Shahawar Matin Siraj, on trial for plotting to bomb the Herald Square subway station, often lied to strangers that he was wanted for murder in his native Pakistan and gloated when the space shuttle Columbia broke up over Texas, a jury in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn heard during the course of his trial, which is now coming to a close.

In the final day of testimony, lawyers for both Mr. Siraj and the government strove to incorporate his inflammatory comments into the narratives that both sides have presented. One of Mr. Siraj’s attorneys, Martin Stolar, has argued that in late 2003 an older police informant entrapped Mr. Siraj, 23, by cultivating in him a hatred for America.

In rebuttal, the prosecution called an undercover police officer as a witness Wednesday. The officer, who identified himself by the pseudonym ‘Kamil Pasha,’ testified yesterday that Mr. Siraj often had a voice in conversations that glorified terrorism in 2002 in the Islamic bookstore in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where the defendant worked as a clerk.

Mr. Stolar sought to diminish the impact of his client’s words. “They would hang around the bookstore and they would talk about politics,” Martin Stolar said yesterday. “They would boast.”

Mr. Pasha, the undercover officer, testified that, during some of the 72 documented instances he interacted with the defendant, Mr. Siraj praised Osama bin Laden, expressed sympathy with Palestinian suicide bombers, and distributed videotapes describing a conspiracy that blamed the American government for the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. Mr. Pasha said that Mr. Siraj, was one of the first people he met when he infiltrated the Muslim community of Bay Ridge at the NYPD’s request.

But the defense strove to show that several of Mr. Siraj’s alleged statements proved nothing except that he held “community based notions” that were common among Muslims in Bay Ridge. In his cross-examination of Mr. Pasha, Mr.Stolar asked whether the undercover officer encountered these opinions among others.

“In fact, in that entire Muslim community in Bay Ridge, the thought that the American government was responsible for bringing down the towers on 9/11 was common,” Mr. Stolar said.

Mr. Pasha responded: “Not everybody felt that way.”

Although Mr. Pasha testified that Mr. Siraj never told him of a subway bomb plot, the prosecution has sought to show that what Mr. Pasha overheard demonstrates that Mr. Siraj has long been predisposed to violence. Referring to Mr. Siraj’s empathy for Palestinian suicide bombers, an assistant U.S. attorney,Todd Harrison, asked: “Do you find it common in the community that people want to do suicide bombings and hoped attacks would happen in the United States?”

Mr. Pasha answered no.

Outside the presence of the jury, Mr. Stolar has told the judge, Nina Gershon, that Mr. Pasha’s testimony proved only that Mr. Siraj held widely shared views that cannot be taken to show that he was pre-disposed to terrorism.

“That would put the entire Muslim community around Bay Ridge in a predisposition mode,” Mr. Stolar said Wednesday, referring to the prosecution’s argument. “That everyone has a predisposition to commit an attack.”