Secret Tapes Key in U.S. Case Against Sheik

“May God bless you, Sheik! . . . Boom! This will drive the whole world crazy!”

The sentences, picked up on a hidden microphone just after a bomb timer was successfully tested, are chilling--and stand at the heart of the government’s case when the biggest terrorism trial in the nation’s history starts Monday under extraordinary security.

Federal prosecutors charge that Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 of his followers conspired to bomb targets that included the United Nations, the FBI headquarters in Manhattan and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, which are usually crowded with commuters.

Prosecutors also allege that some of the defendants participated in the earlier assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the militant Jewish Defense League, as a prelude to wider violence that included bombing the World Trade Center and plotting to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during a visit to New York.

The reason: “To the Jihad organization, the United States, Egypt and Israel are simply different parts of a single enemy on whom they are obliged to wage war,” government lawyers charge in court papers.

What is likely to emerge during months of testimony in the federal courthouse at Manhattan’s Foley Square is a portrait of a terrorist cell, fueled by religious fanaticism and hatred of the United States, Israel and Mubarak’s regime.

Unlike last year’s trade center bombing trial in which four of the sheik’s followers were convicted largely on forensic evidence, jurors will see FBI videotapes of some of the defendants mixing explosives, hear about scouting trips to potential bomb sites--including the tunnels and New York’s diamond district--and learn that the accused terrorists constantly feared their phones and meetings were being monitored by authorities.

“We do something, we get caught,” lamented one defendant in a conversation that ironically turned out to be secretly recorded.

The government’s case rests heavily on testimony from a former Egyptian army commando and intelligence operative, Emad Ali Salem, who infiltrated the alleged conspiracy and who served as adviser and bodyguard to Abdel Rahman, the principal defendant.

According to court papers, prosecutors will try to show that Abdel Rahman was the spiritual leader of an organization of “radical Islamic extremists” with members in California, New York, New Jersey, Texas, Michigan and other states.

Abdel Rahman directed that all members should prepare for jihad, or holy war, against the West through paramilitary training for terrorist acts, prosecutors allege.

*

To demonstrate the motive, the government is prepared to cite some of the sheik’s sermons as well as conversations recorded by Salem.

Long before the current case developed, prosectors say, Abdel Rahman told followers in a 1991 question-and-answer session in Los Angeles that “we have to be terrorists.”

These and other remarks will contrast directly with the defense contention that the 56-year-old blind Islamic cleric, who suffers from heart disease and diabetes, was merely exercising his First Amendment right of free speech and posed no real threat to society.

The sheik, an avowed enemy of Mubarak’s government, is no stranger to the courts and has successfully defended himself before. He was acquitted in Egypt of charges that he inspired the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981. He left Egypt after being accused in 1989 of inciting an anti-government riot.

Arriving secretly in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, he obtained a visa in 1990 to enter the United States--reportedly with help from the CIA, with which he had cooperated during the Soviet Union’s war with Afghanistan.

Some law enforcement officials who helped develop evidence in the current trial wonder in private whether the government has an airtight case against the sheik.

Some of Abdel Rahman’s conversations recorded by Salem are vague and ambiguous, and there is no evidence that he ever was present in the Queens, N.Y., garage where explosive ingredients were mixed.

The sheik’s lawyers also are expected to focus on one bit of advice contained in the 150 hours of conversations secretly recorded by the informant.

In this tape, Abdel Rahman actually advises against bombing the U.N. building because “it would muddy the waters for Islam.”

“The federal government has replaced communism with Muslim, and it has made it synonymous with terrorism,” Lynn F. Stewart, one of the sheik’s lawyers, charged last week in a preview of trial strategy.

Lawyers for other defendants will also try to convince jurors that their clients engaged largely in “wild talk” that never amounted to much. The lawyers for a second group of defendants--who were apprehended while mixing bomb ingredients with long wooden spatulas in large, yellow barrels in the Queens garage--in all likelihood will claim their clients were entrapped by Salem.

*

Prosecutors view things differently. In one conversation secretly recorded by Salem, defendant Fares Khallafalla exclaims triumphantly when a bomb timing device worked flawlessly during a test: “God bless you, Sheik!” At the same meeting, another defendant was recorded allegedly outlining plans for three separate bombings, all occurring within 10 minutes.

Government lawyers contend that the plot to simultaneously bomb the tunnels and other targets was the result of a process that began before the night of Nov. 5, 1990, when Kahane was assassinated in a meeting room of the New York Marriott East Side Hotel in mid-Manhattan.

Prosecutors charge that several of the current defendants played a key role in the Kahane plot: that El Sayyid A. Nosair, an Egyptian immigrant employed by the City of New York, was the hit man; that the fingerprints of Mohammed A. Salameh and Nidal Ayyad, who were convicted last year in the World Trade Center bombing, were found in Nosair’s car, which was left abandoned in a no-stopping zone outside the hotel.

Government lawyers further charge that Clement Hampton-el--who is among those who will be tried with the sheik--took part in planning Kahane’s execution, and that Mohammed Abouhalima, another convicted trade center bomber, was intended to be the getaway driver but failed to meet up with Nosair.

Nosair, who was captured after a short chase and gun battle, was acquitted in 1991 of Kahane’s murder, but the jury found him guilty of weapons violations and he has been serving a lengthy prison term.

These links only came together in the fiery aftermath of the trade center explosion on Feb. 26, 1993. The massive fertilizer-based bomb, carried into the center’s underground garage in a rented van, killed six people and injured more than 1,000. It also renewed the FBI’s focus on the sheik and his followers.

Largely through Salem’s tapes, a portrait of the alleged terrorist operation will likely emerge at the trial. Prosecutors say the tapes reveal how some of the defendants established safehouses and attended paramilitary training at a secret camp in Harrisburg, Pa., how they communicated in code by beeper and how they carefully scouted targets--concluding on one trip that the George Washington Bridge could be destroyed by blowing up the middle column.

In a particularly graphic account, Siddig Ibrihim Siddig Ali, a 33-year-old Sudanese immigrant and a key defendant, was tape-recorded four months after the trade center bombing allegedly describing how the FBI headquarters here could be blown up.

The plans, prosecutors say, included shooting guards patrolling the building’s garage so that a car carrying a bomb could enter. A getaway car would be placed to carry the five terrorists to safety across the Brooklyn Bridge.

In another tape-recording, Siddig Ali reportedly discusses bombing the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, which link New York with New Jersey. In this conversation with two other defendants, he allegedly explains that because the tunnels contain numerous surveillance cameras, the raiders would have to wear disguises.

“I want the bombing of the tunnels to be occurring at the same moment,” he allegedly instructed.

*

To counter all of this, defense lawyers are expected to portray Salem as a money-hungry agent provocateur who inspired plots, entrapped witnesses, sought glory and received more than $1 million in informant’s fees from the FBI.

Because of the complexity of the conspiracy case, prosecutors are expected to take six to nine months to try to convince the jury that all 12 defendants engaged in “a terrorist campaign which comprehended not only assassinations of individuals but the mass destruction of political, social and economic assets of the ‘infidel’ West.”

Senior U.S. intelligence officials will be watching the trial warily. One high-ranking official said the sheik’s conviction could trigger an increase in Islamic-based terrorism in the United States and the Middle East. These anxieties are shared by some top law enforcement experts.