19 June May 2001
Source: Digital file from the Court Reporters Office, Southern District of
New York; (212) 805-0300.
This is the transcript of Day 65 of the trial, June 19, 2001.
The Court Reporter said the entire record was sealed for Day 64, June 18, 2001.
See other transcripts: http://cryptome.org/usa-v-ubl-dt.htm
7418
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 USAMA BIN LADEN, et al.,
6 Defendants.
7 ------------------------------x
8
New York, N.Y.
9 June 19, 2001
9:30 a.m.
10
11
12 Before:
13 HON. LEONARD B. SAND,
14 District Judge
15 APPEARANCES
16 MARY JO WHITE
United States Attorney for the
17 Southern District of New York
BY: PATRICK FITZGERALD
18 MICHAEL GARCIA
Assistant United States Attorneys
19
20
DAVID RUHNKE
21 DAVID STERN
Attorneys for defendant Khalfan Khamis Mohamed
22
23 Swahili Interpreter:
Beston Mwakaling
24
25
7437
1 (Pages 7419 through 7436 filed under seal)
2 (In open court; jury present)
3 THE COURT: Good morning.
4 THE JURY: Good morning.
5 THE COURT: Welcome back to the alternates.
6 As you know, the penalty phase concerning the
7 defendant Khalfan Khamis Mohamed is about to begin. Your
8 prior verdicts regarding the guilt phase of the trial and the
9 penalty phase concerning the defendant Mohamed Al-'Owhali are
10 final and they are not to be revisited by any juror or by any
11 alternate.
12 Because you have not heard the evidence and the
13 arguments of the government in favor of the death penalty and
14 the evidence and arguments on behalf of K.K. Mohamed in favor
15 of a life sentence, it is critical to the integrity of this
16 process that you have not prejudged the question.
17 I ask that you give to the evidence that will be
18 presented during what is estimated to be the next two weeks
19 the same care and conscientious attention that you have
20 heretofore displayed during these proceedings. You are to
21 listen with a fair and open mind to the presentation of the
22 parties so that after you have evaluated all of the evidence
23 and shared your views with your fellow jurors during your
24 deliberations, you can determine whether, based on the
25 evidence and your judgment, to vote either in favor of the
7438
1 imposition of the death penalty or life without possibility of
2 release.
3 Is there any juror who is unable to do that? If
4 there is, it is important that the Court know. And if you are
5 unable to listen to the evidence, to consider and weigh the
6 evidence and, based on your evaluation of that evidence, to
7 vote either in favor of the death penalty or in favor of life
8 without possibility of release, then we should know that.
9 Moving, then, on to some other matters. During the
10 guilt phase of this trial, you unanimously found the defendant
11 K.K. Mohamed guilty of the following counts contained in the
12 indictment: One count of destruction of property of the
13 United States resulting in death, as charged in Count Six; one
14 count of use of a weapon of mass destruction against a
15 national of the United States resulting in death, as charged
16 in Count Eight; 11 counts of murder in the course of an attack
17 on a federal facility involving the use of a dangerous weapon,
18 as charged in Counts 222 to 232; two counts of murder of
19 officers and employees of the United States, on account of
20 their duties, as charged in Counts 275 and 276; and one count
21 of murder of an internationally protected person, as charged
22 in Count 281. These are all capital counts, by which I mean
23 that the death penalty is possible punishment for these
24 offenses.
25 You must now consider, separately with regard to each
7439
1 of these counts, whether imposition of a sentence of death is
2 appropriate or whether Mr. Mohamed should be sentenced to life
3 imprisonment without the possibility of release.
4 Before I proceed, let me explain to you that these
5 instructions are very similar to those you have heard
6 before -- although they were abbreviated as much as possible
7 because you already heard the other instructions. And the
8 reason why they are very similar is because the process we are
9 undertaking is in most respects the same as the one you
10 completed last Tuesday. However, I cannot caution you enough
11 that the penalty phase for Mr. Mohamed is a separate and
12 independent proceeding, because issues relating to Mr. Mohamed
13 are sufficiently distinct from those relating to
14 Mr. al-'Owhali to warrant a separate penalty hearing. The
15 very reason why we have separate penalty hearings is because
16 of those differences. Your judgment as to the appropriate
17 sentence for Khalfan Khamis Mohamed must be determined
18 separately with respect to him, and must be based solely on
19 the information presented during, one, this penalty phase;
20 two, the guilt phase, but not including any evidence that was
21 introduced solely against another defendant; and, three, the
22 Al-'Owhali penalty phase, but only to the extent that either
23 party explicitly offers information presented in the
24 Al-'Owhali penalty phase and the Court receives it.
25 Now, as I instructed you at the start of the last
7440
1 penalty phase, for defendant Mr. Mohamed's situation, Congress
2 has channeled your discretion by requiring that certain
3 findings be made before the death penalty is even considered.
4 Remember, you may consider a sentence of death for Mr. Mohamed
5 on a particular capital count if, but only if, you unanimously
6 find that the government has proven beyond a reasonable doubt
7 the existence of at least one gateway factor and at least one
8 statutory aggravating factor as to that count.
9 I am going to read the government's allegations with
10 respect to gateway factors, statutory and non-statutory
11 factors, and they will seem very familiar to you because
12 indeed they are the same with respect to K.K. Mohamed as they
13 were with respect to Al-'Owhali.
14 The four gateway factors alleged by the government
15 are:
16 1. That the defendant intentionally killed the
17 victim or victims of the particular capital offense charged in
18 the respective count of the indictment; or
19 2. That the defendant intentionally inflicted
20 serious bodily injury that resulted in the death of the victim
21 or victims of the particular capital offense charged in the
22 respective count of the indictment, or
23 3. That the defendant intentionally participated in
24 an act, contemplating that the life of a person would be taken
25 or intending that lethal force would be used in connection
7441
1 with a person, other than one of the participants in the
2 offense, and the victim or victims of the particular capital
3 offense charged in the respective count of the indictment died
4 as a direct result of the act; or
5 4. That the defendant intentionally and specifically
6 engaged in an act of violence, knowing that the act created a
7 grave risk of death to a person, other than one of the
8 participants in the offense, such that participation in the
9 act constituted a reckless disregard for human life and the
10 victim or victims of the particular capital offense charged in
11 the respective count of the indictment died as a direct result
12 of the act.
13 The statutory aggravating factors alleged by the
14 government with respect to each of the capital counts are:
15 1. The deaths and injuries resulting in death
16 occurred during the commission of other crimes, namely,
17 certain offenses listed under Title 18 of the United States
18 Code, which I will identify for you in the instructions prior
19 to your deliberations.
20 2. The defendant, in the commission of the offense,
21 knowingly created a grave risk of death to one or more persons
22 in addition to the victims of the offense.
23 3. The defendant committed the offense after
24 substantial planning and premeditation to cause the death of
25 one or more persons or to permit an act of terrorism.
7442
1 4. The defendant intentionally killed or attempted
2 to kill more than one person in a single episode.
3 As I instructed you at the outset of the last penalty
4 phase, if, after fair and impartial consideration of all the
5 evidence in this case, you unanimously find that the
6 government has proven beyond a reasonable doubt at least one
7 gateway factor and at least one statutory aggravating factor
8 with regard to a particular capital count, you will then
9 consider whether you unanimously find that the government has
10 proven beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of any
11 non-statutory aggravating factors specifically identified by
12 the government for consideration in this case.
13 And the government alleges the following
14 non-statutory aggravating factors with regard to each of the
15 capital counts:
16 1. The defendant poses a continuing and serious
17 threat to the lives and safety of others with whom he will
18 come in contact.
19 2. As demonstrated by the deceased victims' personal
20 characteristics as individual human beings and the impact of
21 the deaths upon the deceased victims' families, the defendant
22 caused injury, harm, and loss to those victims and their
23 families, and the defendant caused serious physical and
24 emotional injury and grievous economic hardship to numerous
25 individuals who survived the bombing.
7443
1 3. That the victims and intended victims included
2 high-ranking public officials of the United States serving
3 abroad and the offense was motivated by such status.
4 During the balancing stage of your analysis, in
5 addition to the existence of any non-statutory aggravating
6 factors, you must determine whether any of you find that
7 Mr. Mohamed has established the existence of any mitigating
8 factors by a preponderance of the evidence. Any one of you
9 may, individually, find the existence of a mitigating factor,
10 regardless of the number of other jurors who may agree, and
11 any juror who so finds may weigh that factor in making up his
12 or her mind whether or not to vote for a death sentence.
13 The defendant K.K. Mohamed alleges the following
14 mitigating factors:
15 1. Khalfan Mohamed's role in the offense and
16 relative culpability is as set forth below:
17 A. Khalfan Mohamed was not a leader or organizer of
18 the conspiracy which led to the bombing of the Dar es Salaam
19 embassy.
20 B. Although Khalfan Mohamed is guilty of the
21 murders, his participation was relatively minor.
22 C. Khalfan Mohamed was recruited by others as
23 someone who was an expendable member of the conspiracy.
24 Mitigating factor alleged by Khalfan Mohamed number 2
25 is that others equally or more culpable in the murders will
7444
1 not be sentenced to death.
2 3. Khalfan Mohamed's postarrest statement (A) was
3 complete and truthful, (B) demonstrated acceptance of
4 responsibility, (C) provided the interviewing agents with
5 valuable information.
6 4. If Khalfan Mohamed is not sentenced to death, he
7 will spend the rest of his life in a United States prison
8 without any possibility of release.
9 5. Khalfan Mohamed has no prior history of criminal
10 behavior.
11 6. If he is executed, Khalfan Mohamed will cause his
12 family to suffer grief and loss.
13 7. Khalfan Mohamed is remorseful for the deaths,
14 injuries and other consequences of the bombing of the embassy
15 and would not participate in such a crime in the future.
16 8. Khalfan Mohamed acted out of sincere religious
17 belief.
18 9. At the time of the offense, Khalfan Mohamed was
19 25 years old.
20 10. If Khalfan Mohamed is executed, he will be seen
21 as a martyr and his death may be exploited by others to
22 justify future terrorist attacks.
23 11. As a matter of South African law, Khalfan
24 Mohamed should not have been released to American officials
25 without assurances that he would not face the death penalty in
7445
1 the United States.
2 12. Based on Khalfan Mohamed's personal
3 characteristics as an individual human being, which include
4 the following, he should be sentenced to spend the rest of his
5 life in the United States prison:
6 A. Khalfan Mohamed has exhibited responsible conduct
7 in other areas of his life.
8 B. Khalfan Mohamed has shown himself to be a person
9 capable of kindness, friendship and generosity.
10 C. Khalfan Mohamed lost his father at an early age
11 and worked to help his family, which struggled financially
12 after the death of the major breadwinner.
13 Remember, during the balancing stage, each of you
14 must individually weigh the aggravating factor or factors
15 (statutory or non-statutory) that all 12 jurors have
16 unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt found to exist
17 against any mitigating factor or factors that you individually
18 or with other jurors have by a preponderance of the evidence
19 found to exist to determine if death or life imprisonment
20 without the possibility of release is the appropriate
21 punishment.
22 Let me remind you that the weighing and balancing
23 process is a unique and individual one wherein members of the
24 jury are called to make an individualized judgment about the
25 appropriateness of sentencing another human being. This is
7446
1 not a mechanical process; what is called for in weighing the
2 various factors is not arithmetic, but each individual juror's
3 careful, considered and mature judgment.
4 As before, I will repeat and elaborate on these
5 points after you have heard all of the evidence before you
6 begin your deliberations. And as in the prior proceedings,
7 you will have a special verdict form to assist you and my
8 final and definitive instructions, which will be in writing
9 and available to you during your deliberations.
10 Thank you for your continued patience and attention.
11 We will proceed now with the government's opening
12 statement.
13 MR. GARCIA: Thank you, Judge.
14 Good morning. I would like to begin today by talking
15 to you about three dates, three dates in the life of this
16 defendant, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed.
17 The first date we will talk about is a date you are
18 very familiar with, August 7th, 1998, the date of the horrific
19 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam Tanzania, a
20 bombing that killed 11 people, shattered 11 families, and
21 changed countless lives forever.
22 This defendant Khalfan Mohamed rode partway to the
23 embassy in the bomb truck that morning, and then he jumped out
24 and he went back to the bomb factory, where he had helped to
25 mix the bomb and load the bomb into the truck. And he waited,
7447
1 he waited nervously, watching the television, trying to see
2 news of the bombing.
3 And he prayed. He prayed for the suicide driver of
4 that truck, the man who had pushed the button on the dashboard
5 and detonated the explosive -- not for the innocent victims
6 who would be killed. And finally, that morning he saw news on
7 the television of the bombing, watched those reports, and he
8 was happy. He said he was very happy.
9 That was Khalfan Mohamed on August 7th, 1998.
10 And the next date I would like to talk to you about
11 is a date that you also heard about during the guilt phase of
12 this trial, and that's October 5th, 1999, more than a year
13 after the bombing, when Khalfan Mohamed was caught in South
14 Africa, caught in South Africa where he had run, where he had
15 fled, after he cleaned out that bomb factory back in Dar es
16 Salaam.
17 And on October 5th, Khalfan Mohamed talks to the FBI
18 agents and he shows no remorse for his horrific crimes. No
19 remorse, although it's a year later and he has had time to
20 learn that the 11 victims of his crime were Tanzanians. They
21 were his countrymen. They were mostly Muslims. He's had time
22 to learn all that, and he shows no remorse. He killed five
23 security guards, a gardener, a water truck driver, and he has
24 no remorse.
25 He's not sorry. In fact, he is making statements
7448
1 about doing it again. Khalfan Mohamed told the FBI that if he
2 hadn't been caught in South Africa, they would have done it
3 again. He would have participated in more bombings to kill
4 Americans. And he said more than that. He said if he was
5 released, he would participate in more bombings and that he
6 would help to kill Americans.
7 And he said that he hoped, he hoped, now that he was
8 caught, that others would carry on. And he said that he would
9 carry on, he would still carry on if he could.
10 That was on October 5th, 1999.
11 And someone hearing that back then might have
12 thought, well, that's just bluster, that's just big talk from
13 a man who's been caught after murdering 11 people, it isn't
14 real. They would want to believe, they would want to believe
15 that Khalfan Mohamed, after he was caught and arrested and put
16 inside a prison in the United States, safely locked away,
17 would be stopped.
18 Now let's talk about the third date, and this is a
19 date you haven't heard about in this guilt phase. This is
20 November 1st, 2000. And this is a very significant date in
21 the penalty phase. It's one year after this defendant has
22 been caught, it's two years after he committed this horrific
23 bombing, and he's now lodged in prison here in downtown New
24 York, sharing a cell with Mamdouh Salim, a man that you heard
25 about in the guilt phase of this trial.
7449
1 And this cell is on the 10 South unit of the MCC, the
2 maximum security wing. And the defendant and Salim are
3 getting ready for trial, and you will hear that the guard on
4 duty that day, on November 1st, on the 10 South unit, was
5 Officer Louis Pepe. And Officer Pepe brought Salim out of his
6 cell that morning and took him to a meeting with his attorney
7 so that Salim could prepare for trial.
8 And you will hear that Officer Pepe treated the
9 inmates on 10 South with respect and even with kindness. And
10 that day, Salim made an excuse to Officer Pepe to have him
11 take him back to the cell he shared with Khalfan Mohamed in
12 the back of that 10 South unit. He lured him back to that
13 cell where this defendant was waiting. Officer Pepe opened
14 the door, stepped in, and was viciously attacked.
15 You will hear when other officers finally got to
16 Officer Pepe, other officers who were also attacked by Salim
17 and this defendant, they found that Officer Pepe had been
18 stabbed in the eye with a comb that had been sharpened into a
19 bayonet. And you will hear that that comb, that knife, that
20 combed turned into a knife, shredded Officer Pepe's eye and
21 traveled three inches into his brain, maiming him and causing
22 debilitating brain damage. He will never recover to what he
23 was.
24 Those were not idle threats made back in October of
25 1999. It wasn't bluster. This defendant threatened to do it
7450
1 again, and he then participated in a murderous attack on
2 Officer Pepe, an attack that came two years after the bombing
3 and one year after he was caught and placed in prison.
4 You will hear the details of this attack during this
5 penalty phase. When you must decide the penalty for this
6 defendant, Khalfan Mohamed, and as Judge Sand instructed you
7 at the guilt phase, you must individually consider each
8 defendant, each count, view them separately, consider them
9 separately and decide them separately. That's the law and
10 that's critical to giving each defendant and the government a
11 fair trial. And you must do the same in arriving at the
12 appropriate sentence for each defendant who is convicted of a
13 count that carries a death penalty. Justice for each
14 defendant for the crimes and for the victims of those crimes
15 requires no less.
16 Throughout this trial you have carefully considered
17 the evidence and you have engaged in meticulous deliberations.
18 Now, the government is confident that you will consider the
19 evidence here with an open mind at the penalty phase, where
20 you decide the appropriate penalty for this defendant. And we
21 submit to you that when you have heard all of that evidence,
22 when you have considered all of that evidence and what it
23 means, none of you will have any doubt that the right
24 sentence, the appropriate sentence, and the just sentence for
25 this defendant is the death penalty.
7451
1 So what generally will the evidence be at this phase?
2 Well, this morning I would like to talk to you about two
3 aggravating factors: Victim impact evidence and future
4 dangerousness.
5 Victim impact: As you might be expecting, you will
6 hear from some of the many victims of the defendant's
7 terrorist bombing in Dar es Salaam on August 7th. This will
8 be, and it should be, painful testimony for you to witness,
9 but because you will be hearing about pain, pain that this
10 defendant caused that day when the bomb went off in Dar es
11 Salaam, it created horror and it created terror.
12 Eleven lives were taken, eleven families were
13 shattered that day, and you must take that into account. You
14 must take that impact of the defendant's horrific crimes into
15 account, the devastation he happily wrought on the victims of
16 this bombing in Dar es Salaam and weigh that. That is his
17 responsibility, what happened in Dar es Salaam, and it's your
18 responsibility to consider it, to weigh it as you decide the
19 appropriate sentence for this defendant.
20 And let's talk now about some of the testimony you
21 will hear starting today from this witness stand. You will
22 hear testimony of survivors from the bombing, Patricia Wagner,
23 who was inside this building when the defendant's bomb ripped
24 through it. You will hear her testify.
25 You will hear from relatives of those that were
7452
1 killed by this defendant. At the guilt phase, you heard from
2 a guard Edward Ruthashewra. He was a security guard working
3 in the front of the embassy, and on the morning of August 7th,
4 he decided to take a break at about 10:00 and the guard that
5 relieved him was Omar Nyumbu.
6 Mr. Ruthashewra went behind the embassy to take his
7 break and the bomb went off, and he ran back in front of
8 embassy and he found Mr. Nyumbu lying on the ground, badly
9 injured. Mr. Nyumbu asked him, please take me over to the
10 shade. And you heard in the guilt phase that Mr. Nyumbu died,
11 he did not survive his injuries.
12 This is an exhibit, the actual identification card
13 that Mr. Nyumbu was wearing that day in Dar es Salaam when he
14 was on duty in front of the embassy when he was killed. He
15 was 21 years old.
16 At this phase, you will hear from Mr. Nyumbu's wife,
17 Asha, and she will tell you what Mr. Nyumbu was like, what he
18 was like as a husband, what he was like as a father. And you
19 will hear that he had just been promoted at the embassy. You
20 will hear details of his life, and you will hear that Asha, on
21 the morning hours of August 8th, was preparing food to bring
22 to her husband in the hospital when she heard that he had
23 died, that she would never see him again.
24 And you will hear from this witness stand the
25 testimony of Judith Mwila, whose husband, Abbas, was also a
7453
1 security guard at the embassy. The defendant killed five
2 security guards that day. And you will hear that Abbas had
3 three young children, that he was disciplined, he was a quiet
4 man, and that his mother had died when he was young in age.
5 And you will hear that Abbas then worked, he worked hard, he
6 worked at the embassy, he worked to support his family.
7 And you will hear about a water truck driver named
8 Shamte Ndange, and that this water truck driver, Mr. Shamte
9 Ndange, had six children. And you will hear details about his
10 life, his accomplishments, how he had received a certificate
11 for completing English studies.
12 And you will hear details of the other lives that
13 were lost that day on August 7th, 1998, when the bomb went off
14 after that truck left a Uhuru Road, where the defendant jumped
15 out and continued on to the embassy in Dar es Salaam, that at
16 the embassy in Dar es Salaam, the guards were outside at their
17 post, a water truck driver and a gardener were working.
18 And you will see and you will feel the impact of that
19 bombing and you will learn about the pain this defendant
20 caused those families. And listen to that pain and suffering,
21 listen about the 11 victims and what they will not get to do,
22 listen and remember what the innocent victims lost that day,
23 the day the defendant killed them. And remember that if you
24 hear about this defendant's background, this defendant's
25 family and this defendant's life, remember the lives he ended,
7454
1 the lives of the children that will now grow up without a
2 mother or a father.
3 And you are going to hear a great deal at this
4 penalty phase about future dangerousness, because the
5 government is going to prove to you beyond any doubt that this
6 defendant poses a future danger, a very real danger to anyone
7 he comes in contact with, to the lives and safety of others.
8 And part of the government's proof on this factor, the future
9 dangerousness factor, is going to be the attack on Officer
10 Pepe at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.
11 It is important that you understand how that proof
12 fits in at this phase. It's being offered to show you that
13 this defendant, who would commit mass murder on August 7th,
14 1998 in Dar es Salaam, who would say that he would do it
15 again, and who participated in an attack on an officer inside
16 prison, where the officer was maimed and suffered brain
17 damage, that this defendant is a danger to anyone he would
18 come in contact with.
19 As part of the proof of that, you are going to hear
20 how this defendant shared a cell, cell number 6, at the
21 Metropolitan Correctional Center with Salim in the back of the
22 high security unit. And you will learn that on November 1st,
23 2000, one year after being brought to the United States to
24 stand trial, he struck again.
25 Salim lured Officer Pepe back to that cell and they
7455
1 attacked him, they attacked him with that homemade knife that
2 was driven into the officer's eye with such force that it
3 shattered the bone and back of the eye socket and went deep
4 into his brain.
5 You will hear how officers responded to a silent
6 alarm that was inside Officer Pepe's radio, and when they
7 reached 10 South, they went through the door and they saw
8 blood on the floor, blood on the walls, going back to this
9 defendant's cell. And they followed that blood into the back
10 of the unit, and as they rounded the last corner to get to
11 that cell, to get to Officer Pepe, you will hear that this
12 defendant jumped out at them and attacked them, struggled and
13 fought with them. And as he was doing that, his cellmate,
14 Salim, came out of the cell and attacked those officers as
15 well. And it wasn't until they could subdue and restrain
16 Khalfan Mohamed and Salim that they could get to the stricken
17 officer.
18 And you are going to learn something very important.
19 You are going to learn that this wasn't a sudden attack,
20 something done out of rage. This was part of a well planned
21 hostage-taking plan, a plan that was going to be put in motion
22 by the attack on Officer Pepe.
23 And you will learn that in various ways. You will
24 learn that through notes that were seized from the cell in a
25 search that was done after the attack, and I would like to
7456
1 read to you one of those notes.
2 "We are the Muslims who were falsely accused of
3 bombing the embassy in Africa. We have captured the tenth
4 floor in MCC and we have several lawyers and officials. They
5 are under our full control. We were forced to resort to this
6 solution after we were deprived of our legal rights. We
7 request the immediate release of," there's a blank, "and send
8 them outside the U.S. If the government worries about the
9 safety of its citizens, it has to comply with all our demands.
10 Otherwise, it will be responsible for any consequences."
11 That note was found in this defendant's cell that he
12 shared with Salim. There are other notes that were found in
13 there, notes detailing the plan to take over the maximum
14 security wing at the MCC, notes that listed arming and
15 preparing for hunting, notes about informing all of the plan
16 and its steps, notes about the division of labor and
17 role-sharing, and notes about what the plan was about --
18 luring the guard, taking hostages, negotiations, demands --
19 notes about the physical layout of the unit, including the
20 electricity, including the keys, and notes about killing. One
21 note stated "causing the utmost injury to human lives."
22 After the savage attack on Officer Pepe when he had
23 been brought to the hospital and was undergoing hours of brain
24 surgery, agents searched the floor and searched the cell.
25 They found those notes. They also found another weapon -- a
7457
1 brush that had also been sharpened into a knife, and that
2 weapon was covered with Officer Pepe's blood, another weapon
3 used in the attack.
4 Now you are going to hear something about cameras,
5 cameras and monitors on the 10 South floor, and you are going
6 to hear there is no tape of this attack. And that's true.
7 There is no videotape. And there are two reasons for that:
8 One, the MCC, prior to this attack, there was no
9 procedure for making tapes, changing tapes, or storing tapes.
10 So the tapes were not changed, they were not made, and the
11 tapes in those machines are from the day before and late the
12 previous evening.
13 And second, you are going to learn that Salim and
14 Khalfan Mohamed were aware of the taping system. Notes in the
15 cell prove that. One note read, "The video and stopping it.
16 It may not exist." So they believed there was no taping going
17 on, but they were going to make sure there was no tape. So
18 they took a precaution. The camera inside Cell 6 was blocked.
19 A piece of paper was put over the camera lens so they made
20 sure there would never, in any case, be a recording.
21 And you are going to hear evidence that will show you
22 and to make clear that this was not Salim acting alone, that
23 this was not Salim enraged in stabbing a guard, that this was
24 a plan. And it was a plan, and the evidence will be that
25 Khalfan Mohamed was right there with Salim, a full
7458
1 participant. You will see that from the crime scene, you will
2 see that from the forensic evidence, and you will see that
3 from the way both of those inmates attacked the guards who
4 came to Officer Pepe's aid.
5 That is some of what you will hear at this penalty
6 phase about Khalfan Mohamed, a killer who said he would kill
7 again. He said he would kill again if he could, and he almost
8 did. And Officer Pepe nearly paid with his life, a life that
9 will never be the same.
10 You will learn that it was only through the
11 courageous acts of Officer Pepe and the other staff who
12 responded to the alarm that hostages weren't taken on 10
13 South, that more blood wasn't spilled on 10 South, and more
14 killings didn't happen on November 1st, 2000.
15 Khalfan Mohamed committed murder and said he would do
16 it again if he could. He joined Salim in a vicious attack on
17 Officer Pepe. Officer Pepe paid the price. The only penalty
18 that does justice for this defendant for his murder of 11
19 innocent people on August 7th, 1998 is the death penalty, and
20 that is the only penalty that will stop him from doing it
21 again and that will avoid putting more innocent lives at risk.
22 Thank you very much.
23 THE COURT: Thank you, Mr. Garcia. We'll take a
24 brief recess.
25 MR. RUHNKE: How long, your Honor?
7459
1 THE COURT: Five minutes.
2 (Recess)
3 (In open court; jury not present)
4 MR. RUHNKE: Your Honor, I object to Mr. Garcia's
5 comments in the opening about the death penalty being
6 appropriate as justice for victims, implying that the victims
7 all want a death penalty and see that as something that will
8 do justice for them.
9 What I would ask your Honor to do is instruct the
10 jury that the fact that people are testifying in this case as
11 victims simply means they are bringing evidence for the jury
12 to consider, and the jury should not infer by the fact that
13 they are testifying that they want Mr. Khalfan Mohamed
14 sentenced to death.
15 THE COURT: I think that is argument that you are
16 free to make, but I don't think it is appropriate that I
17 instruct them. I don't know what their views are with respect
18 to the death penalty as to K.K. Mohamed, nor do I think it is
19 appropriate that they express those views.
20 Denied.
21 MR. RUHNKE: I'm ready to proceed otherwise.
22 THE COURT: You are ready to proceed?
23 MR. RUHNKE: Yes.
24 THE COURT: Very well.
25 (Jury present)
7460
1 THE COURT: Mr. Ruhnke.
2 MR. RUHNKE: Thank you, your Honor.
3 Ladies and gentlemen, good morning.
4 THE JURY: Good morning.
5 MR. RUHNKE: If you still don't remember my name, I'm
6 David Ruhnke. I represent Khalfan Mohamed with David Stern,
7 who is with me at counsel table.
8 You will remember in February when we started this
9 process, as I reminded you in the past, it was snowing
10 outside, there was a wind howling through the courtroom.
11 Today it's going to be 90 degrees. By the time you are
12 through with your jury service, we will be in the midst of the
13 celebration of the 225th year of our independence over the
14 Fourth of July holiday. And it's somehow appropriate that
15 this case is coming at a time when we think about how this
16 nation was founded and where we come from, because this case
17 is a test of an American jury and the ability of an American
18 jury to do justice, to mix justice with fairness, and to come
19 out with a result that shows this nation to be as great a
20 nation as we are.
21 We are obviously all aware of the jury's decision in
22 the first part of the case. So, once again, you are going to
23 be called upon to make what Judge Sand has described to you as
24 the unique, individualized judgment about the appropriateness
25 of sentencing another human being, that particular human being
7461
1 to death. It is a responsibility that most American jurors,
2 thank goodness, are never asked to undertake. To ask an
3 American jury to do it twice, to have you folks willing to do
4 it twice is a tribute to you.
5 David Stern and I will work together to present what
6 we believe is a compelling case for life over the next several
7 weeks, next two weeks. But in reality, all that is needed for
8 you to return a verdict of life for Khalfan Mohamed is to
9 doubt the necessity for death.
10 The judge has instructed you, and will instruct you,
11 that in order to sentence a person to death in a case like
12 this you must be, beyond a reasonable doubt, sufficiently
13 persuaded that the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating
14 factors or that the aggravating factors themselves justify
15 imposition of a sentence of death.
16 And we know what the term "beyond a reasonable doubt"
17 means. What is "sufficient"? What is "sufficient"? In a
18 sense, that comes back to this concept of an individualized
19 decision. You know that the law does not answer the question
20 for you as to who gets sentenced to death and who does not get
21 sentenced to death. The law never gives you a cookbook or
22 arithmetic to deal with. The law leaves it to you, and the
23 law never requires you to impose a sentence of death.
24 So what does "sufficiently outweigh" mean? I suggest
25 to you -- this is my definition, it need not be your
7462
1 definition -- that in order to vote for a death sentence, you
2 have to be so sure that you are doing the right thing that you
3 will cast a vote that will yield a termination of another
4 human being's life. That is how sure "sufficiently outweigh"
5 means, and it is your individual decision. It is not one that
6 the law solves for you.
7 I want to talk about future danger and I want to talk
8 about November 1, 2000. And while I have great respect for my
9 adversaries from the prosecutor's office, the United States
10 Attorney's Office, with all due respect, Mr. Garcia has taken
11 some liberties with the facts.
12 Mr. Garcia has conveniently combined "him," an
13 individualism, into "them" and "they," when the evidence of
14 who did what on November 1 in the year 2000 is far less clear
15 than the government might try to make it out for you.
16 Khalfan Mohamed had no knowledge that Officer Pepe
17 was going to be attacked. He did not participate in a plan to
18 attack Officer Pepe. He did nothing to attack or injure
19 Officer Pepe. The evidence will be he never left the area
20 around his cell, Cell No. 6.
21 The notes that Mr. Garcia spoke about are in Arabic,
22 a language he barely speaks and does not read very well, but
23 certainly does not write. The one note that Mr. Garcia talked
24 about, "we are the Arabs falsely accused, we have been
25 deprived of our legal rights," is written in handwriting that
7463
1 is not Mr. Mohamed's handwriting. It is in the cell.
2 The evidence will be that Mr. Mohamed had been a
3 prisoner in the United States for well over a year and had not
4 caused one bit of trouble on 10 South or any other place he
5 had been, had not given any of the guards a hard time, had not
6 complained about his legal rights being deprived.
7 The evidence will be that when the guards responded
8 to 10 South, that they observed Mamdouh Mahmed Salim roaming
9 the hallways with keys in his hands. The evidence will be
10 that Mamdouh Mahmed Salim had locked Officer Pepe inside Cell
11 No. 6. The evidence will be that Khalfan Mohamed was seated
12 on the floor outside of Cell No. 6 and never left that spot
13 after Salim attacked officer pep.
14 Who is Salim? I'm displaying a photograph of Mamdouh
15 Mahmud Salim. You also know him as Abu Hajer al Iraqi. You
16 have heard a lot of testimony about Mr. Salim. If you wanted
17 to find Mr. Salim today, you could go perhaps 100 yards in
18 that direction and about three floors up and you would find
19 him in the 10 South unit of the Metropolitan Correction
20 Center.
21 We know Mr. Salim was a high-ranking member of the al
22 Qaeda organization. We know he was a veteran of the fighting
23 in Afghanistan. We know about Mr. Salim, Abu Hajer al Iraqui,
24 that he was the one who issued the religious opinion that it
25 was correct under Islamic law to kill innocent people, if
7464
1 necessary, in defense of Islam, because if the innocent people
2 were truly innocent, they would go straight to paradise, and
3 if they were not truly innocent, there was no evil in their
4 demise.
5 Mamdouh Salim is the person that al Qaeda turned to
6 when they wanted someone to purchase nuclear weapons. When al
7 Qaeda was prepared to spend a million and a half dollars for
8 the components of nuclear weapons, they turned to the man who
9 is on this screen.
10 Something you don't know about Mr. Salim is that he
11 is a very physically powerful man, a tall and strong man.
12 Something the government didn't tell you about Mr. Salim is
13 that in the days and the months and the weeks preceding the
14 attack on Officer Pepe on 10 South, Mr. Salim had become
15 increasingly angry, increasingly complaining about his legal
16 rights being violated, unhappy with the lawyers who were
17 representing him, shouting out in court to points where the
18 judge was required to order him to sit down, in essence,
19 remain silent in court, complaining and angry.
20 You will hear evidence that even after what occurred
21 on 10 South on November 1, 2000, Salim carried on his roar,
22 because even as Salim was being medically treated, he managed
23 so hide and take possession of a needle that had been used in
24 his treatments, an IV-type needle. What he was going to do
25 with it, we don't know, but he took it and hid it.
7465
1 He has been separately charged and indicted with the
2 attempted murder for the attempted murder of Officer Pepe.
3 You need to know this: Through his attorneys, he has placed
4 the court and the government on notice that he will defend the
5 charge of attempted murder on the grounds that he was mentally
6 ill at the time that the assault took place. This is Abu
7 Hajer al Iraqui.
8 On the day in question -- when I talk about
9 Mr. Garcia playing fast and loose with the facts, this is what
10 I mean. He told you that Officer Pepe went back to the cell,
11 the door was opened, and he was attacked. He doesn't know
12 that to be true and no one knows that to be true. In fact,
13 the responding officers believe that Officer Pepe was attacked
14 as he was escorting Salim back to his cell.
15 You will see in evidence a diagram of what 10 South
16 looks like. 10 South is a high security unit. Unfortunately,
17 it was not treated as a high security unit. I will tell you
18 more about that in a moment.
19 What you will see is that 10 South is a U-shaped unit
20 that has a total of six cells, just six cells on it; that the
21 cell doors are solid metal with small windows in them. You
22 will see that there's an opening in the doors, a food slot,
23 something that's about this high, about this wide, something
24 that a tray perhaps could fit through. You will learn a lot
25 about what the security actually was on 10 South on November
7466
1 1st and what it should have been.
2 On November 1, 2000, at about 10:30 in the morning,
3 Salim received a visit from two of his attorneys, a gentleman
4 named Paul McAllister and another gentleman named Charles
5 Adler. At the same time that that was going on, Mr. El
6 Hage -- obviously you know Mr. El Hage -- was himself having a
7 meeting with his attorneys, and his attorneys were both
8 present on 10 South, Joshua Dratel and Sam Schmidt, who you
9 know from the trial.
10 Here is how things are supposed to happen when
11 attorneys visit or other visits occur, and it references back
12 to the food slot that I talked to you about.
13 First, prisoners at this particular time were
14 double-celled, which means that there was two prisoners in
15 each cell; that the prisoners in each cell rotated. There was
16 a rotation. Mr. Mohamed had never been in a cell with
17 Mr. Salim previously and, to his everlasting bad fortune, five
18 days before this attack occurred, he was rotated into the cell
19 with Mr. Salim.
20 What is supposed to happen when there is an attorney
21 visit, at least as it existed then, was that attorneys were
22 allowed then, before November 1, to have what are called
23 contact visits with your client, which simply means that, for
24 example, Mr. Mohamed and I would be permitted to meet in an
25 open room, obviously locked door, across a table. Mr. Mohamed
7467
1 would not be handcuffed, and that would be the circumstances
2 of the meeting. However, the way this worked, in order to
3 maintain security, here is how Mr. Mohamed, or any other
4 prisoner, would be brought to that attorney meeting:
5 The guard on duty, and hopefully it would be more
6 than one guard -- it is now -- would go to the cell of the
7 inmate: You have an attorney visit. The inmate would then do
8 the following:
9 The officer would unlock this food slot. Again, it's
10 a relatively small thing. You will see photographs and you
11 will have a clear idea of what it looks like. An inmate was
12 then required to back up to the food slot, place his hands
13 through the foods slot and be handcuffed from behind, and
14 then, once he was handcuffed from behind, then the door would
15 be opened and the inmate would be brought into, for example,
16 the attorney room that I have described.
17 Now, the attorney room that I have described also has
18 one of these food-type slot openings in it, and what would
19 occur is that the officer would open the door to the attorney
20 room, lock the door to the attorney room so both attorneys
21 would be in there and now the defendant is in the room, and
22 then the defendant would back up to the door and the handcuffs
23 would be removed. And so he would be in a lock, secure
24 facility, and at all times when he was in contact with the
25 officer, he would have been handcuffed from behind.
7468
1 The same thing happened, as you can probably imagine,
2 at the end of the meetings, which would be that at the
3 conclusion of the meeting, the client would back up to the
4 door, be handcuffed, allow himself to be handcuffed from
5 behind, and at that point the door would be opened so the
6 attorneys could leave and the client would be escorted back to
7 his cell, where, once he was locked in his cell, the handcuffs
8 would be removed in exactly the same procedure that I have
9 been describing.
10 Officer Pepe was often left alone on 10 South, the
11 only officer in charge of 10 South. On the day in question,
12 he made a mistake and he did not cuff Salim. What occurred is
13 that -- you have to recall the situation. He had been taken
14 out of his cell for an attorney visit. To all knowledge, he
15 was cuffed just as in the manner that I have described to you,
16 taken to an attorney room.
17 Now, the way this particular attorney room was set up
18 is that you will see from the diagram that there are two large
19 areas on 10 South which are designated recreation, but they
20 are basically large rooms, perhaps as large as the rectangle
21 that I'm drawing here. They are designated recreation, but in
22 fact they were often used mostly for meetings, and there would
23 be a foldable picnic-type portable table in there and some
24 plastic chairs and it would be used for meetings.
25 There were also other visiting facilities which
7469
1 consisted of two areas, each accessible by a locked door, each
2 with those kind of food slots with a security screen in
3 between, a stiff metal screen -- not something you could have
4 in your house, but a stiff metal security screen that you
5 could see through holes in the screen but there could be no
6 contact between.
7 On the particular day at 10 South, there was a
8 computer set up in one of those rooms, one side of that
9 visiting area, so that people who were preparing their case
10 who had to look at computerized discovery or other kinds of
11 documents could use the computer to look at it. We're moving
12 to a digital age where not everything is on paper any longer.
13 People would look at it.
14 On the day in question, Salim was taken from his
15 cell, locked into the computer side of the separated visiting
16 room, while his two attorneys were on the other side. And
17 Salim was doing something with the computer, said, in sum and
18 substance, I need to get some more materials from my cell.
19 And Officer Pepe took him out without handcuffing him and
20 walked him back towards his cell, and that is when the attack
21 on Mr. Pepe, Officer Pepe, took place.
22 You will find that, in terms of what happened
23 afterwards, the following: Officer Pepe's body alarm went
24 off. The officers carry an alarm so that if there is a
25 problem, if they are knocked down, there is an alarm that
7470
1 sounds throughout the institution. And it is a call to action
2 of the highest magnitude within a prison. It means an officer
3 is down and there's some problem.
4 They tried to raise Officer Pepe on his radio and he
5 would not respond to radio calls. They tried to call 10 South
6 and there was no answer on 10 South.
7 And then what happened is that the way 10 South is
8 set up is that you walk into a very secure area called 9
9 South, you walk up a half a flight of stairs, there is a
10 locked door with a window, there is a vestibule area between
11 the next locked door, it is maybe six or eight feet. The way
12 the security was set up is that only the officer on the inside
13 of 10 South would have the key to open the inside door. The
14 outside door could be opened via radio call by some kind of
15 central control.
16 Well, the extra key or the emergency key could not be
17 immediately located by the officers. So we have this
18 situation where they are trying to get onto 10 South and they
19 can't get there and they can't find the key. It takes five to
20 ten minutes before the key is brought up.
21 The officers rushed 10 South. They come charging
22 down the hallway, and Khalfan Mohamed fought back. I don't
23 deny that and I don't argue against that. I ask that you look
24 at the situation as he saw it. Salim had just got finished
25 attacking Pepe. The officers were charging down at him and he
7471
1 fought back, probably in an effort, he thought, to save his
2 life.
3 It is a tragedy that there is no video. I mean, it's
4 a tragedy for Mr. Mohamed, I suggest, that there is no video
5 of what took place on 10 South because there is now no way,
6 short of what one human being says about one thing and another
7 human being recalls about another thing, to reconstruct
8 exactly what happened on 10 South.
9 The guards responded, were responding to an emergency
10 situation. I can never tell you how I would respond if there
11 were -- how I would respond if I were in their shoes and
12 responded to what they responded to and seeing what they saw,
13 but we do have evidence, you will hear evidence that there was
14 at least some overreaction by some of the guards, physical
15 force used over and above what was necessary to subdue
16 Mr. Mohamed and Mr. Salim.
17 Very specifically, Mr. McAllister and Mr. Adler, from
18 where they were sitting in that attorney room, locked in, will
19 tell you the following: That while they were there -- and
20 they did not know what was going on, they are locked in this
21 room -- they saw Pepe walk Salim back to Cell No. 6, to the
22 far rear unit, and then nothing happened. Salim didn't come
23 back. They didn't see Officer Pepe again.
24 From their vantage point inside this interview room,
25 they could see, however, video monitors under the officers
7472
1 station desk at front and could see, for example, on 9 South,
2 that unit a half-step, a half-floor down, that there was a lot
3 of activity going on.
4 They couldn't figure out what was going on, but they
5 could see guards gathering and very excited and very upset.
6 And when they next saw Salim -- this was their client at that
7 time -- when they next saw Salim, they saw the following:
8 They saw officers drag Salim back into the front of the unit;
9 they saw that Salim was unconscious, unresisting.
10 One of the attorneys believed he was dead. Obviously
11 he wasn't dead, but he thought he was dead. And while Salim
12 was down, unresisting, unconscious, one of the officers in
13 question took a metal object of some kind, whether it's a key
14 or what it was, and jammed it almost into Salim's eye. Blood
15 spurted. It was like a fountain of blood.
16 That is what the attorneys witnessed. Nobody
17 witnessed what occurred back on Cell 6. However, I would like
18 to display for you photographs 103 through 106.
19 This is a photograph of Khalfan Mohamed taken on
20 November 6. It was taken five days after the events on 10
21 South. The injuries suffered by Mr. Mohamed are nothing
22 compared to what happened to Officer Pepe, but they include a
23 fractured nose and they include a fractured eye socket. If
24 you look at Mr. Mohamed's eyes, somebody fractured his eye
25 socket.
7473
1 And there is no video. The government has taken upon
2 itself to explain to you why there is no video that remains on
3 10 South. I suggest to you that the officers who responded,
4 just as they told the attorneys who were in the attorney room,
5 told them turn around, don't look. Turn around, don't look,
6 as they told the attorneys. They did not want to see what
7 they were doing to Salim; that there is a reason or there may
8 be a reason or that it is at very least suspicious or it is at
9 very least a failure of proof.
10 And perhaps that is the kindest, most non-accusatory
11 way to say it -- that there is a failure of proof as to what
12 occurred in the rear of 10 South and how these injuries
13 occurred. And whether the officers perceive of themselves now
14 as having to justify the injuries received by Mr. Mohamed, as
15 I say, Pepe paid a price that makes this appear to be nothing.
16 But he paid the price, and the injuries he received were not
17 at the hands of this man, they were at the hands of Mamdouh
18 Mahmud Salim.
19 He has nothing to do, Khalfan Mohamed, nothing to do
20 with this horrible assault. The government has taken it upon
21 itself to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he poses a
22 future danger and it uses as a component of that proof this
23 assault.
24 But let me not leave it there. No matter what you
25 do, no matter what you find as to what occurred or did not
7474
1 occur on 10 South on November 1, 2000, the United States
2 Bureau of Prisons will make its own assessment as to whether
3 or not Khalfan Mohamed poses a danger in the future and will
4 have steps and will take steps and has available to it steps
5 to make certain that there is no further risk. No matter what
6 you find, no matter what you find, they are going to take
7 their own view of it.
8 There are simple steps that can be taken, and they
9 can be taken on 10 South. And you will hear experts and
10 witnesses describe these. They can be taken on 10 South.
11 They can be taken on virtually any institution that the Bureau
12 of Prisons maintains all around the United States, steps as
13 simple as never leaving one officer in charge of a group of
14 high security inmates.
15 The current situation on 10 South is that
16 Mr. Mohamed, and everyone else on 10 South, goes through --
17 first of all, everybody is back to being single-celled, by
18 themselves, goes through this procedure that I described to
19 you even to be moved the ten or fifteen steps for an attorney
20 visit, but does it only under the supervision of at least
21 three officers, including a lieutenant.
22 Where there are numbers, the tendency to relax
23 procedures, and where there is a superior officer, the
24 tendency to relax procedures is diminished. And the Bureau of
25 Prisons -- you have heard reference to the SAM, the Special
7475
1 Administrative Measure that was introduced in the current
2 case -- I'm sorry, the prior penalty phase. There is also
3 something that you should know about and need to know about
4 called a control unit.
5 The Bureau of Prisons has available to it and has
6 procedures spelled out for housing inmates that the Bureau of
7 Prisons determines -- never mind what you determine -- the
8 Bureau of Prisons determines would pose a risk to other
9 individuals, staff, inmates, or anybody else, and the primary
10 criteria, the primary reason people are sent to a control unit
11 is that they have acted violently while in less restrictive
12 conditions.
13 Whatever you decide, I suggest that the Bureau of
14 Prisons is going to send Mr. Mohamed to a control unit, and
15 there is only one control unit in the United States. It is
16 located in a facility called Florence, a United States
17 penitentiary facility referred to as the Ad Max, which stands
18 for administrative maximum.
19 It is the most secure prison and the most
20 safety-conscious prison in the entire Bureau of Prisons
21 system. It has only been in operation for six or seven years.
22 It is sometimes referred to as the Alcatraz of the Rockies.
23 It's in a remote area of Florence, Colorado. We will be
24 putting on evidence to you of what these conditions are like
25 in a control unit or in what's called the Ad Max unit and how
7476
1 inmates are handled and how exposure to staff and other people
2 is absolutely minimized.
3 But these are steps that can be taken in any prison.
4 We will show you that after the events of November 1, the
5 horrible events of November 1, Mr. Mohamed was taken out of
6 the prison in the Metropolitan Correctional Center behind us
7 and taken to a facility in Otisville, New York. The facility
8 in Otisville, New York is not even a maximum security
9 facility, but they set it up inside for him.
10 And we have for you and will play for you videotapes,
11 at least one videotape, that was prepared by Otisville to
12 document the kind of security that they put into place with
13 regard to Mr. Mohamed, how he is moved from place to place.
14 It's a procedure that can be put in place in any penitentiary
15 in the United States. It is essentially this three-man hold
16 that I described to you, that a person moves only with three
17 people around them at all times; that they are shackled at the
18 feet with chains; that they are searched thoroughly before
19 coming out of the cell; that they are chained at the waist;
20 that the handcuffs are looped through the chain at the
21 waist -- it's called a belly chain or a Martin chain
22 sometimes; that sometimes what is called a black box is used
23 on handcuffs. The handcuff has chains on it. A black box
24 is -- a small black metal box that covers the chains is locked
25 over the chains so that there is not even this kind of
7477
1 movement available; you can only move there. And as you will
2 see from the video, that is how Mr. Mohamed is moved around.
3 Before someone says that, well, I must be blaming the
4 victim for what happened in this case, I do not. Somebody
5 will say, well, he's blaming MCC for letting Officer Pepe be
6 there all by himself. And I'm not. I blame Mamdouh Mahmed
7 Salim for what happened to Officer Pepe on November 1, 2000.
8 Let's talk about the alternative to death. Let's
9 talk about prison. Let's talk for a moment about life in
10 prison. You will see lots and lots of photographs of what a
11 prison cell looks like as part and parcel of this particular
12 case. Most prison cells are maybe eight feet by ten feet,
13 roughly a triangle, rectangle that I'm drawing or outlining
14 now.
15 I want you to think for a moment of life in a prison,
16 life in a room that size for the rest of your life, for every
17 day of the rest of your life. But back up a little bit.
18 Think about a moderately nice motel room, a Holiday Inn
19 somewhere, a Days Inn somewhere, and think of yourself being
20 put into this relatively nice motel room by yourself one
21 morning and saying, well, here you are and you're going to be
22 here forever. This is going to be your home for the rest of
23 your life.
24 Well, you have the T.V. to look at and you have some
25 reading to do, but day after day, even being locked in a nice
7478
1 motel room, it is that loss of freedom that is the punishment.
2 It is the loss of freedom that drives people to kill
3 themselves in prisons. It's that loss of human contact, of
4 being part of any kind of a society.
5 Now, instead of the Holiday Inn room, imagine that
6 one day the manager of the Holiday Inn comes and says, I'm
7 sorry, we know you're enjoying this large room, but we're
8 going to have to move you into the bathroom and that's where
9 you're going to have to stay. But, don't worry, we're going
10 to move a bunk in there and you will have a toilet in there.
11 And I hope you don't mind that there is a camera on you every
12 day, and I hope you don't mind that people are watching every
13 intimate detail of your life, and I hope you don't mind that
14 you're not going to be able to make phone calls when you want,
15 and if you do make a phone call, we're going to listen and
16 tape record it and we're going to read every letter that you
17 get and every letter that you send.
18 It is punishment. It is punishment. And it is
19 punishment because of choices, choices that Mr. Mohamed made
20 himself. Nobody has brought this on him. We are not blaming
21 someone else for the fact that here, in the year 2000,
22 somebody who once had a life in front of him has nothing in
23 front of him except prison or death in prison.
24 I mean, in a real sense, Mr. Mohamed knows something
25 today that none of us know, and what he knows today that none
7479
1 of us know is where he is going to die. He is going to die in
2 a United States penitentiary. The only question is when, and
3 the only question is whether he dies as a result of age or the
4 ravages of time, a disease, or when God's calls him to die, or
5 whether he dies as a result of 12 votes from a jury in New
6 York City in the spring and summer of the year 2001.
7 A final word on future dangerousness: What the
8 government says that Mr. Mohamed did on November 1 is not a
9 capital crime. I mean, Mr. Salim does not face the death
10 penalty because of what he did on Officer Pepe. Officer Pepe
11 did not die. He was horribly injured, but we don't have the
12 death penalty for people who do not kill.
13 But what the government is saying is this -- and
14 understand fully what they are saying: What they are saying
15 is, since we can't figure out a way to confine him in a way
16 that is not a risk some day to somebody, as some kind of final
17 guarantee, you people should vote that he be killed. That's
18 what it's there for. That's what the government is asking you
19 to do. That's why that information has come before you.
20 I want to talk a bit about the case in mitigation,
21 and I want to begin by displaying a chronology that we
22 displayed in the original summation. I will not go through
23 this in long detail. You have seen this document before.
24 It takes Khalfan Mohamed through his birth in 1973.
25 While he is six years old, the mujahadeen come into existence.
7480
1 And you saw during Mr. al-'Owhali's penalty phase that video
2 called "The Koran and the Kalashnikov," I think it was called,
3 that documented the rise of the mujahadeen and the fact that
4 it was our government, our Central Intelligence Agency, our
5 CIA which supported and funded and armed the mujahadeen.
6 You will note that in 1990 he moved to Dar es Salaam
7 to live and work with his brother, Mohamed, and began to
8 undertake the first real religious education that he had ever
9 done. He began to attend a mosque in the Ilala section of Dar
10 es Salaam.
11 This is a photograph of the mosque in Ilala in Dar es
12 Salaam that Mr. Mohamed began to attend at age 17, where he
13 began to learn a brand of Islam that has brought him here
14 today.
15 Let's look, also, at photo 7, which is another view
16 of the same mosque.
17 All right, if we may return to the chronology.
18 As we go through 1994, 1994 was a key year. He meets
19 people. He begins to discuss more and more the concept of
20 radical Islam and he goes to training in Afghanistan in 1994.
21 He thought he might go there to help the people in
22 Bosnia. You have heard a little bit about Bosnia and what was
23 happening in Bosnia Herzegovina.
24 If we could switch and display map 8, it's a map of
25 the Mediterranean area, North Africa, and you see right across
7481
1 Italy, across the Adriatic Sea, Bosnia, Herzegovina, former
2 portion of the Yugoslavia-Czech Republic, Czechoslovakia, when
3 those nations broke up in the wake of the dissolution of the
4 Soviet Union, hundreds-of-year-old ethnic rivalries and
5 hatreds came back to the surface. And what happened in Bosnia
6 to the Muslim people has been described to you by witnesses,
7 at least one witness in this case, as genocide.
8 We will present further evidence on what was going on
9 in Bosnia and what was in the mind of Khalfan Mohamed in 1994.
10 Entire villages of men and boys were marched out of Muslim
11 areas in Bosnia, never to be seen again, although mass graves
12 still to this day continue to be uncovered all over this area
13 of Bosnia.
14 The leaders of these crimes have been indicted for
15 international war crimes. They do not face the death penalty,
16 but they have been indicted for war crimes in international
17 tribunals.
18 In Bosnia and Herzegovina, for the first time rape
19 was recognized as a war crime because it was used as an
20 instrument of war, where Serbian neighbors raped Bosnian
21 neighbors in the name of ethnic cleansing so that the two
22 could never, ever live side by side.
23 This is what is fulminating in the Muslim world in
24 1994. It is not fiction. It is not propaganda. It is,
25 unfortunately, the truth about what happened.
7482
1 If we could display the document called mitigation.
2 One of the first things that you will consider is his
3 role in the offense, and you have heard much about his role in
4 the offense -- that he was not a leader or an organizer of the
5 conspiracy which led to the bombing of the Dar es Salaam
6 embassy or, indeed, the larger conspiracy.
7 Think of the number of people who were involved and
8 think of the money and the experts and the material and
9 logistics, all that had to be accomplished in order for that
10 to happen. And in that overall grand scheme of things, he was
11 obviously not a leader. He was obviously not an organizer.
12 He was not even particularly skilled. No expert talent of his
13 was brought to bear.
14 Now, I want to say something more about the leaders
15 and the organizers and the other people who have been charged.
16 There are literally dozens of people who will be named and
17 established for you throughout the trial who played roles in
18 this offense who will not face the death penalty.
19 Some of them, obviously, you know about firsthand,
20 directly:
21 Mohamed Sadeek Odeh found guilty by you of 213 counts
22 of murder in Nairobi never faced the death penalty.
23 Wadih El Hage never faced the death penalty, despite
24 your finding him guilty of the conspiracy to kill Americans
25 everywhere in the world, despite the fact that he was the key
7483
1 organizer of the Nairobi cell of al Qaeda which carried out
2 both of these bombings.
3 Mr. al-'Owhali does not face the death penalty
4 anymore, although he did, because by your verdict he is not
5 facing, he cannot ever face a sentence of death.
6 We will present evidence of other individuals.
7 I want to talk to you about extradition and the
8 concept of extradition. Mr. Salim was extradited from
9 Germany. He was extradited from Germany on condition that the
10 United States Government could not expose him to a death
11 sentence.
12 The government has stipulated in the first penalty
13 proceeding, it will undoubtedly so stipulate in this penalty
14 proceeding, that there are defendants presently undergoing
15 extradition proceedings in the United Kingdom who do not face
16 a death penalty because the United Kingdom will not extradite
17 people to any country unless assurances are given by the
18 government that that person will not face a sentence of death.
19 You will hear evidence in this case about other
20 people who have entered into cooperation agreements with the
21 United States or who, you may infer, and I will argue that you
22 can infer, have entered into cooperation agreements with the
23 United States.
24 There will be a stipulation between the government
25 and the defense that there is a member of al Qaeda who in the
7484
1 past five years has pled guilty to a conspiracy to kill
2 Americans anywhere in the world, and that he has an
3 arrangement with the government by which his sentence can be
4 anything from zero to life.
5 I want to talk specifically about another individual,
6 and that is Ali Mohamed.
7 If we could have that photograph.
8 Ali Mohamed, you remember discussion of Ali Mohamed.
9 You may remember particularly in summing up to you Mr. Karas
10 described Ali Mohamed in the following words: "Ali Mohamed
11 lurks in the background of this entire conspiracy." Lurks in
12 the background of this entire conspiracy.
13 Ali Mohamed, a naturalized American citizen, a man
14 with two bachelors degrees and a master's degree, born in
15 Egypt, served in the Egyptian army, served as an instructor
16 for the special forces at Ft. Bragg in South Carolina.
17 You may recall arguments made to you about Mr. El
18 Hage as an American, it was argued to you; he was asked to
19 choose between his country and al Qaeda, and he repeatedly
20 chose al Qaeda. It now appears that Mr. Mohamed, Ali Mohamed,
21 is in exactly that same position -- that he repeatedly was
22 asked to choose between his country, America, and al Qaeda,
23 and repeatedly chose al Qaeda, except now there has been a
24 change and the change is it now appears that the United States
25 has chosen Mr. Mohamed as one of their cooperating witnesses.
7485
1 I ask you to make that inference. I do not say that
2 the United States confirms that that is the case, but I'm
3 going to ask you to make the inference that this man is
4 cooperating with the United States under circumstances by
5 which he could some day not only not face the death penalty
6 and not face a sentence of life imprisonment, but some day
7 walk free. Ali Mohamed walking the street of America again
8 because of a deal with the government.
9 I'm going to read for you, and you will have this
10 document in evidence, but I'm going to read to you from a
11 statement that Ali Mohamed gave in the course of pleading
12 guilty to five counts of international conspiracy and
13 terrorism on October 20, 2000.
14 I'm just going to start reading:
15 "Your Honor, in the early 1980s I became involved
16 with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization. In the early
17 1990s, I was introduced to al Qaeda -- al Qaeda is the
18 organization headed by Usama Bin Laden -- through my
19 involvement with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
20 "In 1992, I conducted military and basic explosives
21 training for al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Among the people I
22 trained were Harun Fadhl and Abu Jihad. I also conducted
23 intelligence training for al Qaeda. I taught my trainees how
24 to create cell structures that could be used for operations.
25 "In 1991, I helped transport Usama Bin Laden from
7486
1 Afghanistan to the Sudan.
2 "When I engaged in these activities and the others
3 that I am about to describe, I understood that I was working
4 with al Qaeda, Bin Laden, Abu Hafs, Abu Ubaidah, and that al
5 Qaeda had a shura council, which included Abu Hajer al Iraqui.
6 "In the early 1990s, I assisted al Qaeda in creating
7 a presence in Nairobi, Kenya. I understood that I was working
8 with al" -- I'm sorry. Repeat that.
9 "In the early 1990s, I assisted al Qaeda in creating
10 a presence in Nairobi, Kenya and worked with several others on
11 this project. Abu Ubaidah was in charge of al Qaeda in
12 Nairobi until he drowned. Khalid al-Fawwaz set up al Qaeda's
13 office in Nairobi. A car business was set up to create
14 income. Wadih El Hage created a charity organization that
15 would help provide al Qaeda members with identity documents.
16 I personally helped El Hage by making labels in his home in
17 Nairobi. I personally met Abu Ubaidah and Abu Hafs at Wadih's
18 house in Nairobi.
19 "We used various code names to conceal our
20 identities. I used the name Jeff; El Hage used the name
21 Norman; Ihab used the name Nawawi.
22 "In late 1993, I was asked by Bin Laden to conduct
23 surveillance of American, British, French and Israeli targets
24 in Nairobi. Among the targets I did surveillance for was the
25 American embassy in Nairobi, the United States AID Building in
7487
1 Nairobi, the United States Agricultural Office Nairobi, the
2 French Cultural Center and French Embassy in Nairobi. These
3 targets were selected to retaliate against the United States
4 for its involvement in Somalia. I took pictures, drew
5 diagrams and wrote a report. Khalid al-Fawwaz paid for my
6 expenses in the photo-enlarging equipment. He was in Nairobi
7 at this time.
8 "I later went to Khartoum, where my surveillance
9 files and photographs were reviewed by Usama Bin Laden, Abu
10 Hafs, Abu Ubaidah, and others. Bin Laden looked at the
11 picture of the American embassy and pointed to where a truck
12 could go as a suicide bomber.
13 "In 1994, Bin Laden sent me to Djibouti to do
14 surveillance on several facilities, including French military
15 bases and the American embassy.
16 "In 1994, after an attempt to assassinate Bin Laden,
17 I went to the Sudan in 1994 to train Bin Laden's bodyguards,
18 security detail. I trained those conducting the security of
19 the interior of his compound, and coordinated with the
20 Sudanese intelligence agents who were responsible for the
21 exterior security.
22 "In 1994, while I was in Sudan, I did surveillance
23 training for al Qaeda. Ihab Ali, also known as Nawawi, was
24 one of the people I trained. Nawawi was supposed to train
25 others."
7488
1 I'm going to skip over some of this because you are
2 going to have this all.
3 "In late 1994, I received a phone call from an FBI
4 agent who wanted to speak to me about the upcoming trial of
5 United States v. Abdel Rahman" -- just parenthetically, you
6 have heard testimony about that as he was called away from
7 Nairobi. "I flew back to the United States, spoke to the FBI,
8 but didn't disclose everything that I know.
9 "I reported on my meeting with the FBI to Abu Hafs
10 and was told not to return to Nairobi.
11 "In 1995, I obtained a copy of the co-conspirator
12 list for the Abdel Rahman trial. I sent the list to El Hage
13 in Kenya, expecting that it would be forwarded to Bin Laden in
14 Khartoum.
15 "In 1996, I learned from El Hage that Abu Ubaidah had
16 drowned.
17 "In 1998, I received a letter from Ihab Ali. In
18 early January 1998, a letter said that El Hage had been
19 interviewed by the FBI in Kenya and gave me a contact number
20 for El Hage. I called the number and then called someone who
21 would pass the message to Fawwaz for Bin Laden.
22 "After the bombing in 1998, I made plans to go to
23 Egypt and later to Afghanistan to meet Bin Laden. Before I
24 could leave, I was subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury
25 in the Southern District of New York. I testified, told some
7489
1 lies, and was then arrested."
2 And there's more, which I will not read.
3 This is a man who may walk the streets again. And I
4 say to you this, and I saw to you this: If, in the view of
5 the United States, the justice can be served, if justice can
6 be served by striking a deal with Ali Mohamed, if justice can
7 be served by striking a deal with an American citizen who
8 surveilled our embassy in Nairobi, who took the photographs to
9 Usama Bin Laden himself and who stood there while Usama Bin
10 Laden looked at the photographs an remarked "there's a good
11 place for a bomb truck to go," and thereafter continued to
12 assist the conspiracy up to and including perjury in a grand
13 jury in 1998, leading to his arrest -- that's a long build-up
14 from an "if," but if justice can be served by striking a deal
15 and allow him to walk free some day, perhaps, then surely
16 justice can be served by taking Khalfan Mohamed and putting
17 him in a prison from which he will never walk free. And
18 that's one of the points of comparing the involvement of
19 people.
20 We'll go back to the mitigating list.
21 It is a mitigating factor that Khalfan Mohamed gave a
22 truthful and candid statement to the agents. One of the
23 things we will bring before you, which is new information to
24 you, is that although Mr. al-'Owhali eventually gave a
25 statement to the agents about what he knew about the bombing
7490
1 in Nairobi, for several days, Mr. al-'Owhali lied to the
2 agents about who he was and what he knew and where he stood in
3 the process.
4 If Khalfan Mohamed is not sentenced to death, he will
5 spend the rest of his life in a United States prison without
6 any possibility of release. He has no history of prior
7 criminal behavior.
8 If he is executed, Khalfan Mohamed's family will
9 suffer grief and loss. Mr. Garcia suggests to you so will the
10 victims, and that's undeniably true, but we will try to show
11 you some of his role. We won't do it now, but we will through
12 photos and maps, the kind of places he grew up in Kademni on
13 the Island of Zanzibar in Tanzania.
14 And the point of this, the point of this is that
15 there has been enough killing and enough pain. And you are
16 allowed to consider this, to say, look, do we need to bring
17 grief, are we substantially persuaded that we need to bring
18 grief and loss to another family in order to somehow balance
19 out the world? The world is not balanced out when more pain
20 is inflicted. And we hope to present to you members of
21 Mr. Mohamed's family who are, as we speak, traveling from East
22 Africa to the United States for the sole reason of speaking to
23 you as witnesses and telling you about their son or their
24 brother or their loved one.
25 But you will conclude, when you learn about
7491
1 Mr. Mohamed's world -- we will present testimony from a woman
2 named Jill Miller. Jill Miller is a trained social worker.
3 She holds a master's degree in social work and for the past 15
4 or 20 years has devoted her career to developing life
5 histories, family histories in a way that is understandable
6 and coherent in one piece to juries.
7 You will hear from her to discuss where Khalfan
8 Mohamed grew up, how he grew up, his education, the fact that
9 he left school before graduating from high school, the
10 influence in his life. She's been to Zanzibar twice for those
11 purposes. You will have her testimony and you will have
12 photographs that try to show you what that life is like, and
13 you will be justified in concluding that between our lives and
14 Mr. Mohamed's lives, virtually the only thing we have in
15 common is our common thread of humanity; that our worlds are
16 so very different and the influences are so very, very
17 different, and it is the point of this proceeding whether even
18 that common thread of humanity is going to be cut by you, the
19 jury.
20 You will hear from a psychiatrist, okay, a
21 psychiatrist not on the issue of Mr. Mohamed's mental health.
22 We do not, like Abu Hajer al Iraqui, contend that our actions
23 are somehow driven or justified or excused by mental illness.
24 Gerald Post, M.D., is a Yale-educated psychiatrist. He is a
25 professor of political psychology at George Washington
7492
1 University.
2 But before he went to the academic world, Dr. Gerald
3 Post spent 21 years as an analyst with the Central
4 Intelligence Agency, studying the psychology of terrorism and
5 how terrorist groups operate, how they recruit, and how they
6 select those who are important members of their conspiracy and
7 their group from those who are less important. And he will
8 give you the benefit of those 21 years and 25 years of
9 research as he discusses Khalfan Mohamed.
10 Number 7. Khalfan Mohamed is remorseful for the
11 deaths, injuries and other consequences of the bombing of the
12 embassy and would not participate in such a crime in the
13 future. One of the things about the death penalty is that it
14 disrespects and disregards the potential that people can
15 change, the potential that people can say I have thought about
16 where I have been and I have thought about where I am going,
17 and where I have been is perhaps not the right place to have
18 been.
19 You will hear testimony from both Dr. Post and Jill
20 Miller that they have discussed at great length Khalfan
21 Mohamed's view of what occurred at the embassy in Nairobi and
22 what occurred at the embassy in Dar es Salaam, and that the
23 experience and how the experience of being here in court and
24 how the experience of hearing from the victims has not changed
25 his beliefs, not changed his core beliefs, but has changed his
7493
1 view of what jihad should be and should not be, and that jihad
2 should not involve the killings of innocents, that it was
3 wrong. Of course he was wrong, and he never would have an
4 opportunity to do it again, but he would not.
5 This is always something, if he had been arrested and
6 executed, he never would have come to this point.
7 If he is executed, he will be seen as a martyr and
8 exploited by others to justify future terrorist attacks.
9 That's simply a fact. I mean, that's just simply a fact.
10 There is nothing I can do about it, the government can do
11 about it, or that you can do about it except to not have him
12 become a martyr. You can make him disappear from the face of
13 the earth, disappear into a prison, become socially invisible.
14 We have discussed factor 8, sincere religious belief,
15 and you have heard his statement and the things that
16 influenced him.
17 Number 11, this is something you don't know about and
18 wouldn't have known about until this part of the case. As a
19 matter of law, South African law, Khalfan Mohamed should not
20 have been released to American officials without assurances
21 that he would not face the death penalty in the United States.
22 You will learn, probably by stipulation or
23 instruction from the Court, that very recently in a lawsuit
24 brought in his name, the highest court of South Africa
25 overruled a lower court decision, unanimously concluded that
7494
1 Khalfan Mohamed should not have been released to Americans
2 without a promise -- just the same promise that the defendants
3 in the UK are getting, the same promise that was made to
4 Mamdouh Salim -- that he would not face a death penalty.
5 This is almost, he facing the death penalty, it is
6 almost arbitrary. It is almost like being struck by
7 lightening. In proper proceedings but for improper
8 application of South African law at the time by South African
9 officials. I add that the court I'm referring to did not
10 criticize the Americans for taking custody of Mr. Mohamed.
11 However, interpreting their own law and their own
12 Constitution, the South African High Court, the highest court
13 in South Africa, ruled that Mr. Mohamed should not have been
14 turned over to the Americans unless it was promised that he
15 not face the death penalty.
16 The final things we will talk about and I will
17 reserve talking about, Mr. Mohamed's personal characteristics.
18 This is to tell you that you are not asked to consider
19 executing or imprisoning a symbol or a cliche or some kind of
20 cipher. He is a human being with human qualities that are
21 good, that are bad. The choices he has made have brought him
22 to that point where the only decision left in his life is do
23 we kill him or do we lock him up in a prison away from society
24 for the rest of his life.
25 It is unique, individualized judgment, as I have
7495
1 said. I'm going to close with an example. It used to be in
2 this country when people were executed by a firing squad that
3 a member of the firing squad, one member, would have blanks
4 placed in their rifle. And the reason for that was that if it
5 ever turned out that the person was innocent or turned out,
6 even more importantly, that they should not have been
7 sentenced to death, that something went wrong with the process
8 and they should not have been executed, that the person could,
9 any member of the squad could take the view that, well, maybe
10 I had the blank and maybe I'm not responsible for killing this
11 person.
12 As you well know, all 12 of you must vote for
13 execution if execution is to take place. The law does not
14 give any one of you a blank vote. I'm asking all of you to
15 withhold your vote for death. I am asking all of you to treat
16 Mr. Mohamed as a unique individual, to look into your heart,
17 and to vote for a sentence of life imprisonment.
18 Thank you very much.
19 THE COURT: Thank you, Mr. Ruhnke.
20 We will take a five-minute recess.
21 (Recess)
22 (Pages 7496 through 7499 filed under seal)
23
24 (Continued on next page)
25
7496
1 In open court; jury present)
2 THE COURT: We're now in the government's case. The
3 government may call its first witness.
4 MR. FITZGERALD: The government calls Patricia
5 Wagner, WAGNER.
6 PATRICIA JOAN WAGNER,
7 called as a witness by the government,
8 having been duly sworn, testified as follows:
9 DEPUTY CLERK: Please be seated. Please state your
10 full name.
11 THE WITNESS: Patricia Joan Wagner.
12 DEPUTY CLERK: Please spell your last name.
13 THE WITNESS: W-A-G-N-E-R.
14 DEPUTY CLERK: Thank you.
15 DIRECT EXAMINATION
16 BY MR. FITZGERALD:
17 Q. Good afternoon, Ms. Wagner.
18 A. Good afternoon.
19 Q. If you could just keep your voice up a bit or if you could
20 sit slightly closer to the microphone so that everyone can
21 hear you.
22 A. Okay.
23 Q. Can you tell the jury when you first moved to Tanzania?
24 A. I moved to Tanzania in the summer of 1997. My husband and
25 I were former Peace Corps volunteers in Africa, and my husband
7497
1 had gotten a job with the Peace Corps as staff to supervise
2 the teachers that were in Tanzania. So he actually went over
3 I believe it was in March of that year, and I waited until
4 summertime and my children finished school and then I
5 followed.
6 Q. And where did you and your husband move from when you went
7 to Tanzania?
8 A. We had been living in Hawaii for a number of years. We
9 both were teachers there.
10 Q. And what did you teach and when did your husband teach?
11 A. I teach science, biology, chemistry, physics. Pretty much
12 the gamut. My husband teaches mathematics.
13 Q. Once you moved to Tanzania in 1997 and joined your
14 husband, what did you do for work?
15 A. The embassy has usually a small number of jobs, sometimes
16 they're part-time, sometimes they're not, that they sort of
17 reserve for spouses of people who are either working at the
18 embassy or at a Peace Corps or perhaps at like USAID, part of
19 the entire American mission. There was an opening that came
20 up. It was actually a program that was being restarted. It
21 had not been taking place for a couple of years, and so I got
22 a job as the security assistance officer in the embassy.
23 Q. And can you tell the jury what the job of security
24 assistance officer involved?
25 A. Okay. It really has nothing to do with the word
7498
1 "security." Security assistance is a Department-of-State-run
2 program which brings officers and enlisted personnel from
3 overseas to the United States for training with our different
4 military services.
5 Q. And where was your office located?
6 A. My office was located on the second floor. It's a little
7 difficult sort of to describe where it is. You know, the
8 embassy wasn't really one embassy. It was really two
9 buildings and there were two passageways from one side to the
10 other side. So I was not in the building that was closest to
11 where the bomb went off, I was in the building next to that,
12 but in the front corner. So that the side of my office, the
13 windows were sort of in the front of that corridor that led to
14 the, to where the bomb went off.
15 Q. Is it fair to say that you worked obviously in the embassy
16 and your husband worked in a different building?
17 A. That's correct.
18 Q. Why don't I direct your attention to the morning of August
19 7th, 1998. If you could tell us what you were doing shortly
20 before 10:30 in the morning.
21 A. Okay.
22 Q. And then what happened.
23 A. I came in to work a little bit late that morning. I
24 wasn't feeling very well. And I also noticed there weren't
25 any parking places available where I normally parked, so I
7499
1 drove my car further down, hoping for a space. And there was
2 one right directly in front of the embassy.
3 I went inside. I was very busy with things, and I
4 was actually sitting at my desk. I was waiting for a phone
5 call from -- someone was supposed to call me with some
6 information, a price of a hotel room, so I could send that in
7 an E-mail. And I was very annoyed that this person hadn't
8 called me. I remember sitting there and just sort of drumming
9 my fingers like this because I wanted them to call.
10 And then all of a sudden I felt something was very
11 wrong and I started to dive under my desk. It was -- it is a
12 very old heavy oak desk. And I didn't even get very far, and
13 then the bomb went off and I was flung around backwards,
14 facing the opposite direction. But I kept thinking I should
15 try to get under the desk.
16 And I could see the wall was falling. I could see it
17 looked like to me the ceiling was falling, so I kept trying
18 to -- and I did, I got under the desk. I thought that this
19 was what it must have been like for people who were in
20 Oklahoma City. And I remember my head hurt and it was just,
21 just spinning. I mean, I was so confused.
22 And I could hear, it sounded like a siren, but it was
23 very, very far away. And I kept thinking, why isn't the siren
24 getting any closer? And then I realized there was smoke in
25 the room. The windows had burst and I thought, oh, my God,
7500
1 the embassy must be on fire and I've got to get out of here.
2 So I pulled myself out from under the desk, and I
3 realized right away as I stood up, my foot hurt, and I
4 realized I didn't have a shoe on. So I thought, I've got to
5 be really careful. I'm okay, I'm really okay, and I've got to
6 watch my foot so I don't step on anything because I'm going to
7 have to help other people that were hurt. So I've got to
8 watch myself.
9 And so I was worried about getting electrocuted from
10 the light, and I tried to make my way around the desk because
11 the computers had shattered and the drapes had blown down and
12 a big bookcase fell, and there was just stuff everywhere, but
13 I climbed over it.
14 And my office is two offices with a secretary's
15 office in the middle, and I went to the door and the windows
16 had all broken, but I could see the -- it's like a lattice
17 covering and I could see it was still there. And I knew no
18 one else was up in my office. Everyone else was in a meeting
19 upstairs.
20 So I started pushing on the door. It's got one of
21 those handles that you push on. And I kept pushing it and
22 pushing it and I couldn't get it to open, and I started to get
23 scared because the smoke was just pouring in. And I thought I
24 can't climb down, I can't get out of here because the lattice
25 is still, the mental is still attached.
7501
1 And so I started using my hip. And I kept pushing my
2 hip and pushing my hip, and then I saw another door opened
3 farther down the hallway and I saw some people coming out.
4 And I pounded on the little glass section. I started yelling
5 so they could hear me, so they could help me to open the door.
6 And they did. They saw me, and with me pushing and them
7 pulling, we got the door open.
8 And I said, I said, what happened? Was it a bomb?
9 Was it a bomb that went off? And they said, we don't know,
10 but we're going to go outside and see. And so one of them
11 took my hand, and I said, I have to be really careful where I
12 walk.
13 And we went out a side entrance of the embassy, and
14 then everyone ran towards the back, except the person who was
15 holding my hand, Chip Carpenter. And I started to go to the
16 back and he started to go to the front. I thought, wait a
17 second, that's where all the smoke is coming from. I better
18 go over to the front and see what's happened and see if
19 anyone's hurt there.
20 So I ran around the corner of the building, and I ran
21 to the front and I saw all the cars that were on fire and it
22 was just like things were exploding and popping and banging,
23 and the noise, and there was all the fires from the cars and
24 all the smoke around it was so strong -- the smoke, it burned
25 your nose.
7502
1 And as I came around, I saw that the tree that had
2 been in the little courtyard had blown in front of the door
3 and there was metal or something. I couldn't really tell what
4 it is. I remember it was like some kind of weird sculpture
5 that was blocking the door. And I climbed over it and I got
6 the front door. It opened up right away. It's a heavy door,
7 but it opened up.
8 And then I saw people were coming down the stairs,
9 and so I what I did was I backed up because they all had blood
10 and it was difficult for them to see.
11 And as one person came out, then I went on the other
12 side of the wood and I would help them to climb over. And
13 then as soon as we got over, I would take them around to the
14 back and I would put somebody in charge of them and I would
15 say, you, you're in charge of Cynthia, you know, you take care
16 of her.
17 And then I would go to -- because it was, Cynthia was
18 the first one that came out, and I could see she still had her
19 glasses on, but her lens was missing and it just looked like
20 she just didn't, her eye was gone. And she had just so much
21 blood, so I made sure that I got someone to take care of her
22 because we just didn't know what was happening. She kept
23 saying to me, I can't see anything.
24 And then I ran right back, and I kept helping. I saw
25 Lizzy Slater, and her nose was all cut up. And people were
7503
1 trying to like touch her nose and I was saying, no, no, no,
2 don't pull anything out, leave it, we'll get medical help.
3 And I took her around.
4 I kept doing that over and over again. And then
5 there was no one else coming out, so I ran around the back to
6 see if anyone had any more information, but it was so chaotic.
7 People were crying and screaming and so many people had facial
8 injuries, which, you know, they had so much blood on their
9 faces.
10 It sounded like there was a war going on, just what
11 you see on T.V. So I thought, I'm going to go around to the
12 front on the other side where the -- what I now know where the
13 bomb had gone off. And as I ran around the side of the
14 building, I could see the fires. And someone came running
15 around the side and said, don't, don't go that way, get back,
16 get back, the petrol tank, which was right on -- the gas tank,
17 which is right on the corner, it's going to blow up, it's
18 going to blow. Run. Run. So I ran to the back.
19 And we just tried to figure out what was the best
20 thing to do. I mean, I tried to see, to do, you know, triage,
21 to see who was the most badly hurt, who we could help right
22 away, who looked like they were really going to need medical
23 attention in a hospital kind of setting, you know.
24 We didn't know if like the embassy was being attacked
25 or -- no one really knew. It was very, very confusing because
7504
1 we still had all the noises and the things kept exploding.
2 And then a truck came over to the side of the embassy
3 where there's, it's just bars that you can see through. And
4 it was the Ultimate Security Guards, and I said, we have to
5 get some of these people to a hospital, they're badly hurt.
6 So they found a ladder that they broke and they put it half on
7 the outside and half on the inside, and we got -- I took
8 Cynthia and the people, the woman whose ribs were badly hurt
9 out and another person, and they put them in the front of the
10 truck, a small little truck, and then I got in the back
11 because I wanted to make sure that there was someone there
12 with them and we went off to the hospital.
13 Q. During the ride to the hospital, did you talk to Cynthia
14 at all?
15 A. No. I was in the back. I was all by myself. I mean,
16 they were all in the front with the driver. I was in the back
17 just holding on.
18 Q. And what happened when you got to the hospital?
19 A. There were a lot of people there. They was a crowd, maybe
20 five or six people deep around the entrance. And I got out
21 and I jumped around the side and I grabbed the other two women
22 and we started to make our way through the crowd. People were
23 trying to say, let them through, let them through.
24 We got in sort of a main room and they brought some
25 stretchers out, wheeled ones, and we put Cynthia on one and
7505
1 wheeled her back into a side room. And it was just, it was so
2 chaotic. People were in there crying and screaming and people
3 had, were just -- had blood and they had ripped clothes and
4 just, you know, people running through it like, again, it's
5 like some war scene.
6 And I got Cynthia. Cynthia was so upset. Her
7 husband is the gunny, he's the head marine in the embassy and
8 she was worried about him, but she kept saying, he's a marine
9 and he's going to be okay. But she was really worried about
10 her son, because she thought her son was in the embassy, too.
11 And I kept trying to calm her down and calm her down
12 and tell her her son was going to be okay. I knew her husband
13 was okay because I had seen him. I had seen the Marines
14 running into the embassy, but I hadn't seen her son. But I
15 just, I kept telling her he was okay anyway.
16 Then I grabbed one of the nurses because I was afraid
17 that she had lost so much blood and the fluid from her eye and
18 maybe had other injuries that she was going to go into shock,
19 and I knew that that would be bad for her. I grabbed some
20 people and I told them that she needed help, she needed a
21 specialist, an eye specialist. And they said they would get
22 someone.
23 Sometimes people would come back. More people kept
24 coming in. I just kept holding Cynthia and I kept telling her
25 it was going to be okay, we were going to get help for her.
7506
1 And I saw other people from the embassy on a bench sitting
2 there, and then I leaned, turned around, and there was a man
3 on a stretcher in back of me. He had a white shirt on and he
4 was face-down, but he wasn't looking toward me, he was looking
5 away from me.
6 And his shirt was all white, but at the edge where
7 the stretcher was, it was all red. And the blood had pooled
8 up and it was dripping onto the floor. I wanted to help him.
9 I put my hand on his shoulder because I didn't know what else
10 I could do to help him. And I just put my arm back around
11 Cynthia.
12 Q. Did there come a time that day where you had to step
13 outside to gather -- because you were not feeling well?
14 A. After a while, I realized I was feeling faint. And I had
15 been in a couple of trauma situations where I know exactly
16 what it feels like, I know exactly what is going to happen.
17 So I got Patricia, I told her I had to get outside, the smell
18 of blood was so strong. I had to go outside and put my head
19 down for a while. So she came over and she took over with
20 Cynthia, and I went and I just sat on a bench and I put my
21 head down between my knees. And people would just come over
22 and just put their hand on my shoulder and say (speaking in
23 Swahili), just to make me feel better.
24 And after a while, I felt so much better and I just
25 sat up. And a man came over with a wash cloth and he just
7507
1 started -- just because I had had my face next to Cynthia so I
2 had blood on it and he thought I was hurt, but I said, no, no,
3 no, no, I was okay, and he washed the blood off of my face.
4 Q. What did you do after that point in time?
5 A. When I was sitting there, I realized that I didn't know
6 where my husband was, and I know that the Peace Corps office
7 is not very far, but who knows where he would have been.
8 Maybe he comes to the embassy, maybe he might have been in the
9 embassy.
10 So I told Patricia I couldn't stay any more, I had to
11 go and find out what had happened to my husband. So she said
12 she would stay with Cynthia. So I walked outside and there
13 were still a lot of people out there, and I made my way
14 through the crowd. Some people didn't want me to leave, but I
15 said, no, I wasn't hurt and I had to get back to the embassy
16 because I had to find out.
17 And so I started walking back to the embassy and I
18 kept telling myself to be really careful, to watch where I
19 stepped because I knew I had glass in my foot. It was hurting
20 and I had to be very careful. It was hot, it was very hot on
21 the pavement with my foot, but I just kept going.
22 I just got this little song in my mind. It was just
23 like, I got to get to the embassy, I got to get to the
24 embassy, and I just kept walking and walking. And sometime a
25 lot of people, a lot of people were going to the embassy. You
7508
1 could see the smoke.
2 And people would come up to me and they would take my
3 hand and they would start talking to me in Key Swahili and
4 then they just kept saying it wasn't them, they didn't do it.
5 They kept saying everything was going to be okay and they
6 would walk with me for a ways and just hold my hand.
7 Q. How far was it from the hospital to the embassy?
8 A. I'm not really sure. I know it's a couple of miles. It
9 felt like it was very far. It's not really that far.
10 Q. What happened when you got to the embassy?
11 A. There were a lot of people there. They were putting out
12 the fires with the fire trucks and there were the TPDF. The
13 army men had come and they had sort of cordoned off the
14 embassy. And they didn't want to let me through and I said,
15 no, I grabbed onto one of the security guards, I said, you've
16 got to, I've got to get in, I've got to find people, I've got
17 to talk to someone to find out what's happened.
18 And he took me right in. That's when I stood there
19 and I saw the crater and I saw the front view of what had
20 actually happened to the embassy. I just, I couldn't believe
21 it.
22 The DCM, John Lange, saw me and he came running over.
23 He asked me if I was okay. And we talked about what had
24 happened. And then he said he had a car, I believe it was the
25 French ambassador had given him a car to use because all our
7509
1 cars had been destroyed, so he could take me to his house
2 because that's where my husband would be.
3 He didn't know what had happened. And I went and I
4 stood by the car, and my dress had ripped so I was like
5 trailing just the bottom half. Part of it was trailing behind
6 me. And of course I had no shoes, so I kept pulling up my
7 dress with my hand so I could see where I was walking.
8 And I was standing by the car, and all of a sudden
9 this old man comes walking towards me, and he's bowed down
10 like this and he has a rubber slipper in his hand. It was
11 this huge, it was like size 13 red rubber slipper that he was
12 giving me to put to use on my foot. And I remember my first
13 thought was like, it's okay, I'm okay. And then I realized he
14 was giving me this gift, so I put it on.
15 I got in the car with John Lange and we went to his
16 house, and as I got out of the car I walked around the side of
17 the car, and that's when I saw my husband was standing in the
18 doorway of the house. I was really happy to see him.
19 Q. Now --
20 Go ahead, sorry.
21 A. Okay. We just held one another. I didn't know how bad it
22 had been for him. He was actually a couple of blocks away and
23 when the bomb went off, he was in a Peace Corps vehicle. They
24 thought all the tires had been shot out of the vehicle or the
25 tires had exploded or something, and they pulled over real
7510
1 quick and they hopped out and they were looking at the tires
2 and all of a sudden my husband looked up and he saw the smoke.
3 He said he knew, he knew it was the embassy right then.
4 So he went running down the street and people were
5 running in the opposite direction saying an airplane had
6 crashed into the embassy. You know, my husband was, what?
7 And as he came around the corner, of course, he was on the
8 side where the bomb went off, and so he had, he called back to
9 the Peace Corps.
10 He arranged for medical people to come because the
11 Peace Corps has a nurse and several medical facilities and
12 equipment. And he kept looking and looking and looking for
13 me. Nobody remembered seeing me. He just didn't know for
14 those hours what had happened. So it's pretty good to see him
15 again.
16 Q. And over the course of the days following the bombing, did
17 you go back to the embassy on a number of occasions?
18 A. I was the Department of State liaison with the FBI. I
19 took FBI agents around the neighborhood, into diplomatic
20 residences, spoke to the guards in Key Swahili, explaining to
21 them what we were doing and why we were doing this as they
22 gathered evidence.
23 About a month later, I was in front of the embassy
24 and I suffered a miscarriage and I had to be medivac-ed up to
25 Nairobi to take care of it.
7511
1 Q. Is it fair to say that, without knowing what the cause is,
2 you attribute the miscarriage to the bombing?
3 A. It's definitely linked in my mind.
4 Q. Let me show you a picture of an office, which has been
5 marked Government Exhibit 3005 for identification.
6 MR. FITZGERALD: If I could display that on the
7 screen, your Honor, if there's no objection.
8 Q. Can you tell the jury, if their screens are working, what
9 is it we are see in the photograph marked 3005?
10 A. This is my office and this is looking toward the front of
11 the embassy. You can see on the left-hand side that's where
12 the window is with the grating.
13 We went back in. This is the very next day. We went
14 back in to try to get some records and some phone numbers of
15 people to call to help us. And you can see my chair. I
16 actually picked the computer up and put it back on the desk,
17 and you can see my chair behind the computer and then you can
18 see on the right-hand side the, it's a concrete wall
19 reinforced with steel rods. Very heavy.
20 Q. If I could also show you and offer at this time Government
21 Exhibit 113O, and can you tell us what the building is in the
22 background there?
23 A. The building is across the street from the embassy. It's
24 a private residence and Jan and Calvin Connor were living in
25 it. We have a play group that meets every Friday afternoon.
7512
1 All of the children who ar