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Closing Arguments Wrapped Up In Ressam Trial
LOS ANGELES, April 5 (News Agencies) - Prosecutors on Thursday urged a jury to convict an Algerian man of plotting to bomb U.S. targets during the year 2000 Millennium celebrations, calling Ahmed Ressam "a trained terrorist" who planned to sow fear in the United States.
In his closing arguments, prosecutor Jerry Diskin went over the government's case, saying it proved Ressam was a member of a Montreal-based "terrorist" cell that planned to hit U.S. targets around New Year's Eve 1999.
"Had law enforcement failed to stop Ahmed Ressam at the border and had he and his cohorts completed their mission," tragedy would have resulted, Diskin told jurors.
He then played a videotape of a blast investigators created to show what would have happened if the 59 kilograms (130 pounds) of explosives found in the trunk of Ressam's rented car had been detonated.
The 33-year-old Montreal resident was arrested on December 14, 1999, after customs officials in Port Angeles, Washington State - some 100 kilometers (60 miles) northwest of Seattle - found a trunk-full of explosives and timing devices in his car.
Officials have said they are not sure of his planned target, but said his arrest had thwarted an attack.
But Ressam lawyer JoAnne Oliver said the case against their client was a house of cards built in circumstantial evidence, and slammed prosecutors for appealing to jurors' emotions and fears.
"The government is using these kinds of props [the videotape] to get you to jump to conclusions," said Oliver. "Don't be misled."
Oliver said Ressam was manipulated by others, especially handler Abdelmadjid Dahoumane, who was arrested in March after returning to Algeria. Dahoumane has also been charged in the Ressam case.
Ressam - who did not testify in the case - could face up to 130 years in prison if convicted.
His lawyers on Wednesday had called the last of their six witnesses, following about three weeks of testimony from more than 100 government witnesses in the trial that began March 12th.
The defense's key witness was a former explosives expert for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Frederic Whitehurst, who worked in the FBI's Washington, DC crime lab from 1982 to 1998, said he would have tested Ressam's clothing and obtained samples from his hands, including fingernail scrapings.
Whitehurst also said traces of the explosives should have been found in the Vancouver motel room where he and an accomplice allegedly manufactured bombs and timing devices.
"I'd be very surprised if you didn't fine some," he said.
Ressam's court-appointed lawyers also showed evidence that their client had planned to leave Seattle the day after he was to arrive.
Former Seattle travel agent Theodore Baio said he found airline reservations in the name of Benni Noris - the alias Ressam used in Canada - for flights from Seattle to New York to London.
Those reservations were for December 15th, said U.S. Customs Special Agent Tyler Morgan in testimony that could bolster the defense argument that Ressam was nothing more than a courier for the explosives.
Ressam lawyer Michael Filipovic elicited an admission from FBI Special Agent Frederick Humphries that authorities only recently located the clothing Ressam was wearing the day of his arrest.
The government did not test the clothes for traces of explosives, the agent said, because they had not been properly sealed against contamination.
The government's expert witness on terrorism, French investigating magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere, had a short stint on the stand Tuesday after Judge John Coughenour ruled much of his testimony - he first gave it outside the jury's presence - was inadmissible.
Bruguiere was not permitted to say the French were investigating Ressam's role in a network linked to Osama bin Ladin, or that the investigation had culminated in the trial of 24 men.
Ressam was tried "in absentia" in France.
The government said it needed Bruguiere's testimony to explain some of the evidence jurors have heard and seen regarding Ressam's alleged bombing plans.
But prosecutors were not allowed to mention bin Laden's name or refer to "terrorist" training camps in Afghanistan after the judge ruled there was no evidence linking Ressam to the exiled Saudi millionaire, accused by Washington of masterminding 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.
Bruguiere, through an interpreter, did tell jurors that French authorities began investigating Ressam in 1996. He added that Ressam was the "object" of the investigation, but Coughenour ordered jurors to disregard the comment.
Bruguiere was also allowed to tell jurors that French authorities knew Ressam was somewhere in Canada and had asked for Canadian assistance.
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