By Rudolph Bush
Tribune staff reporter
Published January 4, 2007, 5:12 PM CST
Defense attorneys for a Bridgeview man accused of being a leading member of
the Palestinian extremist group Hamas rested their case in federal court
Thursday after again putting the issue of torture squarely before jurors.
The trial of Muhammad Salah has hinged largely on whether he voluntarily confessed to Israeli authorities in 1993 that he was Hamas' military commander or if he was tortured into complying with whatever demands his captors made.
A Turkish psychiatrist, Dr. Metin Basoglu, sought to bolster the defense argument Thursday with testimony that anyone who suffers prolonged mistreatment at the hands of interrogators is "very likely" to comply with their demands.
An expert on the trauma of torture, Basoglu had no first-hand knowledge of Salah's treatment by Israeli interrogators.
Testifying via video from Istanbul, Basoglu said people with deep commitments to political or military causes are less likely than ordinary people to break quickly under torture.
"Would a militant commander of a resistance group immediately cooperate and continue to cooperate over a period of 54 days while being interrogated by military police?" defense attorney Erica Thompson asked, referring to the length of time Salah was under interrogation.
Basoglu could not answer the question after U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve sustained a prosecution objection.
Still, he spoke about the effects of torture on the human mind for more than two hours.
Basoglu's testimony touched on many of the techniques Salah's lawyers claim were used to extract a confession that led to his conviction and 4-year imprisonment in Israel.
Such methods as sleep deprivation, hooding and being forced to sit handcuffed in a child-sized chair were legal techniques in Israel during the time of Salah's detention, defense attorneys told jurors.
Prosecutors stipulated that those methods were indeed legal at the time.
Earlier in the trial, two Israeli interrogators who questioned Salah testified that he was treated well and provided detailed, high-level information about Hamas that was corroborated by other sources.
Before court opened Thursday morning, Salah and his co-defendant Abdelhaleem Ashqar, of suburban Washington D.C., greeted a long line of supporters waiting outside St. Eve's courtroom.
Smiling and seemingly confident, both men shook hands with friends, many of them young Muslim men and women, and thanked them for making the trip downtown to view the proceedings.
Many of Salah and Ashqar's supporters say the defendants are gentle family men who have been falsely accused of being members of Hamas.
Hamas is a fundamentalist Islamic organization whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel. The group has been responsible for dozens of suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
Prosecutors charge that Salah used his U.S. citizenship as cover to transport hundreds of thousands of dollars to the West Bank and Gaza for use by the military wing of Hamas.
They also allege he attempted to recruit and train new Hamas members in the U.S.
Ashqar, who was educated in the U.S. but is not a citizen, is accused of acting as a sort of switchboard for Hamas, connecting members with one another over the telephone and passing along information. Prosecutors also charge that he was a Hamas archivist who collected and stored key documents.
Closing arguments in the case are scheduled to begin Monday, with prosecutors pointing to evidence they will argue proves Salah was a high-ranking member of Hamas.
They are expected to refer jurors back to a trail of money transfers between Salah and other alleged Hamas members.
Salah's attorneys, meanwhile, are likely to return to arguments made in opening statements nearly four months ago — that Salah was taking money to the West Bank and Gaza to ameliorate the suffering of people living under Israeli occupation.
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
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By MIKE ROBINSON
AP Legal Affairs Writer
Published January 4, 2007, 4:40 PM CST
CHICAGO -- Attorneys for one of two men accused of furnishing thousands of dollars and fresh recruits to a Palestinian terrorist network rested their case Thursday following testimony from an expert on torture.
Closing arguments were set for Monday at the racketeering trial of former Chicago grocer Muhammad Salah, 53, and Abdelhaleem Ashqar, 48, a former assistant professor of business at Washington's Howard University.
Federal prosecutors say the two men were members of the Palestinian militant group Hamas and helped to bankroll a wave of terror that included bombings, kidnappings and murder aimed at toppling the Israeli government.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we are done with the evidentiary portion of this case," U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve, who has presided over the 10-week trial, told the jurors before sending them home for the weekend.
Attorney William Moffitt, who represents Ashqar, rested his case weeks ago. Salah attorney Michael E. Deutsch rested Thursday following testimony from a psychiatrist and torture expert, Dr. Metin Basoglu.
Basoglu, an authority on the psychological mechanisms created by torture, testified over a live video feed from Istanbul where he lives.
Basoglu said a slipped disc in his back kept him from traveling.
Salah's attorneys are hoping Basoglu's testimony will reinforce Salah's claim that after his January 1993 arrest he was tortured by Israel's Shin Bet security agents into making incriminating statements.
Israeli police confiscated $97,000 in cash in his East Jerusalem hotel room, money they say was earmarked to pay for guns and bombs for Hamas.
The soft-spoken Salah, who grew up in a squalid West Bank refugee camp and later became a U.S. citizen, says the money was for Muslim charities.
He served almost five years in Israeli prisons before he returned to this country, where he immediately came under intense scrutiny by the FBI.
Basoglu, a specialist in psychiatry at Istanbul University and a senior lecturer at the University of London, said torture causes acute stress by making victims feel they have lost control of their situation.
He said the anxiety torture victims suffer during interrogation by the military or the police can become so intense as to be unbearable.
"Any one of us would comply in that situation," he said.
The trial began with opening statements in October. The prosecution's initial witnesses were two Shin Bet agents who interrogated Salah in 1993.
They testified under aliases in a courtroom cleared of spectators to protect them against possible reprisals by Hamas. But reporters were allowed to hear their testimony on closed-circuit TV in another room.
Both men denied Salah ever was tortured. Salah did not take the stand but his attorneys say he was put in a freezing cell with no blanket, forced to wear a foul-smelling hood and otherwise mistreated for weeks.
Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified that she witnessed part of Salah's 54-day interrogation at a high-security prison in Ramallah. She said he seemed to be in good spirits. Salah attorneys say Miller saw only a small fraction of what went on and was easily fooled.
Prosecution witnesses testified that when agents searched Ashqar's home they found Hamas records and literature and that he took part in a Philadelphia meeting at which the group's organizers mapped strategy.
His attorneys maintain that he merely was exercising his right to free speech and that nothing he did violated the law.
There is a third defendant in the case -- Mousa Mohammad Abu Marzouk -- allegedly a high-ranking member of the Hamas command now believed to be living in Damascus and classified as a fugitive.
A crowded courtroom was expected for closing arguments Monday. The case has drawn wide interest since August 2004 when then Attorney General John Ashcroft unveiled the indictment at a news conference, saying the three operated "a U.S.-based terrorist recruiting and financing cell."
Copyright © 2007, The Associated Press