Kahane Case Is Expected to Go to Jurors Today
A Muslim man’s plan to kill an extremist rabbi and escape would have worked except for an elderly man’s embrace and a police officer’s bullet, a prosecutor said in closing arguments Tuesday.
But the defense said El Sayyid Nosair did not kill Rabbi Meir Kahane, and said the prosecution pinned its case on witnesses who have axes to grind.
Nosair, 36, an Egyptian-born Muslim who lived in Cliffside Park, N.J., is charged with the Nov. 5, 1990, shooting death of Kahane, a Brooklyn-born former member of Israel’s parliament.
The jury in Manhattan’s State Supreme Court was to begin deliberating today.
Assistant Dist. Atty. William Greenbaum said that Nosair’s idea to kill Kahane in a crowd was a good one, if not for the reaction by Irving Franklin, 73, who pinned Nosair’s arms to his body. Nosair shot Franklin in the thigh, Greenbaum said.
He said Nosair then saw a man he thought was a city policeman and shot him in the shoulder. Carlos Acosta, a U.S. Postal Service police officer, dropped Nosair with a bullet to the throat.
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