(Daily Southtown file photo)
February 1, 2007
Mohammed Salah
Born in Jerusalem, Mohammed Salah eventually settled in Bridgeview and has held jobs including car salesman, store owner, college teacher and van driver.
Mohammed
Salah
(Daily Southtown file photo)
He’s also held the distinction of being the only U.S. citizen designated
an international terrorist by the U.S. government.
In a confession to Israeli agents, revelations he claims were coerced, Salah said he was recruited into the Muslim Brotherhood — widely viewed as a precursor to Hamas — by the Imam of the Bridgeview mosque, Jamal Said, in the 1980s. In a matter of years, he allegedly rose to a top rank as the U.S.-based military leader of Hamas.
His 1993 arrest in the West Bank, where he was accused of delivering large sums of cash to Hamas fighters, thrust his name into headlines around the globe, and it’s been in and out ever since. He pleaded guilty to charges in Israel and returned to Bridgeview after spending more than four years in prison there.
Salah, 53, and a collection of other alleged south suburban Hamas fundraisers were targeted in a federal lawsuit that ultimately led to a $156 million judgment in favor of the parents of a Jewish teen killed in a 1996 West Bank terrorist attack.
In 1998, federal prosecutors went to court to seize $1.4 million in assets they claimed Salah meant to funnel to Hamas. Newly revealed court documents show prosecutors were prepared to settle the case in July 2001 under an agreement that would have let the government keep the cash and Salah keep his Thomas Street house.
But the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks two months later changed the playing field and the long-running federal probe into Salah’s past, dubbed Vulgar Betrayal, was reincarnated.
In August 2004, then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft held a Washington news conference to announce terrorism charges against Salah.
Free on bond, Salah has remained essentially under house arrest in a modest home that prosecutors have noted is just a “stone’s throw” from the mosque where he allegedly was first drawn into Palestinian militancy.
His defense has had ups and downs — a crushing blow when a judge ruled a series of confessions Salah gave to the Israelis can be used against him here; later a victory when prosecutors abruptly dropped charges he provided support to a terrorist organization.
But he still can’t escape his alleged doings of more than a decade ago: The allegations of Hamas activity remain couched in a more mundane charge of racketeering. Just as he did last week as his jury was selected, Salah has sat silently through the dozens of court hearings leading up to this week’s trial — always wearing simple, workingman clothes and an expressionless gaze.
Abdelhaleem Ashqar
By far the more urbane of the two defendants, former Howard University professor
Ashqar dresses impeccably and moves like a subdued politician through the
courtroom prior to each hearing — politely greeting lawyers, reporters
and well-wishers.
The Alexandria, Va., resident long has been a prominent Palestinian activist; earlier this month, it was revealed Ashqar at one point was described as an “asset” by FBI agents, and was also once the subject of a CIA recruitment effort. But since at least 1991 Ashqar has rejected demands he cooperate with federal authorites probing Hamas, proclaiming he would “rather die than betray my beliefs and commitment to freedom and democracy for Palestine.”
Indeed, the mild-mannered intellectual has waged two high-profile hunger strikes — in New York in 1998 and Chicago in summer 2003 — while locked up for refusing to testify before federal grand juries about Hamas activities despite grants of immunity. Judges ordered him force-fed liquids through the jugular vein in his neck, and later through a tube snaked through his nose and into his throat.
He was charged in this case in October 2003, and Salah was added as a defendant a year later. The racketeering indictment alleges Ashqar served as a U.S.-based “information clearinghouse” for Hamas, meticulously tracking the group’s terrorist operations overseas and alleged money-raising efforts here.
He’s portrayed by the goverment as a behind-the-scenes Hamas guru: In
a warrantless search of Ashqar’s home in 1993, agents found debriefing
reports of local operatives returning from missions in the Middle East. One
summary lamented Salah’s capture in the West Bank, and concluded he “is
not as strong mentally as he is physically. ... He is naive, and lacks the
ability to take the right steps.”