January 12, 2007
By Chris Hack Staff writer
After a lengthy trial that focused on Mohammed Salah's alleged work for the
militant Palestinian group Hamas well more than a decade ago, jurors Thursday
afternoon began weighing the Bridgeview man's fate.
"In this case, justice has been delayed too long," Assistant U.S. Attorney Reid Schar said to conclude his pitch to jurors, capping a fourth day of closing arguments in the three-month trial. "Ladies and gentlemen, it's your time now."
Salah, 53, faces federal racketeering charges alleging he served as a high-ranking military leaders of Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. He's accused of training would-be Hamas militants in the United States, delivering money to fighters in the Occupied Territories and lying about his ties to the group in a civil lawsuit years later.
Charged alongside Salah is Abdelhaleem Ashqar, a former university professor living in Virginia. He's accused of serving as a communications link between top Hamas leaders in the United States and abroad.
Schar said Ashqar, a native Palestinian, used America's communications and financial systems to help run Hamas but later obstructed justice by refusing to provide information about the group when called to testify before federal grand juries in New York and Chicago.
"You can't protect yourself, cloak yourself in the U.S. Constitution and then turn around and decide which laws you're going to follow and not follow," Schar said. "He does not get to decide."
Prosecutors have also labored to combat a key contention of defense attorneys for both defendants -- that the men were justified in helping Palestinian militants resist an Israeli presence in the region that has resulted in squalid living conditions in the cramped Occupied Territories.
"Living conditions are pretty bad in some parts of Chicago, too," Schar told jurors. "What you are really getting here is a 'two wrongs make a right' argument."
"Well, you are going to get instructions from the judge, and you can read those instructions for three months, but you won't find one that says that two wrongs make a right."
After Schar finished, U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve read aloud 110 pages of jury instructions. The six alternate jurors selected for the trial were then dismissed and the 12-person jury began deliberations about 2:30 p.m. The panel is expected to resume deliberations this morning.
Chris Hack may be reached at
chack@dailysouthtown.com
or (708) 633-5984.