Terrorist trial begins in Toledo
Widening conspiracy alleged as terrorist trial begins in Toledo, Ohio with jury selection
Trial proceedings began Wednesday, March 5, in a Toledo federal court against three Islamist Muslim men charged as conspirators in an alleged terrorist cell plotting violent jihad.
The opening phase of trial includes three weeks of jury selection from a pool of nearly 500 prospects to find 12 members and six alternates able to withstand a trial expected to last into July.
Jurors endured a battery of hundreds of questions, probing among other issues whether or not they could set aside personal feelings of American patriotism in order to hear facts regarding anti-American Islamist Muslims.
Charged are Mohammad Zaki Amawi, Marwan Othman Al-Hindi and Wassim I. Mazloum, on a nine-count federal indictment. They each face life in prison if found guilty.
They are charged with conspiracy to kill or kidnap Americans overseas, conspiring to provide material support for terrorists, distributing bomb-making information and making threats against the President of the United States.
FBI authorities arrested the three in February 2006 as part of an investigation that included numerous search warrants and other named individuals.
The probe included ties with persons overseas, primarily in Amman, Jordan: Amawi has dual citizenship with Jordan, El-Hindi is a naturalized citizen born in Jordan and Mazloum is from Lebanon.
Extensive documents and evidence seized in a battery of searches, included listed items from AZ Travel, Inc, Toledo; a man associated with that search, Jihad Hekmat Dahabi, stands charged with making false statements related to the Amawi case.
Seized items included Arab-language literature, cassette tapes and packaging that included sent information from a named individual in Amman, Jordan.
Also part of the case: numerous protective orders regarding secret and top-secret international counterterrorism operations by the U.S., information of which might become introduced as evidence at trial.
About a dozen defense lawyers, present at the jury selection process this week, have been fighting to have protective order guards eliminated to expose the classified government information.
Also protected by an order declared by federal Judge James G. Carr, a U.S. informant witness referred to as “the Trainer,” who turned evidence of the three in conspiracy to distribute bomb-making information related to the making of terrorist-use IEDs, or improvised explosives.
A defense action to throw out the explosives charge is already on the table, through a motion to dismiss based on lack of evidence in the case.
The motion coincides with numerous actions to unlock the classified information for general exposure despite the claims by U.S. attorneys that to do so would seriously jeopardize national security.
“The alleged distribution, according to count three, consisted of …’the defendant accessed a secure muhahideen web site and opened, viewed, and discussed with the Trainer certain instructional materials and videos,” Amawi lawyer Elias Muawad stated in his motion.
Muawad argued the information, including a video, “Martyrdom Operation Vest Preparation,” and steps for making and using a suicide bomber vest, was only for personal viewing, and not technically an act of distribution to another.
The case is being reported in the Toledo, Ohio area as a trial against Muslims planning holy war, reports noting the three face consequences of up to life in prison.
"I'm asking you to give the government, the defendants, and myself a commitment, an absolute commitment, to decide this case on the evidence itself," Judge Carr was quoted as saying.
"The only thing on which to decide this case is what you hear from the witnesses, see in the documents, and based on the law that I tell you," he reportedly added.
The three men are suspected of targeting people in the Middle East, including U.S. troops serving in Iraq, according to published reports.
The three men have pleaded not guilty.
Since the original charges were filed, two additional defendants have been charged with terrorism related crimes linked to this case.
Chicago cousins Zubair Ahmed and Khaleel Ahmed were arrested in February 2007, charged with plotting to recruit and train terrorists to attack U.S. troops overseas.
The trial against the Ahmed cousins is severed to give attorneys more time to prepare the case.