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St. Petersburg Times - August 24, 2005
Sami Al-Arian trial defense takes center stage
By MEG LAUGHLIN
TAMPA - William Moffitt looked from side to side, as if casing the joint, and set himself firmly before the FBI agent in the witness box.
This was the moment he had been waiting for, for a month. At last, the chance to cross-examine Kerry Myers, the FBI agent who has spent weeks laying out the prosecution's case against Moffitt's client, Sami Al-Arian, and three other men accused of abetting terrorism in Israel and the occupied territories.
"Can you see the Syrian border from Iran, as you said in your grand jury testimony?" boomed Moffitt, looming over the FBI agent, glaring at him. "No, sir, I made a mistake," said Myers, explaining that Syria doesn't border Iran.
Moffitt sounded like an irate headmaster berating a misbehaving student. The courtroom was packed with spectators - many of them supporters of Al-Arian - who had come to see how the widely known Washington, D.C., lawyer would deliver a comeuppance to the FBI and prosecution.
The former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers then ordered Myers to count and write.
"Yes sir," said a dutiful Myers, taking the marker Moffitt handed him.
The assignment: to write numbers on a large display pad.
472,239 FBI-monitored phone calls over nine years, 323 overt acts linking defendants to alleged criminal action in the final indictment, Myers wrote.
Then Moffitt asked him to write time spans to show how Al-Arian's alleged associations with Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders compared to the 1995 U.S. designation of the PIJ as a terrorist organization.
Remaining calm and respectful, Myers wrote down a column of dates, then agreed with Moffitt that there were "zero" overt acts connecting Al-Arian directly to Palestinian Islamic Jihad after the Jan. 25, 1995, terrorist designation of the group by the U.S. Treasury Department.
Moffitt asked Myers if he'd ever heard any plans for terrorist acts mentioned in nine years of FBI-monitored calls.
"I did not see anything about planning future acts, sir," Myers replied.
The direction of Moffitt's questions signaled two key points in the upcoming defense: Nothing shows that Al-Arian plotted terrorist acts, and the vast majority of the wiretaps focus on the years before the U.S. government declared the Palestinian Islamic Jihad a terrorist organization.
As questioning continued, both men appeared to relax. Moffitt ditched the irate tone, calling Myers "sir." And Myers' voice grew louder. But the columns of numbers on the display pad got longer.
"When was Dr. Al-Arian's last conversation with Ramadan Shallah?" Moffitt asked Myers.
"April 28, 1994 - 11 years ago," said Myers, writing down the date, which was six months before Shallah became head of the PIJ.
Then, the veteran criminal defense attorney asked the FBI agent if the PIJ had ever been involved in violent acts outside Israel. Myers' response - that he had once seen a classified intelligence report about a PIJ plot to take violent action in the United States - appeared to surprise Moffitt, who asked the agent if he could get the report in the next few days.
Yes, Myers said, offering no information about its accuracy……
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/08/24/Hillsborough/Defense_takes_center_.shtml
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