Defense in Bomb Plot Says Hands Are Tied : Courts: Lawyers for Egyptian cleric, others in New York case complain about judge’s ruling denying them witnesses they wanted to call.

Eleven defendants, led by a blind and diabetic Egyptian sheik, file into a heavily guarded courtroom here each morning, carrying file folders and small prayer rugs even though their hands are shackled behind them.

Accused of waging a “war of urban terrorism” by allegedly plotting to blow up the United Nations building and Manhattan commuter tunnels, they have sat through 25 weeks of prosecution evidence. Now it is their turn, but they are off to a slow start this week.

Although the defendants’ shackles are routinely removed before jurors enter the courtroom, the lawyers who represent them are complaining that they feel manacled by the judge during the proceedings. Denied many witnesses whom they wanted to call, attorneys for Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman claim the judge has “tied our hands behind our backs.”

“He has gutted our case, absolutely,” says lawyer Abdeen Jabara, citing a ruling by U.S. District Judge Michael B. Mukasey that experts on the Islamic faith may not testify about the sheik’s beliefs and that Atty. Gen. Janet Reno cannot be questioned about the sheik’s prosecution.

Instead, defense lawyers are putting on the witness stand those who worshiped at Abdel Rahman’s Brooklyn mosque to tell why they revere the cleric and are mounting new attacks on the FBI’s secret informer, Emad Ali Salem.

Several witnesses, some in Arabic dress, have pictured the sheik as a scholarly man of deep personal holiness who never appealed to radical elements. He used his knowledge of the Koran, the holiest book of Islam, to teach a peaceful, nonviolent philosophy, they said.

At least two members of the sheik’s flock recalled that after the February, 1993, bombing of the World Trade Center, which killed six people and injured more than 1,000, the cleric publicly condemned the act as unwise and ill-advised.

However, the government’s case has included evidence--based on the testimony of former confidants and secret tape recordings made by the FBI informant--that Abdel Rahman served as spiritual leader of a terrorism ring and declared jihad (holy war) on the United States because it is an ally of Egypt.

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The sheik’s defense contends that charges against Abdel Rahman in this case resulted from pressure from the Egyptian government. Abdel Rahman has long been an avowed enemy of the government of President Hosni Mubarak.

Testifying for the defense, Barbara Rogers, former wife of Salem, described the FBI informant as a deceptive “double agent” who had briefcases full of cash at their New York home and who she believed was working for Egyptian intelligence as well as the FBI.

Prosecutors themselves have never been happy with Salem, their star witness who collected more than $1 million in informant fees from the FBI. He has acknowledged telling false stories to the FBI to try to inflate his importance and even secretly tape-recorded his FBI handlers in an effort to trick them into saying things that he might use to boost his fees. Government lawyers have told the jury, however, to consider Salem’s testimony and his tapes along with other evidence in the case.

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What effect the defense testimony on Salem and the sheik’s religious beliefs is having on the jury of seven women and five men is hard to gauge. But the sheik’s attorneys say that the testimony of defense witnesses so far has not been as strong as they had planned when they told Judge Mukasey they intended to call several Islamic law experts to counter prosecution claims that the sheik practiced a radical brand of Islam bent on destroying his enemies and their allies.

Lynne Stewart, Abdel Rahman’s chief defense lawyer, said that she wants to put on “a rebuttal to the government’s criminalization of Islam” through expert witnesses. But the judge’s ruling has deprived the sheik of a fair trial and has amounted to “a scimitar through our heart,” she said.

Prosecutors, however, challenged the relevance of what experts in Islamic law would have to say and Mukasey agreed with them. He ruled that such witnesses would take jurors on “a whole course of Islamic law” that would not “clarify the issues in this case”--that is, the intentions of the defendants.

Mukasey, who was elevated to the bench by then-President Ronald Reagan, is a former prosecutor in New York who has prided himself on running a tight courtroom.

Of the defense’s plan to summon Reno to question her about alleged political pressures brought to bear to indict the sheik, the judge ruled that “the only thing the jury has to decide is whether there’s enough evidence” for a conviction.