Smoked Opium With Barry, Witness Says

An Iranian-born restaurateur who says that he supplied Mayor Marion Barry with cocaine at least 30 times testified Tuesday that he also smoked opium with Barry on several occasions.

The testimony of Hassan Mohammadi marked the second mention of opium at Barry’s trial on 14 charges of perjury and cocaine use. Rasheeda Moore, the former model who lured Barry into an FBI sting operation, also testified that she had smoked opium with the mayor.

Mohammadi, in his second day on the witness stand, said that he and Barry first smoked opium at Mohammadi’s Georgetown apartment in February, 1988, putting the drug on the back of a spoon and warming it with a plumber’s torch. They used a straw to inhale the fumes, he told the jury.

Mohammadi said that he had introduced Barry to opium about three years after the two began sniffing cocaine in powdered form. Opium, an ancient drug that is the raw material for morphine and heroin, is “very popular” in Iran, he said.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson permitted the testimony about opium over the objections of Barry’s lawyers, who argued that it was irrelevant and prejudicial.

Mohammadi said that Barry seemed to enjoy using opium as well as cocaine and that the mayor often would telephone him to ask: “Do you have anything?” If he had drugs in his possession, Mohammadi said, the two would arrange to meet.

“But sometimes I would tell Mr. Mayor, ‘No, I don’t have anything,’ ” the witness said.

Mohammadi said that he never charged Barry for drugs but assured the mayor: “I am not looking for any favors.”

He testified: “I was a true friend for Mr. Mayor; I was always there for Mr. Mayor.”

On one occasion, Mohammadi said, he pulled an opium-caked spoon out of his automobile and the two smoked the residue. He said that Barry, for variety, sometimes would lace marijuana cigarettes with cocaine before smoking them, referring to such concoctions as “M. B. specials,” after his initials.

Barry is facing three perjury charges for having denied to a federal grand jury that he had used cocaine with another friend and former city employee, Charles Lewis, in December, 1988. Lewis has told jurors at Barry’s trial that he repeatedly used cocaine with the mayor at the downtown Ramada Inn and that the two later discussed how they would lie to cover it up.

Lewis, who has pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy, is awaiting sentencing.

Mohammadi testified that in late December, 1988, about the time that Barry allegedly was using cocaine with Lewis at the Ramada Inn, the mayor arrived at Mohammadi’s apartment at 11 p.m. to use the telephone.

He said that the mayor seemed troubled and upset, but he did not explain why.

Mohammadi said he warned Barry later that “you just have to slow down” because District of Columbia police were investigating his alleged visits to Lewis’ hotel room.

“Mr. Mayor told me he is not going to go to any more hotels,” Mohammadi said, adding that Barry opted instead to use drugs in Mohammadi’s apartment, in his own home or sometimes on boats docked at a Washington marina.

Mohammadi said that in July, 1989, during a crab feast at Barry’s house, the mayor asked “if I had anything.”

“We went upstairs and did some lines of cocaine in the bathroom,” he testified.

The mayor’s downfall occurred last Jan. 18, when he was arrested in a hotel room in an FBI sting operation after being videotaped smoking crack cocaine with Moore. The resulting 83-minute videotape has been shown at Barry’s trial.

Mohammadi said that he decided to plead guilty to drug conspiracy charges earlier this year and to cooperate with prosecutors because “everybody came from the woodwork--I did not have any choice.”

In a related development, Barry was reported to have sold the rights to his life story for a television movie at an unspecified price. The New York Daily News said the drama would be produced by former CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter, who currently is producing a series with the Rev. Jesse Jackson.