Prosecution Rests in N.Y. Bomb Plot Trial : Terrorism: Interest wanes as the spotlight swings from Manhattan to Oklahoma. Government’s case relies heavily on two shaky witnesses.

In court action pushed into the background by the Oklahoma City bombing, the government rested its case Wednesday in the trial of Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 10 of his followers who are charged with plotting a war of urban terrorism against the United States.

As prosecutors presented a final series of technical witnesses this week, less than 10 spectators were present most days in a large, heavily guarded third-floor courtroom in Manhattan’s Foley Square. New York newspapers paid the trial scant attention, and even some of the lawyers complained that the proceedings were tedious.

Nevertheless, at issue is an alleged plot to set off virtually simultaneous explosions at the United Nations building, two congested commuter tunnels and the Manhattan headquarters of the FBI. If such a plot had succeeded, casualties could have eclipsed the toll of 168 dead and 500 injured in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma.

According to secretly recorded conversations, one defendant speculated that such a mass bombing would make the February, 1993, blast at New York’s World Trade Center, in which six people were killed and more than 1,000 injured, look like a “dwarf.”

As a chilling reminder of the dimensions of the case, prosecutors replayed a videotape of some of the alleged bombers methodically mixing what federal agents said were explosives in a Queens building. The June 24, 1993, tapes from hidden FBI cameras showed six of the defendants using wooden paddles to stir ingredients in buckets before pouring them into barrels. Occasionally, one of the men would kneel in prayer.

“Don’t mess up the cooking,” one of the participants admonishes, according to transcripts of conversations translated from Arabic.

“What about the ones for the tunnel?” another of the defendants asks as the ingredients are mixed.

“The tunnels are set for four minutes,” a companion advises.

As the tapes were replayed, the jurors watched intently.

Prosecutors charge the motive of the sheik and his supporters was to protest U.S. policy in the Mideast, particularly support of Israel.

During nearly five months of testimony, government lawyers fashioned what the defense maintains is a fragile case, resting largely on the shaky credibility of two principal witnesses: Emad Ali Salem, a former Egyptian military officer and confidant of the sheik who became an FBI informant, and Abdo Mohammed Haggag, a former member of the cleric’s inner circle who was allowed to plead guilty to an unrelated charge of insurance fraud.

The prosecution’s supporting cast included police, bomb experts, FBI agents and fingerprint analysts, and other federal law enforcement officers. Excerpts of many tape recordings and half a dozen FBI national security wiretaps of the defendants have been presented to the jury.

The burly, bearded Salem, 44, spent five weeks on the witness stand detailing acts that the government contends show the sheik and his co-defendants sought to wage “a war of urban terrorism” against the United States.

Serving as the sheik’s bodyguard while also informing the FBI, Salem recorded more than 100 hours of conversations with the blind Muslim cleric and his alleged co-conspirators. Salem was paid $1.5 million by the government.

The recorded conversations showed links between the group on trial and four men who have been convicted of bombing the World Trade Center. On one tape made in May, 1993, for example, Siddig Ibrihim Siddig Ali tells Salem that the alleged co-conspirators knew of the trade center plot.

Siddig Ali, who later pleaded guilty in the current case, characterized Mohammed A. Salameh, one of those convicted last year, as “the stupidest of God’s creatures” for renting a van in his own name to carry a 2,000-pound homemade bomb into the trade center’s underground garage.

Some tapes, however, seemed to help the sheik’s defense, picturing the accused chief conspirator as a devout man of prayer.

In one recording, Siddig Ali described for Salem how the sheik’s followers helped him bathe in the morning and gave him a shot of insulin for his diabetes. “He sits a little to rest, because sometimes he stays awake all night. Then he prays and then he does the things he needs to do,” Siddig Ali said, according to an English transcript of the Arabic recording furnished to the jury.

Siddig Ali, although he entered a guilty plea after the trial was under way, was not called as a witness by prosecutors. The reason, according to one source, was that “we did not believe he was fully forthcoming in his cooperation with us, and so we did not have full confidence in his credibility as a witness.”

Moreover, Salem himself has proved to be less than reliable for the government. Defense attorneys have succeeded in poking holes in some of his damaging testimony against the sheik.

Salem told jurors, for example, that the cleric told a colleague after the trade center bombing that it was “a duty” to bomb the United Nations building. But defense lawyers noted that such an instruction, which was not taped, seemed to conflict with the actual recording of another conversation in which the sheik tells Salem to avoid the U.N. headquarters and attack a military installation instead.

While Salem gave other damaging testimony, including the sheik’s alleged command to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the defense showed he had lied about his professional background and his friendship with Libyan and Iraqi leaders.

“I told a lot of bragging stories,” Salem acknowledged to the jury. “I made myself a big shot.”

Haggag took the stand to describe Abdel Rahman as a religious leader who privately exhorted his followers to commit violence against the United States.

Formerly one of the sheik’s closest advisers, Haggag testified he was at Abdel Rahman’s apartment with several followers when the cleric put an overseas caller on the speaker phone. Haggag said the caller asked the sheik: “When are we going to hear about jihad [holy war] in America?”

“We’re going to hear about jihad when these guys around me stop living like ladies,” Haggag quoted Abdel Rahman as saying. Later, Haggag testified, Abdel Rahman told his followers: “You guys embarrass me.”

He further quoted Abdel Rahman as insisting that “ jihad was permissible in the United States” and suggesting that they choose serious U.S. targets.

However, defense attorneys delighted in showing a darker side to Haggag, who admitted he had lied to prosecutors when he claimed he had never been a paid informant for the Egyptian government.

In addition, he admitted he had helped orchestrate two child-snatchings in custody disputes.