Muslim Sheik Denies Role in Alleged N.Y. Bomb Plot

Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, speaking out for the first time in open court in his own defense, emphatically declared Friday that he is innocent of plotting to bomb the United Nations, three other New York targets and planning the assassination of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

“All I know is I had nothing to do with this case other than I am a cleric who prays in a mosque,” Abdul Rahman told a federal judge during a hearing to change his lawyer.

“I did not speak, I did not give orders. I did not approve anything. I had nothing to do with anything,” the blind cleric said.

He insisted that William Kunstler and Ronald Kuby be named as his attorneys despite their representation of El Sayyid A. Nosair, another defendant in the case.

“There is no conflict of interest between me and any other defendant,” Abdul Rahman said, speaking through an interpreter.

Nosair has been serving a long sentence in New York State’s Attica Prison on weapon charges relating to the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane. Kahane, the militant founder of the Jewish Defense League, was slain in a Midtown hotel in 1990.

With Kunstler and Kuby serving as his counsel, Nosair was acquitted of murder charges in 1991. But in a federal indictment filed in August against the sheik and 14 of his followers, Nosair was charged with “violence by racketeering” in connection with Kahane’s death. The indictment set the slaying in a larger context, charging that the rabbi’s death was part of a “war of urban terrorism” waged by Abdul Rahman and his supporters.

Prosecutors challenged the sheik’s decision to retain the two attorneys, saying they were opposed to multiple representations in the complex case.

But U.S. District Judge Michael B. Mukasey temporarily accepted Kunstler and Kuby as Abdul Rahman’s attorneys, pending his final determination on the government’s challenge.

Mukasey told the Egyptian cleric that if Nosair were to testify during the bombing-conspiracy trial, Kunstler and Kuby would be restricted in their questions during cross-examination because they would also be representing the sheik.

The indictment in August charged the sheik and his supporters with planning bombings of the United Nations, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, and the federal building in Manhattan. The alleged plot also included assassinations and other criminal acts. Mubarak allegedly was to be killed during a visit to New York.

Abdul Rahman, who has fought a two-year battle to avoid deportation, has been confined in a federal prison north of New York City. But plans are under way to move the 55-year-old cleric to special quarters at the Metropolitan Correctional Center next to the federal courthouse in Manhattan.