Bomb Case Built a Stub, a Shard, a Shell at a Time : Trial: Prosecutors plod through bits and pieces of evidence against four men accused in World Trade Center blast. Judge warns even he’s getting bored.

As some members of the jury stifled yawns, the police detective on the witness stand matter-of-factly identified a small orange parking-lot stub handed to him by Gilmore Childers, the federal prosecutor.

Yes, the witness said, it was from the B-2 level of the World Trade Center garage--where an explosion Feb. 26 had killed six people, injured more than 1,000 others and disabled one of the world’s best-known skyscrapers.

But more important, Detective Ronald Alongis said, the stub was dated Feb. 16--just 10 days before the blast--and it bore the fingerprints of the principal defendant in the bombing case, Mohammed A. Salameh.

Like most of the government’s case so far in the 10-week-old trial of four alleged terrorists, the stub was only a piece of circumstantial evidence. But it gave support to a government theory that the alleged bombers had cased the underground scene several days before they allegedly drove a van loaded with explosives into the garage.

The slow pace at which evidence has been introduced in piecemeal fashion by prosecutors--such as the parking stub--has sometimes left the jury glassy-eyed. Before that, it took prosecutors nearly three weeks to introduce hunks of charred and twisted debris gleaned from the five-story-deep crater created by the blast, including parts of a yellow van believed used to carry the bomb.

But bit by bit, testimony about parking stubs, pieces of the van and chemicals traced to the defendants is building the government’s case.

Most criminal trials rely on one or two big-ticket witnesses for the prosecution, such as the onetime close aides of former Panamanian dictator Manuel A. Noriega who helped convict him by giving firsthand testimony about his receipt of illicit drug profits.

But the case against the four accused bombers has no witness who can place them at the scene, no former associate to testify about their movements. Instead, the prosecutors have had to add one element of circumstantial evidence after another in a slow, plodding fashion to try to show that the defendants rented an apartment and a storage shed to mix chemicals for the bomb, had access to joint bank accounts to finance their endeavors and, finally, leased a van to deliver the 1,200-pound homemade explosive device.

The judge, however, said the snail-like introduction of evidence has annoyed even him. Federal attorneys seem intent on showing the jury the painstaking detective work that enabled them to build their case against the alleged terrorists.

The jury came to understand, for example, that police and FBI agents had sifted through thousands of parking stubs for the days preceding the bombing before finding one with prints matching Salameh’s, officials said.

So agonizing was the introduction of blast debris, including parts of the van, that U.S. District Judge Kevin T. Duffy--who is given to frank and folksy comments--told prosecutors during a recess that he needed a cup of coffee to stay awake. He asked why they were putting so much debris into evidence “shard by shard.”

“At some point, you’re going to have to finish putting parts together and get down to the case against these defendants,” he said.

Reinforcing the same point a few days later, Duffy said: “It’s one thing to bore the jury. But when you’re boring the judge, you’re in deep trouble.”

The prosecutors, taking a cue from Duffy, have picked up the pace somewhat.

Not all of the government’s 135 witnesses so far have performed flawlessly. In a recent embarrassment to prosecutors, one confused witness--ignoring the defendants in the courtroom--brought peals of laughter when he identified two jurors as the men who gassed up a yellow van in his New Jersey filling station shortly before the bombing.

One key piece of debris exhibited to the jury by Childers was from the chassis of a Ford Econoline van. It bore a telltale vehicle identification number that allowed the FBI to link it to the van Salameh said he leased from Ryder Truck Rentals in Jersey City, N.J. It is the van authorities claim carried the bomb.

Salameh, through his lawyer, contends that the van was stolen from a grocery store lot where he had parked it the night before the blast.

Prosecutors concede that no witnesses saw Salameh or any of the other three defendants near the World Trade Center before the explosion. That is the reason they have taken such pains to introduce so much circumstantial evidence implicating the 26-year-old Salameh and his alleged associates: Nidal Ayyad, 26; Mohammad Ahmad Ajaj, 27, and Mahmud Abouhalima, 33.

All are described as followers of radical Egyptian Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, who has been indicted as the purported leader of a larger group of conspirators who allegedly planned to blow up the United Nations building and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels connecting New York with New Jersey.

Like the four accused bombers now on trial, Abdul Rahman and 15 others charged in the wider conspiracy case have pleaded not guilty. They are expected to go on trial next spring, when the government’s key witness will likely be a former bodyguard to Abdul Rahman who carried a hidden microphone provided by the FBI.

However, the current trial rests on no star witness--only on the bit-by-bit presentation of hundreds of pieces of evidence that offer indirect indications of guilt.

Myles H. Malman, a former state and federal prosecutor with 25 years of experience, observed that a circumstantial case like this “may be boring, but absolutely it can be successful.”

Malman, who helped prosecute Noriega before entering private practice last year, said: “You may not have a smoking gun in every case. So you put a box of shells on the shelf that the jury can use to convict a defendant.”

Besides parking stubs and pieces of the van, the “box of shells” in the bombing trial has included testimony about hydrogen tanks and other chemicals allegedly purchased by the defendants, about an apartment and storage shed linked to the suspects and a little about their banking transactions.

One piece of debris found at the blast site and shown to jurors bore the letters AGL. Testimony indicated it came from a tank of hydrogen gas sold by AGL Welding Inc. of Jersey City.

AGL officials testified that they sold Salameh, who used an alias, three tanks of hydrogen gas the day before the explosion and delivered them to the Jersey City storage locker that other witnesses have said Salameh rented. Investigators say they believe that the compressed hydrogen gas was used to give the explosive greater force.

Former neighbors of Salameh told the jury that they saw a red-haired man of the same description as Abouhalima entering and leaving Salameh’s apartment, where chemical traces consistent with bomb-making were found on the walls.

Salameh was also linked to Ayyad through joint bank accounts in New Jersey in which thousands of dollars were deposited in the months before the bombing, some of it withdrawn in $100 bills.

In addition, Ayyad, a chemical engineer, has been accused of mailing a letter to the New York Times claiming responsibility for the bombing in the name of an anti-Israeli group called the Liberation Fifth Army.

Saliva samples taken from the envelope flap match those of Ayyad, officials said.

Ajaj, the fourth man on trial, has been linked to the alleged conspiracy mainly through bomb-making manuals he was carrying when he entered the United States last fall. But he was in jail on immigration charges at the time of the World Trade Center explosion.

All four face a maximum possible punishment of life in prison if convicted of the bombing.