http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-ap-il-hamasindictment,1,4722451 .story?coll=chi-news-hed <http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-ap-il-hamasindictment,1,472245 1.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true> &ctrack=1&cset=true Judge: Chicago terror suspect's statements to Israeli cops admissible By MIKE ROBINSON AP Legal Affairs Writer Published June 8, 2006, 4:50 PM CDT
CHICAGO -- A federal judge ruled Thursday that prosecutors may use statements made to Israeli authorities a dozen years ago by a Chicago man when he comes to trial on charges of laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Palestinian militant group Hamas. U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve said in her 138-page opinion that federal prosecutors had proven in 13 days of hearings that began in March that Muhammad Salah had made most of the statements voluntarily and not after being tortured as he claimed. St. Eve, a former federal prosecutor, said that "the law enforcement conduct on the record before the court does not shock the conscience." Salah, 53, is one of three men charged in the indictment with taking part in a racketeering conspiracy that included funneling cash to Hamas to commit murders, bombings and other violence. The indictment was announced in August 2004 by then Attorney General John Ashcroft who said at a news conference that the three operated "a U.S.-based terrorist recruiting and financing cell." The evidence prosecutors plan to use at the trial, which is scheduled for October, includes statements Salah made after his January 1993 arrest in Israel on terrorism financing charges. He served five years in Israeli prisons before returning to Chicago. The soft-spoken, Palestinian-born Salah, who has worked as a substitute teacher in Chicago public schools, has long claimed that he made the statements only under torture at the hands of police and interrogators for Israel's Shin Bet internal security service. Salah's legal defense team headed by Chicago attorney Michael E. Deutsch told St. Eve that he was stripped naked, forced to sit in an uncomfortable children's chair, slapped, left for long periods in a tiny freezing cell and subjected to a variety of other tortures. They said he also was forced to listen to music at high volume for long periods. St. Eve held that he was not tortured when he gave statements to two Shin Bet interrogators known as Haim and Nadav who testified at the Chicago hearing. But she said prosecutors had failed to prove their case when it came to a statement he gave an Israeli police officer named Suleiman. "Because the court finds that the government has met its burden by proving by a preponderance of the evidence that defendant voluntarily made the majority of the statements at issue, the court denies the defendant's motion in large part," St. Eve said. She allowed prosecutors to present the statements given to Haim and Nadav to the jury but barred them from using the statement Salah gave to Suleiman. Deutsch said in a telephone interview following release of the opinion that "it comes as a disappointment but it does not come as a surprise." "She systematically chose to believe these Israeli secret police as if they were FBI agents," he said. He said he would present the claims of torture to the jury at the trial and hope it would find them more credible than the judge did. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office, Randall Samborn, declined to comment. Considerable secrecy surrounded the 13 days of hearings. Haim and Nadav testified under the so-called "code names" adopted to provide them the anonymity prosecutors said was needed to protect them from possible terrorist reprisals when they returned to Israel. The courtroom was cleared when they testified and federal marshals sealed off the hallway outside to prevent anyone from seeing the two men through the window in the courtroom door. Even then, Haim and Nadav at times testified under Classified Information Procedures Act provisions behind closed-doors in the judge's chambers with defense attorneys shut out. But the defense attorneys had ample opportunity for cross examination, St. Eve said. The secrecy continued with St. Eve's opinion. There were two versions of the document, one of which contained classified information available only to those with security clearances. The public version had a number of white spaces where classified material had been redacted. Due to stand trial alongside Salah is Abdelhaleem Hasan Abdelraziq Ashqar, 48, of Alexandria, Va. Also charged in the case is Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, formerly chief and now deputy chief of the Hamas political bureau. Prosecutors say Marzook is believed to be living in Syria, and consider him a fugitive. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get to your groups with one click. 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