U.S. Wraps Up Case Against Terror Suspects
CHICAGO — Federal prosecutors wrapped up their case against two men accused of aiding the militant Palestinian Arab group Hamas, saying the men furnished funds and fresh recruits to spread "death, destruction, fear, and terror."
Former Chicago grocer Muhammad Salah and co-defendant Abdelhaleem Ashqar were "important players" with the Hamas terrorist network, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Ferguson told a federal court jury in closing arguments capping a three-month trial that included testimony by torture experts and Israeli agents adopting assumed identities.
"The Hamas organization engaged in a purposeful and strategic campaign to spread death, destruction, fear, and terror in pursuit of its overall objective to remove the State of Israel from the map," Mr. Ferguson said.
Messrs. Salah, 53, and Ashqar, 48, a former assistant professor of business at Washington's Howard University, are charged with a racketeering scheme that provided money and men to the Hamas organization in the early 1990s.
Both men deny that they are Hamas members and say that nothing they did violated the law, even though they hold strong anti-Israel views.
The first two prosecution witnesses were Israeli Shin Bet agents who interrogated Mr. Salah after his January 1993 arrested in Israel, where he served about five years in prison. The agents testified under aliases in a courtroom cleared of spectators to protect them against possible reprisals by Hamas. Reporters were allowed to hear their testimony on closed-circuit TV in another room.
Both men denied Mr. Salah ever was tortured. Mr. Salah did not take the stand, but his attorneys say he was put in a freezing cell with no blanket, forced to wear a foul-smelling hood, and otherwise mistreated for weeks.
