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Lodi terror case weakens in court
LODI, Calif. - The FBI's discovery last summer of an alleged al-Qaida cell among the Pakistani immigrants in this sleepy farm town sent a shiver through California's heartland.
Federal agents and surveillance aircraft swarmed Lodi in June after the arrests of five local Muslim men who the Justice Department said were poised to commit terrorist acts. Journalists surrounded the local mosque, seeking explanations for how radical Islam could take root in the conservative San Joaquin Valley.
This town of 62,000, known as the place where Creedence Clearwater Revival sang about being stuck in 1969, became an unlikely jihadist hot spot.
"Lodi was famous for wines," lamented John Beckman, a city councilman. "Suddenly we became famous for terrorists."
Nearly 10 months later, the much-ballyhooed case appears enfeebled. Some experts say it fits a pattern of the government overstating the importance of post-Sept. 11 terrorism cases.
"Our confidence in the FBI has been severely shaken," Beckman said. "When we look at the totality of the case, a lot of folks here are wondering, `Is that all the FBI has?'"
In U.S. District Court in Sacramento, federal prosecutors last week rested their case against the only two men charged in the plot: Hamid Hayat, 23, a sixth-grade dropout charged with supporting terrorists by undergoing training at an extremist base in Pakistan; and his father, Umer Hayat, 48, an ice cream vendor, charged with lying about his son's aims in Pakistan.
More
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/14268489.htm
This town of 62,000, known as the place where Creedence Clearwater Revival sang about being stuck in 1969, became an unlikely jihadist hot spot.
"Lodi was famous for wines," lamented John Beckman, a city councilman. "Suddenly we became famous for terrorists."
Nearly 10 months later, the much-ballyhooed case appears enfeebled. Some experts say it fits a pattern of the government overstating the importance of post-Sept. 11 terrorism cases.
"Our confidence in the FBI has been severely shaken," Beckman said. "When we look at the totality of the case, a lot of folks here are wondering, `Is that all the FBI has?'"
In U.S. District Court in Sacramento, federal prosecutors last week rested their case against the only two men charged in the plot: Hamid Hayat, 23, a sixth-grade dropout charged with supporting terrorists by undergoing training at an extremist base in Pakistan; and his father, Umer Hayat, 48, an ice cream vendor, charged with lying about his son's aims in Pakistan.
More
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/14268489.htm
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The surprise move was designed to dissuade the defense from calling witnesses who would challenge the story's credibility.
The witness, an FBI informant, told agents when they recruited him in 2001 that he had seen a high-ranking al-Qaida official and two other international terrorists when he lived in Lodi during the late 1990s.
Naseem Khan said he was ``100 percent sure'' he saw bin Laden's physician, Ayman al-Zawahiri, attending a local mosque three times a day.
In a statement read to jurors, prosecutors agreed they could not support the informant's claims, which have been criticized by defense attorneys and terrorism experts.
During the late 1990s, the three terror suspects were being sought in connection with the bombings of U.S. buildings in Africa and Saudi Arabia.
More
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5723572,00.html
James Lazor was called as a defense witness for the case of Lodi resident Hamid Hayat, who is charged with lying to the FBI and attending a terrorist training camp.
Later today, prosecutors revealed that an informant who had befriended Hayat while secretly recording their conversations has suddenly found another tape that was never given to investigators or attorneys. The informant, Naseem Khan, will return to the witness stand later this week.
Lazor was on an independent humanitarian mission to earthquake victims in Pakistan when Hayat's defense team asked him to visit the camp.
Lazor agreed and, while taking blankets and school children's letters to earthquake victims in northern Pakistan, he made a detour to follow geographical coordinates, he told a federal jury today.
More
http://www.lodinews.com/articles/2006/04/04/terrorism/0_trial_060404.txt
Sacramento Bee
April 03, 2006
- When the FBI's four-year undercover operation in the Lodi, Calif., Pakistani community climaxed last June, the government thought it had struck gold in the war on terrorism.
Court documents show the FBI believed their agents had unearthed an al-Qaida cell that stretched from the San Joaquin Valley farm town all the way to Osama bin Laden.
"Wildcat," their undercover operative, placed al-Qaida's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, in Lodi in the late 1990s and added that three of the Taliban's top leaders had come to Lodi on a fundraising or money-laundering mission.
During more than a dozen hours of interrogation by FBI agents in June, Lodi ice cream truck driver Umer Hayat, 48, and his son Hamid, 23, spoke of half a dozen Lodi youths - including Hamid - who supposedly had undergone terrorist training and would take out hospitals and federal buildings on orders from an imam at the Lodi Muslim Mosque, according to an FBI summary.
Ultimately, only the Hayats themselves were arrested on terrorism-related charges.
And last week, as prosecutors rested their high-profile case against the father and son, the scenario seemed far less clear-cut. Seven weeks into the trial, prosecutors have not raised the specter of co-conspirators or produced independent evidence that Hamid Hayat ever attended a terrorist training camp.
On Thursday, as the Hayats' defense got under way, the government agreed to stipulate there is no evidence to support claims that al-Zawahri ever came to Lodi.
More
http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=FBI-TERRORIST-04-03-06&cat=AN