*EPF513 07/06/01
Jury Begins Deliberating on Sentence for Tanzania Bomber
(K.K. Mohamed faces death penalty or life in prison) (1880)
By Judy Aita
Washington File Staff Correspondent

New York -- A federal jury July 5 began deliberating the fate of the Tanzanian convicted of murdering 11 people and injuring scores of others in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam in August 1998.

The jury of seven women and five men will decide whether Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 27, will get the death penalty or spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole for his part in the bombing, which included renting the house used as the bomb factory, helping make the bomb, and riding part way to the embassy in the bomb truck. When he was arrested in 1999 in South Africa -- where he worked -- Mohamed detailed his role in the bombing to FBI agents, adding that if he hadn't been caught he would have gone on trying to kill Americans.

The same jury sentenced Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-'Owhali to life in prison for his role in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, in which 213 were killed and more than 4,000 injured. It also convicted Mohamed Sadeek Odeh in the Nairobi bombing and convicted Wadih El Hage of conspiracy and perjury. They are to be sentenced by Judge Leonard Sand in September.

Mohamed was also found guilty along with the other three of conspiring with Usama bin Laden and his terrorist organization al Qaeda to murder Americans.

A major part of the two-week sentencing hearing dealt with the prosecution's assertion that K.K. Mohamed poses a continuing danger to those with whom he comes in contact in the prison system. The government claims he was involved in an attack on prison guard Louis Pepe in November 2000, just months before the bombing trial was slated to begin.

Mohamed's cellmate is another accused al Qaeda member, Mamdouh Salim, who has issued religious fatwahs against Americans. Salim's trial for the attack on Pepe begins in July. The guard was wounded with a comb sharpened into a knife and remains in a coma.

In his final remarks to the jury July 2, Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said that Mohamed's "lack of remorse, his coldness, his feeling nothing for his victims is something that will stay with him forever -- part of what makes him dangerous while confined.

"He doesn't see anything wrong. He has no conscience. He will do it again," Fitzgerald said. "If he is not sentenced to death, he will be sitting there ticking like a time bomb waiting for the next Officer Pepe to come along," he said. "We have to face the fact that if you give him mercy, he poses danger."

Fitzgerald said: "He didn't equivocate -- no moral struggle while grinding up TNT to make a bomb, grinding away a mixture of death."

Referring to Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, the prosecutor said: "Khamis does not have fire in his eyes. What he has is ice in his veins, and that's what makes him more dangerous because he coldly, coolly decides, 'I'll kill, I won't look back, I'll go be nice to people in South Africa, and I'll come to America.' When the chance is given to attack Officer Pepe, he is there."

"Cold, cool, zero remorse," Fitzgerald repeated.

Fitzgerald pointed out that the 11 killed in Dar es Salaam were Tanzanians, not Americans, "hard-working people, guards, just trying to put food on the table."

But Mohamed "didn't care," he said. "We hear a lot about different cultures, and sure, Tanzania is a different place and they speak a different language, but let's not lose sight of something. They are people just like us and the bonds between us are far closer than [the defense] has described."

Khalfan Mohamed "killed Muslims. He killed Tanzanians. There are a billion Muslims in the world. They don't blow up buildings. There are how many Tanzanians in the world, from humble backgrounds, who work hard and don't blow up buildings," Fitzgerald said.

During the hearing family members of those killed testified about the loss and hardship they are facing since the bombing.

The prosecutor recalled their suffering, pleading: "We cannot get numb to it because of all the death we have heard. We cannot be numbed to it because people speak a different language, are soft-spoken, from a different country. They were good, decent, hard-working, law-abiding people who were slaughtered. Khalfan doesn't care, but we all should.

"I submit to you that the victim impact in this case, the magnitude of the crime, what he did to people is a sufficient reason to vote for the death penalty," Fitzgerald said.

There were no witnesses to the attack on Pepe in the Metropolitan Correctional Center near the Federal Court House in Manhattan and Mohamed's attorneys claimed that he was outside the cell and only attacked officers rushing to Pepe's aid because he was afraid he would be attacked.

But Fitzgerald stressed that the evidence shows that there was preparation for the attack, that it took place in the cell Mohamed shared with Salim, and Pepe told several officers who came to his aid that he fought "them."

Salim was the prime mover in the attack, the prosecutor said, "but make no mistake about it, this man [Mohamed] was in it with him."

"The attack happened in the cell with Salim and the man who looks up to him as a religious and educated figure -- your common sense tells you he was part of it," Fitzgerald said.

He said it would take two men to "take an Afro comb shaped into a knife and take that and drive a piece of hard plastic through the eye destroying the eye and orbit, striking the core at the back and plunging it eight centimeters, two and a half inches into his brain."

Fitzgerald said that some of the mitigating factors put forth by the defense are "downright offensive."

The defense cited as a reason for giving Mohamed life in prison that if he is executed he will be seen as a martyr and his death may be exploited by others to justify future terrorist attacks.

Fitzgerald pointed out that bin Laden has issued demands to free other terrorists currently being held in U.S. prisons, including Wali Khan Amin Shah, Sheik Oman Rahman, Ramzi Yousef, al-'Owhali and others. He cited attacks committed, in Egypt for example, in which the terrorists demanded the release of those prisoners.

"No terrorist attack is going to be stopped because someone gets a life sentence versus death," he said. "Usama bin Laden hates us. There is no way around it. Everyone in his group hates us. They hate everything we do, everything we try to do, everything we don't do.

"This trial, in their eyes, is a fraud. Everything we do is a fraud. We are evil. Do you really think there is an operation that is going to be wiped off the books if Khalfan Mohamed gets a life sentence? I submit to you not," the prosecutor said.

Pleading for his client's life, David Stern disagreed with Fitzgerald about Mohamed's martyrdom if he is executed.

"Other people will cynically exploit his death," Stern said. "Send him to jail and he'll quickly be forgotten by all except those who love him. Kill him and you've guaranteed him immortality."

Imprisonment is a more severe punishment, the attorney said.

Stern said that although Mohamed "came here from half a world away, you also cannot forget what you have in common, and that is your humanity. Like you, he loves and feels pain. His life experience is not yours, none of you share it. But he is closer to you than you know."

"Death in the end punishes those who remain," Stern said, referring to Mohamed's family, who traveled from Tanzania to testify in his behalf. "In the end it grieves family, simple people who don't know why he's here, who can't understand how he came to be involved in the things he was involved in.

"For him, in the most basic way he will never hear his native language spoken again. He will never eat his native food. ... Every choice that he will make will be determined for him by someone else," Stern said.

Stern also said that the government did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mohamed was part of the attack on Pepe. He provided another scenario in which Mohamed and Salim did not talk very much and each went about his own business. Salim alone planned and carried out the attack on the prison guard as Pepe escorted him back to his cell after a meeting with his lawyers.

Mohamed got blood on his clothes and shoes when he left the cell to get away from the attack, Stern said, also questioning the way the evidence was collected after the attack and the recollection of the other prison guards who testified during the hearing.

Stern acknowledged that Mohamed's actions put him in that U.S. courtroom, but he said they were motivated by sincere religious beliefs. "There's a road he took to get here and if you don't understand that road you can't possibly judge him fairly," he told the jury.

"He has proven with his family and with people in South Africa that he has good in him," Stern continued. "The government says to you not to kill the most culpable, but kill the least sophisticated.

"In the end each of you has to make a uniquely personal judgment whether the government has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the only appropriate punishment for Khalfan Mohamed is death, whether that act negated everything else he is and everything else he will be," he said.

"If you kill him, you say there is no hope not just for him but for us. You say there is no hope for the astounding human capacity to change," Stern said.

"Someone has to say, 'Enough.' Someone has to say, 'I will not hurt another family.' Someone has to say, 'I will not become those I detest by doing what they do and killing in the name of justice.' Let that be you," Stern said.

In his instructions to the jury July 3 Judge Sand said that in determining Mohamed's sentence "you must avoid any influence of passion, prejudice, or any other arbitrary consideration. Your deliberations should be based upon the evidence you have seen and heard, and the law on which I have instructed you.

"Whether or not the circumstances in this case call for a sentence of death is a decision that the law leaves entirely to you. Remember that all 12 jurors must agree beyond a reasonable doubt that death is in fact the appropriate sentence, but that no juror is ever required by the law to impose a death sentence. The decision is yours as individuals to make," the judge said.

For a death sentence to be imposed the jury must be unanimous, otherwise Mohamed will receive life in prison.

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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