never saw before. That's what his testimony said. I
22 didn't know these guys that were around Harun. So it wasn't
23 Saleh, must have been some other guys. Wasn't Mohamed Odeh,
24 the bomb consultant, because he knows Mohamed Odeh. He knows
25 him as Marwan, a guy he believes was in Somalia. You can
5733
1 point out over there and say I saw Mohamed Odeh running around
2 with Saleh a couple of days of the bombing. You can say to
3 yourself was Kherchtou's associations, his travel, his contact
4 with the people of Al Qaeda around the 5th and 6th of August,
5 does that make him guilty? If he shared the criminal intent
6 it does. But if he didn't, it does not. Do you think that he
7 was telling the truth when he said that he didn't have
8 anything to do with the bombing? Same thing for Sikander
9 Juma. Remember Tawhil he was afraid to be seen with Kherchtou
10 after the bombing. Remember he ran into him at the hotel?
11 Tawhil was nervous, upset, he didn't want to be seen with or
12 have anything to do with Al Qaeda. The association is
13 powerful.
14 I want to skip through. I want to skip through a
15 lot. I want you to bear with me. I want to share a point
16 with you and it might hurt somebody. But you know how life
17 is. When I was making the point to you about the tape
18 recorder or the videotape -- this is very important, because
19 sometimes it's not what we say, it's how we say it. That's a
20 lesson that all of us learn from when we this big. When those
21 devices are on we capture that. Mr. Karas pointed out to us
22 how Fadhl answered questions certain ways and he used the term
23 we. He is focusing in on the subtleties of what a person
24 says, not so much what but how they say it, how they
25 expressing themselves. Remember Agent Miranda? Agent Miranda
5734
1 said that he interviewed El Hage and showed him a picture.
2 And after the picture was shown to him there was a smirk. You
3 remember the testimony about that? And I asked him, what kind
4 of smirk was it? Because there's a lot of different kind of
5 smirks. And he said the smirk was, he's a fool.
6 Now, what I submit to you, I want you to keep that in
7 mind as we go through these points. The government says that
8 Mohamed Odeh was the technical adviser to the bombing. Let's
9 start from the basic proposition. One, what evidence is it
10 that he agreed to participate in the bombing? The government
11 said he was a prominent member of Al Qaeda. They used the
12 word prominent. They used the word prominent because they
13 wanted to influence you, just like people of prominence do.
14 Prominence means possessing or exercising influence, a person
15 who has indirect power over others through wisdom, force or
16 character. That's what a person of prominence is. A leader.
17 Ask yourself -- the government used that term -- how did they
18 prove his prominence? Who did Mr. Odeh influence in this
19 conspiracy? Name a person. Name one. And in what way?
20 Where? And how? Who did they prove he exercised prominent
21 influence over? Other than the government just saying it,
22 what is the evidence to support that accusation? Zip. None.
23 How did Mr. Odeh participate in the planning,
24 assembly, execution or coverup of the bombing as an adviser?
25 Let's look at the planning. Ask yourself the following
5735
1 questions. Who selected the target? Who said we're going to
2 bomb the embassy? Who selected the date? Were other targets
3 considered? When was this discussed? What evidence is there
4 that Mr. Odeh participated in those discussions? None. The
5 government says that the date is significant, had something to
6 do with President Bush sending troops into the Persian Gulf
7 area. Who made the decision to bomb the embassy on that
8 particular date? Was it Mr. Odeh? I don't think so. There
9 is no evidence of that. Who made the decision to bomb both
10 the United States Embassy and Kenya and Tanzania? And who is
11 responsible for coordinating the execution of simultaneous
12 bombings in two separate countries? Who is that person? And
13 when and how did Mr. Odeh advise that?
14 Let's look at what the government calls the bomb
15 factories. Who chose the type of house to build the bomb?
16 What is the evidence before you? That came from the lease
17 agreement, the negotiations with the landlord, testimony from
18 Sikander Juma in Nairobi. Mr. Odeh is not even charged with
19 anything in Tanzania, which is going to be very interesting
20 when Mr. Wilford gets up. But we will wait for that. Who
21 paid for the houses? Who was present for those negotiations?
22 It was Harun, Sikander Juma, and others. There was no
23 evidence whatsoever that Mr. Odeh participated in the planning
24 and selection of the bomb houses, factories.
25 The players. Who selected the men to participate in
5736
1 this? Who made the decision? Did they just sprout up one
2 day? Where did they come from? How were they recruited? Who
3 gave them their specific assignments? What evidence is there
4 that Mohamed Odeh participated in those discussions as the
5 technical adviser? What? There is none.
6 Travel. Who supervised the travel arrangements for
7 the players? Look at the statements of the defendants.
8 According to Odeh, his travel was coordinated by Saleh and
9 Fahad, and that is verified by the documentary evidence that
10 the government put in. Is there any evidence in this case to
11 contradict that statement? No. There is inferences to be
12 drawn from the physical passports that were recovered in
13 Tanzania. Those are the passports of Al-'Owhali and Azzam
14 that were found in Tanzania -- I am sorry, that were found in
15 the Comoros, right? They were found in the Comoros. Mr. Odeh
16 was a part of that? Who coordinated the travel plans of these
17 individuals into Kenya and Tanzania? Who paid the advance
18 money? Who consulted with that? The guy living in the shack
19 up in Witu?
20 Who coordinated the housing accommodations for the
21 participants in the bombing upon arrival in Nairobi? Look at
22 the defendant's statements. Again, look at Mr. Odeh's
23 statement. Look at the hotel registry. Look at 43 Runda
24 Estates.
25 Who was responsible for obtaining the passports and
5737
1 other travel documents for the participants, and where did the
2 passports come from? The government argued in its summation
3 that passports were the lifeblood of Al Qaeda, and that sounds
4 good. That sounds right. Who was the prominent person
5 responsible for and advising on where to obtain those travel
6 documents for the participants? Look at Odeh's statement.
7 Remember the testimony of Kherchtou and Fadhl, that
8 Al Qaeda had passport experts. Did you believe them when they
9 said that? They said that Al Qaeda had passport experts.
10 They had a bureau that was specifically set up, a department
11 for the production of these items. Remember, they said that
12 the participants, many men, and Al Qaeda documents were taken
13 from them and collected.
14 Again, remember Mr. Odeh's reluctance to leave Kenya.
15 Remember his testimony that he lost his Jordanian passport and
16 how that is confirmed by the government putting into evidence
17 a newspaper article where he advertises the lost passport. Do
18 you believe that the technical adviser for the bombing had to
19 pay for his own passport? The testimony is that he paid $400
20 for a passport with somebody else's picture on it that was
21 expired. There is no evidence to contradict that. The
22 passport is in evidence. And, significantly, that he did not
23 make travel arrangements for his own family.
24 I think Mr. Wilford is going to go into this a little
25 later, but I want you to remember one thing, that all the
5738
1 people who participated in this case, in the bombing, they
2 took care of their family. Odeh's family and kids. Saleh's
3 family and kids, in Afghanistan. Harun has Sikander get his
4 family out. The other man who is seated here, he is young, he
5 don't have no family. Azzam, he was destroyed in the bombing.
6 He was from somewhere else. The only person whose family,
7 whose pregnant wife and child that was left behind in Kenya
8 was the technical adviser to the bomb, according to the
9 government.
10 And what I submit to you is that the fact that his
11 family was there and that he traveled with so little clothing
12 is an inference that you can draw that supports his statement
13 that his intentions was to confer and come back, unless he was
14 a person who didn't really care about his wife or he was one
15 of these guys in Al Qaeda who had four or fife wives and it
16 didn't make no difference to him. You can tell from the
17 quality of his letters that he wrote to his wife about being
18 separated from her and etc., etc., that he loved his wife and
19 he missed her and that he would not have left her behind in
20 Kenya had he known of this bombing. He would have did what
21 everybody else did, got her out of there.
22 Let's look at the bombing itself. Who were the
23 technicians? Who selected and purchased the trucks to be
24 used? Who decided what bombs to use? Was it Mr. Odeh? Any
25 testimony of that? Who supervised the conversion of the
5739
1 trucks for the delivery of the bomb? Remember Mr. Karas told
2 you that 3, that shows that the truck was three meters long.
3 So I guess he was involved in the selection of the truck. Any
4 evidence of that? Mr. Wilford is going to come back to that.
5 It don't even represent that. Who supervised that? Who
6 assembled the bomb and where was the bomb assembled? Doesn't
7 the technical adviser to the bomb have to look at the bomb and
8 make sure it sets right, it's in its proper place? Doesn't he
9 or she? There is not a nanogram of evidence, forensic
10 evidence that Mr. Mohamed Odeh was at 43 Runda Estates.
11 Mr. Wilford is going to address that, but keep in
12 mind a point made by Mr. Karas in his remarks. He said that
13 the microscopic residue found on Mr. Odeh's clothes that were
14 in his bag contained PETN and TNT, and since there was no PETN
15 at 43 Runda Estates, according to the government, he did not
16 get it on his clothes from anything that was contaminated at
17 43 Runda Estates. So Mr. Karas says it must have happened
18 before then, because he's thought out his own logic, it didn't
19 take him nowhere. Mr. Wilford will explain to you where that
20 evidence came from. It came from somewhere else. Mr. Odeh's
21 statements indicate that there is no contact with Runda
22 Estates, Mr. Sikander or anyone else who ever set foot inside
23 of 43 Runda Estates.
24 Who then were the bomb technicians who calculated the
25 quantities of TNT to be used and the number of detonators
5740
1 necessary to destroy the building? What does the credible
2 evidence show? Abdel Rahman, the master bomber, the bomb
3 trainer from Afghanistan. Do you think on a job like this --
4 let's think about it. These simultaneous bombings were going
5 to attract international attention and response. Do you think
6 they sent their best bomb man to do it? Or the fool?
7 Fahad, who wanted to be a Jihad warrior, the guy
8 looking for a fight, the guy whose name is son of jihad.
9 Remember, he took the expert course in bombing. He paid
10 $6,000 out of his own pocket to go to a bombing course in a
11 part of the world where the average worker makes $1,200 a
12 year? Wait a minute. The average worker in that part of the
13 world makes about $1,200 a year, if they got a job. He spent
14 $6,000 to go train on bombing? You think maybe he was the
15 technical adviser? I don't know. Could be. What does the
16 evidence show?
17 Where is the credible evidence that says that Mohamed
18 Odeh served as a technical adviser to Fahad, or to Abdel
19 Rahman, his former trainer from Afghanistan? It is important
20 to keep in mind the internal dynamics of Al Qaeda. At this
21 point Al Qaeda is moving in a different direction. Every
22 witness told you that. Different witnesses. There were many
23 young lions ready to move up to test out that $6,000 worth of
24 training and to do something to make a name for themselves,
25 who wasn't satisfied going to help people in Somalia and
5741
1 wanted to do something big.
2 Remember that many members of Al Qaeda, at least one
3 member of Al Qaeda or associate of Al Qaeda believed by this
4 time that Mohamed Odeh was a fool. There's a big difference
5 between people -- it is a big difference when people think
6 you're a fool and being a person who can be fooled. When I
7 was a kid growing up, I used to get up early in the morning,
8 go to school, my book bag, the whole nine yards. And I would
9 cross people on the street and they would say Anthony Ricco,
10 he's a fool, he ain't going nowhere, I don't know what he's
11 wasting his time for, he will be right here with the rest of
12 us. When Mohatmas Ghandi gave up his law practice, traded his
13 Brooks Brothers suits, fine clothes to take on the cloth of
14 the poor people, to take on the injustice of the British
15 empire, there were many people in his family who thought that
16 he was a fool. When Dr. King turned down a cushy place in the
17 church hierarchy to lead a fledgling civil rights movement,
18 his own father thought he was a fool. It's in his Bible.
19 When Nelson Mandela, the recently retired president of South
20 Africa, gave up his title of only one of six black lawyers in
21 the nation of South Africa to take on apartheid, there were
22 many people who considered him a fool. When Mohamed Ali --
23 the boxer -- gave up his heavyweight championship and the
24 millions that came with it because of his conscientious
25 objection -- to what? War -- there were many people who
5742
1 considered that African American to be a fool.
2 And when you look back, who was the fool? And who
3 was not fooled? Many times you have to look at the person who
4 is using the label to get a full flavor of what that term
5 means in any given situation. The credible evidence in this
6 case establishes that this bomb was consulted and built by
7 Abdel Rahman, the master bomber from Afghanistan, and Fahad,
8 the wanna-be Jihad warrior who was running back and forth
9 between Nairobi and Tanzania making sure everything was right,
10 and Harun, who had some training in bombing. There was no
11 room for him, and there is no evidence that he participated.
12 There is no evidence whatsoever to support the government's
13 accusation that Mohamed Odeh was an adviser for the assembly
14 of the bomb.
15 Let's talk about the execution. There is no evidence
16 that Mohamed Odeh was a technical adviser to those young men
17 who executed the bomb in Nairobi. First question, who
18 debriefed the young men? Any evidence that said Mohamed Odeh
19 did? Who synchronized the watches, made sure the watches were
20 together? Who gave the men their last minute pep talk, come
21 on, let's go out and kill 2, 300 people? Any evidence of
22 that? No. Where did this pep talk take place? Is there any
23 evidence of it was Mohamed Odeh present? I submit this was
24 done by men like Fahad, Saleh and Harun, who were staying out
25 all night. If it was done by Mohamed Odeh, where is the
5743
1 evidence? There was no evidence whatever that Mohamed Odeh
2 was ever at 43 Runda Estates. Who does the government claim
3 drove the trucks? What evidence is there that Mr. Odeh ever
4 advised them? Remember that Agent Anticev showed Al-'Owhali a
5 photograph -- I am sorry. Excuse me, your Honor. Remember
6 that Agent Anticev showed Mohamed Odeh a photograph of
7 Al-'Owhali, and Mr. Odeh said I don't know him. Ask yourself,
8 what credible evidence is there in this case that says that he
9 is a liar? Where did they meet? When and where? What
10 evidence is there? Don't sit back there and say they met.
11 Point to the evidence that says they met. Look at his
12 statement. Look at the other evidence.
13 And there was never any allegation -- they're telling
14 me to move on. There is never any allegation that Mr. Odeh
15 was holding back anything. Did Agent Anticev say that on the
16 witness stand? No, he did not.
17 The bomb aftermath. There is no evidence that
18 Mr. Odeh consulted anybody on cleaning up the bombings and
19 what not after it was done. Nor did he even know Sikander
20 Juma, who testified here. There is no evidence that the two
21 of them ever met each other. So in this regard, what evidence
22 is it then that Mohamed Odeh consulted with anyone on any
23 subject, that is, the planning, the building, the bomb or the
24 execution of the bomb in this case? None. So how then, how
25 then does the government prove, not say -- because you can say
5744
1 anything -- how do they prove that he was the technical
2 adviser? They wave the flag, they say we Americans, he's not,
3 convict him. That's how it goes.
4 I want you to keep in mind, the coordinating of this
5 event must have been tremendous. It involved the arrival --
6 just the arrival and departure of the participants alone must
7 have been a massive effort. The government says that Al Qaeda
8 was an army, an multinational corporation, and like all
9 multinational corporations, Al Qaeda was headed up by a
10 billionaire, Bin Laden, with assets in several countries.
11 (Continued on next page)
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
5745
1 MR. RICCO: (Continuing) They had the ability to
2 purchase nuclear weapons. They had sophisticated businesses,
3 fax machines, computers, private jets. They had eight $80,000
4 cell phones. Do you think that the planners of this event
5 that was going to capture an international audience, do you
6 think that the planners selected a technical advisor for this
7 coordination who didn't even have a telephone?
8 He's living in Witu without a telephone. How is he
9 technically advising? How is he coordinating the people? I
10 submit to you that it did not happen. That's why it didn't
11 happen this way. You can't make something exist that doesn't
12 exist. And when it doesn't exist, the response will be to
13 say, well, let's dance around what there is. And I must say
14 to you that if there is evidence in this case that supports
15 that Mohamed Odeh was involved, let's deal with it.
16 Your Honor, this is a great place and Mr. Wilford
17 will be coming on next.
18 Thank you very much.
19 THE COURT: We'll take a brief recess.
20 MR. COHN: As soon as the jury is gone, your Honor.
21 (Jury not present)
22 MR. COHN: Your Honor, at this time, based on part of
23 Mr. Ricco's summation, I move for a mistrial as to
24 Mr. al-'Owhali.
25 Mr. Ricco found it incumbent on him, in commenting on
5746
1 people who had taken part in the bombing, taken care of their
2 family, to then include my client, who has no family, and
3 specifically inferred that my client was guilty, implied that
4 my client -- more than implied, said almost in terms.
5 I find that to be extraordinary from an experienced
6 and able trial lawyer. And nobody elected him the 13th juror,
7 and I move for a mistrial at this point.
8 THE COURT: Anybody want to comment on that? Nobody
9 wants to comment on it. All right, I'll comment on it.
10 I don't think that's a fair inference to be drawn.
11 The reference was to the government's allegations and what the
12 role of other people are said to have been by the government,
13 and obviously the government takes the position that
14 Al-'Owhali was one of the executors. And the fact that
15 somebody who is said by the government to be in that position,
16 is not identified by another person said to be in that
17 position is a relevant comment and doesn't assume guilt or the
18 role of a 13th juror.
19 MR. COHN: Your Honor, with due respect, reading his
20 remarks would not show you that he's commenting on the
21 government's theory of the case, but he said people who
22 participated in the bombing, that -- and I respectfully
23 disagree with the Court's analysis.
24 THE COURT: Is there any kind of instruction you want
25 to the jury?
5747
1 MR. COHN: I don't think that's going to particularly
2 help. I'll take care of it. If you won't give me the
3 mistrial, I'll take care of it.
4 THE COURT: We'll take a very brief recess.
5 (Recess)
6 (Jury present)
7 MR. RICCO: Excuse me, everyone. I had promised you
8 when we took the break that Mr. Wilford was going to be up,
9 but they reminded me that I left a few things out.
10 There is a great problem when you are involved in a
11 case as jurors and as lawyers where there is as much evidence
12 as there is here and there are so many different defendants.
13 There is always so much that we want to say, but there is only
14 really but so much of it that is really important, and lawyers
15 have a bad way of not just like, this is what we're trying to
16 say and be done with it.
17 Now, Mr. Odeh gave a very detailed statement. It was
18 detailed. He talked about people, their background, their
19 wives, their kids, what countries they came from, where he
20 thought they would be now. He could remember who he met at a
21 camp, what they talked about.
22 When you look at his statement, I want you to really
23 look at that statement very well and look at how Agent Anticev
24 put that statement together for you to read one day in a
25 courtroom, okay, and I want you to remember something. I was
5748
1 picking at Ken Karas' use of the word "prominent," and it only
2 struck me as odd that the prominent al Qaeda member was living
3 in the conditions that Mr. Odeh was living in: Rural, cut off
4 from everyone else, no telephones, no electricity, no running
5 water. "Prominent" is not a word that I would use to describe
6 that unless you are telling me he had some other influence,
7 like he's a great guru living in the mountains that people go
8 to for advice. I don't get that impression.
9 The impression that you got from one of his letters
10 is that Harun checked in on his wife and he said, oh, I have
11 good news about your wife. That's in one of his letters. And
12 also his letters to his wife are written by guy like a
13 country-type guy who misses a simpler life. And so it's very
14 important that you keep that in mind, because as we sit in
15 front of you and talk at you for hours and hours about this,
16 the most important thing is that you try to capture the
17 essence of who it is and what it is we're talking about and
18 not so much the minute details.
19 The one point that I wanted to make to you is that
20 the government put this up. This is page 25, I think, from
21 Mohamed's statement. 25, and what it says is, according to
22 Agent Anticev's typewritten notes, is that he was angry and
23 disappointed at the performance of al Qaeda's cell leader.
24 Odeh stated that if they couldn't get the pickup truck into
25 the garage of the embassy, then the occupants of the truck
5749
1 must die trying. They should not have left the truck to
2 explode and kill so many people, right?
3 Odeh stated that nobody, even Bin Laden, could be
4 happy with the results. Odeh further stated that the position
5 of the pickup truck was a mistake. The back of the truck
6 where the explosives were held should have been facing. So,
7 in other words, according to what Agent Anticev is telling
8 you, the truck should have made a U-turn and then backed in
9 all the way back down to the building or got under the
10 building, according to Agent Anticev.
11 Odeh stated that an errant shock wave hit the wrong
12 building. Remember what the experts told you how a bomb
13 explodes? You know errant shock waves. Bombs go like this.
14 And people who have been to war and trained around bombs know
15 that they go like this, which is why they duck when the bombs
16 go off. A guy in war doesn't say, well, the back of that
17 truck is not facing me so I don't have to get out of the way
18 when it blows up. When this thing goes up, he goes down,
19 okay?
20 Odeh said that he accepts responsibility for the bomb
21 because he's a part of the group. What group? Al Qaeda? Did
22 he ask him? The group that did this? And it was a big
23 mistake and Saleh blundered. Odeh stated that the truck had
24 to back into the building in order to prevent the cab from
25 acting as a hindrance to the shock wave, therefore preventing
5750
1 the surrounding buildings from being affected.
2 Then the government turns and shows you this, and
3 they go, well, if you kind of turn it sideways and look at it
4 like this, wow, that's the whole thing, isn't it? He's
5 guilty.
6 There's a problem with this, and it's a simple one.
7 Mr. Odeh is held incommunicado in Pakistan for seven days,
8 right? He's held incommunicado in Nairobi for 13 days. When
9 he's interviewed, he does not get to see family, friends,
10 newspaper, nothing. How does Mr. Odeh know that the truck
11 didn't get into the building? How? How does he know?
12 Now, some people will say, how does he know it was a
13 truck unless he was involved? But let's deal with it
14 step-by-step.
15 That truck was blown into a billion pieces, right?
16 How does Mr. Odeh know that if they couldn't -- that they
17 didn't get the truck into the garage? Because that's the
18 implication, right? How does he know that somebody didn't die
19 doing this? Who told him that?
20 Couldn't have been -- I can't say that. Let's just
21 say that there's no evidence that anybody said that to him.
22 How does he know that? How does he know that somebody
23 survived that? Where does he get that from? Where? How does
24 he know that it was a mistake and the truck should have been
25 backed up into the building? How does he know, if he's a part
5751
1 of it, that that didn't happen? How does he know that?
2 And I submit -- listen to what I'm saying because I
3 want to be clear. According to the government, the truck went
4 in face-first. According to the government, somebody jumped
5 off the truck. That's the government's theory. They got to
6 prove this case. That's what they said happened. They said
7 one of the guys ran, surviving those bomb blasts moving at 12,
8 13,000 feet a second. They got to prove that.
9 And I have made reference to young Al-'Owhali
10 earlier. Let's be clear. This is what the government says he
11 did. I don't know what he did. I'm talking about what the
12 government claims.
13 How does Mr. Odeh know that an errant shock wave hit
14 the wrong building, right? And when the government comes back
15 up, when we sit down, never to be heard from again, and
16 they're explaining to you and they are showing you the letter
17 to his wife and they are talking to you about Bin Laden and
18 whatever he's involved with in his mind, ask yourself the
19 question, who told Odeh that the wrong building got blown up?
20 Maybe he wasn't held incommunicado. Maybe the agent lied to
21 us about that.
22 How can you have it both ways? Does everybody
23 understand what "incommunicado" means? "Incommunicado" means
24 no wife, no friends, no newspaper, nothing. You're a suspect.
25 And if you want to talk about FBI policy, let me tell you
5752
1 something: I submit to you that you never let one guy get
2 together with the other guy. They always separate the guys,
3 because when you put them together, what do you get? A story.
4 Right? They always separate them and keep them separated.
5 And we asked Agent Anticev, well, were the Kenyans
6 involved? He said, well, sometimes I wasn't with him. When
7 he was alone, I don't know nothing about, let's blame the
8 Kenyans. Was he given this information by the Kenyan
9 authorities? Is there any evidence of that? No.
10 All right, so when Mr. Karas was pointing to this
11 chart earlier -- and it looked powerful, didn't it? No one
12 sat here and said to themselves, how did Odeh know this if he
13 was held in the way in which the government says he was held?
14 Now, this part about responsibility, I asked Agent
15 Anticev about that when he was on the witness stand, and what
16 Agent Anticev explained to us was Mohamed Odeh felt morally
17 responsible -- not criminally responsible, morally
18 responsible -- because he was a part of al Qaeda, and he, like
19 Kherchtou -- you know what Kherchtou said: I seen this. I
20 seen that. I started putting things together.
21 Well, they were hitting Mohamed with the hypothetical
22 questions. And Bin Laden this. He said it. He said he was
23 asking him the hypothetical questions. Maybe, too, Mohamed
24 Odeh has a brain and he started saying, damn it -- he wouldn't
25 have said that, I would have said that -- I feel morally
5753
1 outraged at this.
2 And one of the things that Agent Anticev did record
3 is Mohamed Odeh's reasons for speaking to them, his moral
4 outrage and the fact that he was pushed, pushed, pushed to get
5 out of the country for this. Huh-uh. What do you want to
6 know? Harun? He's from the Comoros. Where did they find
7 him? In the Comoros. Mustafa, he left with his wife and
8 kids. What did they find? Wife and kids playing, records,
9 etc., etc.
10 Odeh said they said something about Eagle Travel.
11 They went to Eagle Travel, what did they find? The flight
12 records. Mohamed said, I stayed in the hotel room, etc., etc.
13 What did they find? His fingerprint right where he said it
14 was.
15 You want to know about Ubaidah? I'll tell you about
16 Ubaidah. He was a secret guy, always running around. How
17 would you have reacted if you found out that a group that you
18 were involved with, it was even alleged to have done something
19 like that? Would you have done the right thing or you would
20 have said, I want my lawyer?
21 He told them about Fawwaz. You remember Fawwaz.
22 He's in London. That's what Mr. Odeh told them. He told them
23 about Tawfiq, also known as Mohamed Kampala. It's right
24 there. He told them about Abu Ibrahim. Told them about
25 Tayyib. He told them about Abu Hafs. He told them about Abu
5754
1 Rahman, the trainer in explosives. He told them about Ahmed
2 the Egyptian, the Tanzanian, Saleh, Harun, Fahad, Tawhil,
3 Nawawi. He said that Nawawi was an Egyptian living in
4 America. You remember him, he's the guy that was in the plane
5 with al Ridi when he crashed and he took off and fled the
6 county. He told about Atef. Even that was confirmed to you.
7 They put together a chronology and they take away the
8 chronology to sell us. Then they say, well, now he started
9 testifying, now he started speaking consistent with the
10 chronology. There was no chronology until they talked to
11 Mohamed Odeh. Go back and look at the statement. Compare it
12 to the indictment.
13 He told them about Sheikh -- I said this guys' name
14 wrong every time -- Mohamed. That was Swedan, the guy who
15 bought the trucks. He told them that he was in some kind of
16 transporting business. He told them about Mustafa and Ubaidah
17 and many, many others.
18 He told them about MIRA, right? Mercy International
19 Relief Agency. And when they go there and find the records,
20 what do they find? Lo and behold, a letter from Mohamed Odeh
21 talking about the lousy fishing business that he was in, that
22 he was losing money in the fishing business and he wasn't any
23 good at it. That's his report to Bin Laden. I can't sell
24 fish and we got to sell off the boats and the rest of the
25 stuff because we can't make any money doing this.
5755
1 And, no, I don't even think the government is taking
2 the position that Bin Laden was doing some good things at
3 times and that he ran businesses. Those had to include
4 people. You think all the people that worked for this
5 multinational corporation was, like, I'm going to kill an
6 American next time I see one? How can they work and function?
7 How can they think? How can they live? How can they love?
8 How can they have compassion? How can you write about God in
9 your life and the lives of your children's and your nephews
10 what you see him doing?
11 So this is very powerful, what the government
12 presents to you. They enlarged it, and they enlarged it for a
13 reason, just like we enlarged this. I'm not trying to put
14 anything on the government that I wouldn't do myself. I
15 enlarged this for a reason, but this was enlarged because this
16 is important to their case. Because what they want to say to
17 you is that's evidence of a bomb technician.
18 And then the government says this, well, it might be
19 kind of a hokey bombing, right? You know, with the blast cone
20 that no one ever testified. No expert in this case testified
21 to something called a blast cone, okay. That came from
22 Mr. Karas.
23 All right, I want to take a few minutes to talk about
24 Somalia. Not a few minutes. I really mean a few minutes.
25 I've been sitting here a lot of months, and I haven't figured
5756
1 it out yet and you are going to have to do that.
2 I will tell that you what we know from the evidence
3 is that Somalia is a vast country filled with nomadic tribes
4 and shifting allegiances. And I will tell you this. In 1993,
5 when Mohamed Odeh went to Somalia, according to the testimony
6 of witnesses, al Qaeda had been in Somalia already for a year
7 before any Americans even got there.
8 There's no evidence whatsoever that Mohamed Odeh went
9 to Somalia to kill Americans. He told Agent Anticev that if
10 he wanted to kill Americans, he could have went right down to
11 Malindi and shot people on the street if that's what he wanted
12 to do, snuck right back up to Witu somewhere and nobody would
13 have known the difference.
14 When he went to Somalia in 1993, he went there to
15 stop the carnage and starvation that was happening as a result
16 of the fighting amongst the clans. And Aideed was a major
17 force in the disintegration and anarchy in that country and
18 Mohamed went there to assist the tribes that were trying to
19 follow Islam, to live in peace and to form a unified Muslim
20 nation.
21 Mohamed Odeh went to Somalia to do good. You see,
22 because for all Muslims having a unified nation doesn't mean I
23 hate everybody else. Just like in this country, it's taken us
24 200 years for people to realize that the concept of
25 integration is not negative. It could be a good thing. It
5757
1 could be a bad thing, too, but it could be a good thing. And
2 you have to be aware of the fact that many people, millions of
3 Muslims in the world, some of them sitting in this room,
4 believe in building a Muslim state without it meaning death
5 and destruction to other people.
6 Mr. Odeh went to Somalia not to join Aideed's forces.
7 And what was Aideed doing, according to Dr. Samatar? He was
8 preventing people from getting food. We're talking about
9 starvation on a level that we can't even conceptualize as we
10 sit here in this courtroom. You don't even have a concept of
11 what it means to be hungry. Hungry means what time is lunch
12 and I want it whether or not the judge orders sandwiches.
13 Starvation means I know I'm going to die, I'm just wondering
14 if my children are going to die, too. And so Mohamed Odeh
15 went to stop it.
16 Now, me and you, we watch it on the 6:00 news. It
17 sounds terrible and we ask, baby, what times the Knicks coming
18 on? That's it. Other people, motivated by higher goals get
19 involved. Some of them people, we often call them fools. And
20 he left his hut and went to help somebody else eat, and
21 there's not a shred of evidence in this case to the contrary.
22 I don't care what Bin Laden was saying in Sudan up
23 there eating dates and drinking juice around the beautiful
24 house with Fadl and the rest of them. He wasn't down in the
25 bush with Mohamed Odeh. He's in the bush doing God's work,
5758
1 trying to help people live, and there's not one piece of
2 evidence in this case to the contrary. And you could take his
3 letters that he wrote to his wife and compare them to
4 statements that other people made that are totally out of
5 context. It doesn't work.
6 Now, Mohamed Odeh went there. The country was in
7 chaos. Samatar told us that everybody in that country was
8 armed to the teeth. Now, it's interesting. He said that he
9 trained on small arms and medicines and he took food. And
10 it's interesting for you to realize that Agent Anticev
11 testified to something very important in this case, and it was
12 going to be one of the things that we were going to put on the
13 computers screens and show you, but it's not to be.
14 But if you go back to his testimony, what we got
15 Agent Anticev to reveal, though he didn't say it in his direct
16 or his original cross, was that he left out that Mohamed Odeh
17 told him that he went to Somalia to help the tribes that were
18 against Aideed. That fact was left out of that 35-page
19 statement. And what he told us was, well, now that I've had a
20 chance to check my notes, I made a mistake, it should have
21 been there.
22 It's an important distinction. It's an important
23 distinction. It is as important as telling the person who is
24 reading this document that he was asked hypotheticals, because
25 it tells you what his state of mind was when he was going. He
5759
1 went there to help the people that were against the people who
2 were causing starvation.
3 Now, he also told you -- I think Kherchtou said he
4 believed that Marwan was a guy who was in southeastern Somalia
5 in the bush, not in Mogadishu. And Mohamed Odeh at this time
6 wasn't up in Sudan with Bin Laden like Fadl was, scheming on
7 how to steal $100,000 or more any chance he could get. He
8 wasn't like Kherchtou in Nairobi, helping people with
9 documents. He was in the bush. And there's no evidence in
10 the record whatsoever that would even suggest, let alone
11 support, that when he went to Somalia in 1993, that he went
12 there for no other reason but to save people's lives.
13 Now, if somebody sitting in a cabana somewhere wanted
14 to use that for their own personal benefit and gain, then
15 remember Fadl told you that Bin Laden was prepared to twist
16 religious beliefs to satisfy his own agenda. He says -- and
17 I'll be through with Somalia in about two minutes, believe it
18 or not, okay? Three minutes.
19 He says that when he was in Somalia, he ran into Abu
20 Hafs. But he didn't say he ran into Abu Hafs, he says that he
21 was at a camp, that is, Mohamed was with the Um Rahan Tribe.
22 I know I said it wrong: Um Rahan. And he's in the bush
23 working with the people, and lo and behold, here comes Abu
24 Hafs. They had just met, according to these other witnesses,
25 in Mogadishu. Now they're coming back from Mogadishu.
5760
1 And remember, Abu Hafs went to Mogadishu disguised as
2 a businessman to get the tribes together. Al Qaeda was going
3 to come in and help them, train them, like they needed
4 training for all the killing and destruction they were going
5 to do, but they were going to get together and now al Qaeda
6 was going to back Aideed. That's the story on it.
7 Now, Mohamed Odeh doesn't know that Abu Hafs is going
8 to that meeting. Fadl told you in the testimony at page 283
9 he was with Abu Hafs in the Sudan and he didn't know that Abu
10 Hafs was going to be going to that meeting. He only found out
11 when he came back. So here Abu Hafs is coming back from his
12 meeting. I guess it was successful. I don't know what the
13 evidence is. He's coming back and he runs into Mohamed Odeh
14 with the other side, right? According to the government, Abu
15 Hafs just cut a deal with the other people in Mogadishu, and
16 when he runs into Mohamed Odeh, Mohamed Odeh is with the
17 people who were being starved to death.
18 How does he share Abu Hafs' intent? They're
19 contrary. They clash. They are not the same. They are not
20 in Somalia for the same reasons. And I made this analogy
21 before and I'll make it again: Just because people go to
22 bootcamp together, they may even serve in the same platoon
23 together, they may even have the same sergeant, that doesn't
24 mean that they share the same state of mind.
25 A lot of people sign up for a lot of different
5761
1 reasons, some because they can't get a job somewhere else,
2 some because they want to be GI Joe, and in other cultures
3 people serve in the military for much more diverse reasons.
4 He doesn't have the same reasons.
5 And what Abu Hafs tells Mohamed Odeh is, according to
6 his statement, is what Abu Hafs was going to do in Mogadishu.
7 Going to do. What the purpose of the meeting was to be, not
8 him telling him, you know, I want to know what your opinion is
9 before I go to this meeting so we can get this straight. No
10 shred of state of mind.
11 Also, some other people told you that they were in
12 Mogadishu, according to the evidence. Harun and Saleh were
13 supposed to have been in Mogadishu, and according to Harun's
14 report, he makes the statement that "our young people hit the
15 Americans in Somalia." That's what he said. That's in his
16 report. There's not a shred of evidence in this case to
17 support that statement, that al Qaeda members hit Americans in
18 Mogadishu. There is no evidence in this record to support
19 that at any time.
20 It's, again, people capitalizing, people trying to
21 take credit for, people pushing their own agenda. Abu Hafs
22 told Odeh that al Qaeda was going to change its policy in
23 Somalia, not that it was changed. That's an important
24 distinction.
25 Now, there's also some testimony that he ran into a
5762
1 guy name Daoud and Daoud had claimed to have been in a
2 situation with U.N. troops. During the testimony, I think Mr.
3 Fitzgerald mistakenly asked him a question and he said U.N.
4 and U.S. troops. That's at page 1744. But Mr. Dratel
5 corrected it in his recross of Agent Anticev when he had the
6 agent look at his notes and found out he left another little
7 thing out, that it was only the U.N. troops.
8 Now, this happened in '93. We don't know what that
9 situation was about. We don't know what was the intent of
10 Daoud, who he was with, or anything about that. But we do
11 know one thing. He's also coming this way while Mohamed's in
12 the bush helping people.
13 Odeh subsequently went to train -- now, Mr. Karas
14 mistakenly said that after this happened in November 1993,
15 Mohamed Odeh left Somalia. I think he misspoke, because the
16 evidence shows that Mohamed Odeh stayed in Somalia and didn't
17 leave until August of '94. With all this talk about Somalia
18 this and Somalia that, it is easy to make a mistake about some
19 of these things, but it's clear that Mohamed Odeh is saying
20 that he's there until August and that he went into the Ogaden
21 region and it was there that he was with a group of people
22 that got involved with a skirm