Bomb Suspect Wasn’t Tested for Residue, Witness Says

Investigators failed to test for evidence of explosives residue on terrorism suspect Ahmed Ressam or in his motel room, raising doubts that he was building a bomb, a former FBI scientist told a federal jury Wednesday.

U.S. and Canadian authorities did not run tests after Ressam’s arrest to look for--or rule out--the presence of incriminating explosives residue, said defense witness Frederic Whitehurst, a former FBI lab examiner and scientist.

If Ressam had worked with the explosives in a Vancouver motel, as prosecutors have charged, traces of explosives would almost certainly have been evident not just on Ressam, but on anything he had touched recently, Whitehurst said as testimony ended in the trial.

“You would want to take [lab test] swabs inside and outside the car, places where a person might touch,” Whitehurst said of the car Ressam was driving. “You’d want [to test] the clothing of the individual, you’d want swabs of the hands of the individual.”

Authorities have conceded that they ran no such tests, and that they misplaced the clothes Ressam was wearing at the time of his arrest. Those clothes were found only last week, and have not been tested for explosives residue.

Whitehurst, who left the FBI after blowing the whistle on problems in its crime lab, also criticized U.S. and Canadian authorities for failing to conduct enough tests on the Vancouver motel room for traces of explosives.

Authorities contend that Ressam and another indicted co-conspirator, Abdelmajid Dahoumane, were making three kinds of explosives at the Motel 2400, including a nitroglycerin equivalent known as EGDN. They also conceded during the trial that no traces of the explosives were found in the room, but that they had failed to test the drapes, bedsheets and other likely areas of contamination.

As such, Whitehurst said, he can only conclude that it’s highly unlikely that Ressam or anyone else was making such a high-grade explosive in the room.

The Whitehurst testimony came as defense lawyers wrapped up their case. In all, the defense team called six witnesses. Prosecutors spent three weeks building a case against the Algerian national based on the testimony of more than 110 witnesses, 5,000 exhibits and a detailed trail of evidence.

The case against Ressam, 33, could go to the jury as early as today after closing arguments. He faces more than 100 years in prison if he is convicted on nine counts, including conspiracy to commit an act of international terrorism.

Ressam did not testify. On Wednesday, with the jury outside the courtroom, he was asked by U.S. District Judge John Coughenour whether he knew he had a right to take the stand.

Ressam nodded, and answered “yes” in Arabic.

Also Wednesday, U.S. Customs supervisor Tyler Morgan testified that one of his agents had used a travel agent to determine that Ressam was planning to leave Seattle the day after he arrived. He was headed for New York and London, Morgan said.

Morgan and the travel agent, Theodore Baio, testified that no hard copies of the reservations exist, only computer records that Baio viewed in December 1999 that showed Benni Noris, a Ressam alias, as having a reservation.

Prosecutors did not contest the testimony, but have said previously that Ressam had no such plans to fly to the East Coast or anywhere else.

Ressam is charged with driving an explosives-laden car from Canada to Seattle as part of a terrorist plot to bomb U.S. millennium celebrations on or about New Year’s Day 2000.

No bombs were ever detonated. Authorities say the alleged plot by Ressam and at least four other men ended with his arrest Dec. 14, 1999, as Ressam drove a rental car off a ferry at a U.S.-Canadian border crossing.

Neither the witnesses nor Ressam’s lawyers gave the jury an explanation of the significance of the plane reservations.

But the defense team has indicated in court papers that the reservations show Ressam couldn’t have had plans to use the explosives since he would have been out of the country when the attacks were to occur.

The defense hasn’t denied that Ressam was driving a rental car with more than 130 pounds of explosive materials and four homemade bomb timers in the trunk. Instead, it has contended he was an unwitting courier who either didn’t know the materials were there, or didn’t know their significance.

But the defense has called no witnesses to raise questions about whether Ressam was conned into driving across the border.