By MIKE ROBINSON
AP Legal Affairs Writer
January 9, 2007, 5:18 PM CST
CHICAGO -- A graduate student living in Mississippi was an important Hamas terrorist leader directing thousands of dollars to families of members who were jailed or killed, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
"He's Hamas and he's assisting the murderous terrorist activities of Hamas," Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph M. Ferguson told jurors in his closing argument, pointing at defendant Abdelhaleem Ashqar, who was a graduate student at the University of Mississippi in the early 1990s.
Ashqar, 48, later an assistant professor of business at Washington's Howard University, is accused along with former Chicago grocer Muhammad Salah, 53, of being high-ranking members of the Hamas terrorist network.
The two men are charged in a racketeering indictment with funneling thousands of dollars and fresh recruits to the anti-Israeli organization.
In the second day of his closing argument, Ferguson was warned as he headed toward the 10-hour mark that he would have to wrap it up by the end of the day.
"I will," Ferguson said. "I don't want to do this tomorrow."
"You won't be allowed to," St. Eve, a former colleague of Ferguson's in the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago, said with a smile.
Ashqar, of Springfield, Va., does not support terrorism and has done nothing illegal, according to his defense attorney, William Moffitt. Moffitt says Ashqar merely was trying to get charitable contributions to poverty-plagued Palestinians on the West Bank under Israeli army occupation.
Moffitt is likely to get his chance Wednesday to address jurors, who have listened during a three-month trial to witnesses that have included an expert on torture and Israeli agents who testified under aliases.
Salah was arrested in January 1993 while in Israel and served almost five years in prison. Police confiscated $97,400 they say was meant to bankroll Hamas terrorism and he says was for charity.
Ashqar, then a graduate student in business at the University of Mississippi, was briefed on statements Salah made to Israel's Shin Bet security service. The briefing came from a Salah traveling companion who also was arrested and released after six months.
Ashqar summarized in writing what he learned from the Salah companion. Ferguson pointed to testimony that the written material, found among documents in Ashqar's home, was signed with an alias.
"There is only one reason for Ashqar signing that report with an alias -- Ashqar is Hamas," Ferguson told the jury.
When asked by a federal grand jury in Chicago if he was Hamas, Ashqar refused to answer.
Ferguson pointed to testimony that Ashqar directed money to families of Hamas "martyrs" killed in terrorist operations and those captured and jailed by Israeli authorities.
"We're talking about someone who is a graduate student at the University of Mississippi, Oxford, Miss., and you see hundreds of thousands of dollars coursing through his accounts," Ferguson said.
While living in Oxford, Ashqar had a telephone in a bogus name and a fax in a different alias, Ferguson said. "He was concealing his name because he was aiding Hamas," the prosecutor said.
Federal agents found that Ashqar spoke on his telephone 568 times in several years with Mousa Abu Marzook, an alleged top Hamas leader who also is charged in the case and is a fugitive believed living in Damascus, Syria.
Ferguson also pointed to testimony that Ashqar served as an archivist, keeping extensive file of Hamas-related documents involving matters ranging from electronic jamming equipment to terrorist operations to so-called dead drops used by spies to pass documents without getting caught.
Ferguson traced a series of steps through which money to bankroll Hamas terrorists allegedly was collected by Marzook in Europe and the Mideast, funneled through accounts controlled by Marzook and associates and then sent to Salah and Ashqar in the United States.
From here it allegedly was transferred to the Mideast and turned into cash allegedly distributed to Hamas operatives.
"Abdelhaleem Ashqar is a conduit himself and directed others to steer money to the military operations of Hamas in Israel," Ferguson said.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Associated Press
By Rudolph Bush
Tribune staff reporter
January 9, 2007
Muhammad Salah distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to militant operatives in Gaza and the West Bank while coordinating violent plots as a leading member of the Palestinian group Hamas, federal prosecutors argued Monday.
For nearly seven hours, Assistant U.S. Atty. Joseph Ferguson chronicled the case against Salah, a Bridgeview businessman accused of serving as a top Hamas commander, and Abdelhaleem Ashqar, a university professor from suburban Washington, D.C.
Ferguson's closing argument was aimed largely at undermining defense claims that Israeli authorities tortured Salah into falsely admitting he was a Hamas operative in 1993.
He reminded jurors that they had witnessed an unprecedented event, the testimony of two Israeli security agents in a U.S. courtroom.
Jurors could judge for themselves whether the interrogators, who appeared under the aliases "Nadav" and "Benny," testified truthfully that Salah was well-treated, Ferguson said.
He also pointed to evidence he said corroborated Salah's confession, including information Salah allegedly provided about the hidden burial site of a murdered Israeli soldier and a series of money transfers between him and Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook.
"There's only one conclusion to draw from that," Ferguson said of information Salah provided about the dead soldier's body. "Muhammad Salah is Hamas. He is the Hamas military. He's part of the inner-sanctum of trusted individuals."
The soldier Ferguson referred to, Ilan Sa'doan, was kidnapped and murdered by Hamas in 1989. His body was buried in an undisclosed location.
Salah was arrested by Israeli authorities in Gaza in January 1993 on suspicion of transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Hamas military wing.
Ferguson argued that Marzook had provided Salah with information about Sa'doan's body, which Salah tried to use as a bargaining chip with his interrogators.
"This was about control," Ferguson said.
Far from being a tortured detainee willing to tell his interrogators anything they wanted to hear, Salah was playing cat and mouse with his captors, the prosecutor said.
Israeli authorities did launch a search for Sa'doan's body in 1993 based on Salah's information, the prosecutor said.
The body was not found, however, until 1996 in a location 3 miles north of the site Salah allegedly described.
Ferguson argued Salah's information was all but "dead on" about the site.
"They were one juncture off. He got the wrong exit [off the highway]," Ferguson said.
Throughout the day, Ferguson outlined a money trail he said corroborated Salah's guilt.
He was captured in Israel with $100,000 in cash. Bank records show Marzook had transferred him nearly $1 million, the prosecutor said.
Before he was captured, he had put some $240,000 in the hands of militant operatives, Ferguson argued.
Salah's lawyers have argued that he never provided money for violence but carried money to Gaza and the West Bank to provide charitable services to Palestinians suffering under a stifling and oppressive Israeli occupation.
Salah, an American citizen, was set up by Israeli authorities to help convince the U.S. government that Hamas was actively creating cells in this country, his lawyers have argued.
Ferguson referred regularly Monday to a series of confessions Salah gave Israeli interrogators as well as to a handwritten statement he provided to fellow prisoners he allegedly believed were fellow Hamas members.
The statement to the fellow prisoners, known as "the Birds," is perhaps the most damning piece of evidence against Salah and something his attorneys have argued was manufactured out of whole cloth by abusive interrogators and Palestinian collaborators.
Ferguson sought to show that the statement was a voluntary attempt to communicate with other Hamas members.
When an Israeli interrogator confronted Salah with it in March 1993, Salah was recorded asking his captors how they got the statement.
"That tells you he gave it to somebody he thought was Hamas," Ferguson said.
Ferguson is expected to continue his argument Tuesday morning. Salah's attorney, Michael Deutsch, is expected to respond in the afternoon.
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rrbush@tribune.com
Copyright (c) 2007, Chicago Tribune