Terror suspect tied to Canada guilty of fraud, U.S. jury says
COLIN FREEZE
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
August 4, 2007 at 1:07 AM EDT
MINNEAPOLIS — An al-Qaeda suspect said to be central to a radio export business that led to several Canadians being imprisoned in Syria potentially faces deportation to Russia after a U.S. jury convicted him Friday of three charges of immigration fraud.
Mohammed Kamal Elzahabi, who once told the FBI that he had served as a sniper instructor at the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan, was convicted of paying an exotic dancer $5,000 (U.S.) to marry him more than two decades ago.
Now balding and with patches of grey in his beard, the slim 43-year-old had met his wife at a Houston bar called The Pink Pussycat just weeks after he arrived from Lebanon in 1984.
It was a match made of necessity: “He needed a green card. She wanted money. They struck a deal,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Anders Folk told a jury in Minneapolis as proceedings started this week.
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The resulting wedding allowed Mr. Elzahabi to get a green card and other credentials, which he used to travel the world as an Islamic warrior, including his violent stints in Afghanistan and Chechnya, during the 1990s.
Mr. Elzahabi was arrested in Minneapolis in 2004, where he had been working as truck driver for several years.
Court records show that he told the FBI agents who arrested him that he was never a member of al-Qaeda, although he said he had gotten to know many people who were. Still, the agents feared the worst about him, even if they could find only relatively minor charges to lay.
Friday's immigration-fraud verdict in a U.S. federal court may smooth the way for the suspect's eventual deportation to Russia — a country where, according to court records, he said he once fatally shot a bulldozer driver while fighting with Chechen rebels.
There is also some speculation the guilty verdict might render unnecessary Mr. Elzahabi's coming criminal trial on other charges. He is alleged to have lied about his involvement in a Canadian-based export business that shipped radios overseas to Pakistan.
Investigators have long suspected the wares actually went to Islamic radicals in Afghanistan, but have never been able to prove it. This same business was at the heart of a 2001-era RCMP investigation against several Canadian Arabs that went famously awry.
No charges were ever laid but some of the police targets in Ottawa, including telecommunications engineer Maher Arar and exporter Abdullah Almalki, were jailed in Syria for long periods. Ever since, the Canadian government has been fending off allegations it orchestrated their overseas imprisonment and torture. Mr. Arar received $10-million in compensation and an apology from Ottawa after he was wrongly flagged as a terrorism suspect. Mr. Almalki's case is currently being reviewed by a separate judicial inquiry.
Court records show that Mr. Elzahabi was questioned by the FBI about his links to the business and the other men, although his answers have never been divulged.
He did tell the FBI that he went to work for the export business in 1996, after bullet wounds suffered in Afghanistan forced him to return to the United States for treatment. He denied knowing much about the business.
Last month, the U.S. court split the charges against Mr. Elzahabi into two distinct cases, meaning only the immigration fraud case was heard this week. The jury heard very little about the suspect's life of travel as Judge John Tunheim insulated proceedings from any mention of terrorism, so as not to prejudice a possible future trial.
FBI agent Harry Samit, a veteran terrorism investigator in Minneapolis, told the jury that Mr. Elzahabi refused to discuss his marriage when questioned by the FBI. “He said this is 100 per cent against me, let's put this aside,” Mr. Samit said.
The ex-wife, Kathy Buckheit, testified she married “for money” because she was addicted to smoking cocaine. While Mr. Elzahabi sat impassively through most of the proceedings, he made a point of approaching her to kiss her on the cheek when she left the witness stand.
Defence lawyer Paul Engh gave an impassioned defence of his client, characterizing Mr. Elzahabi as a chivalrous Muslim who had paid a dowry for his bride. “His intentions were pure. Without a doubt, his intentions were pure,” the lawyer said.
During a break in proceedings, Mr. Engh gave an indication as to why he was fighting so hard for Mr. Elzahabi.
“We think this is a death-penalty case,” the lawyer told Judge Tunheim, nodding to the fact that a guilty verdict could result in his client being stripped of his status, and being sent to a grim fate in Russia.
Outside court, Mr. Engh said his client has awaited trial in extremely strict conditions for 31/2 years, and has already served most of any sentence he could possibly face. For this reason, Mr. Engh expressed doubts as to whether the U.S. would pursue the other charges — those that could shed light on the Canadian export business. |
