Prosecuting a sheik who took joy in terror

NY Times:

A Yemeni sheik on trial in Brooklyn prayed "to put the Jews and the Americans in their coffins" after promising to funnel millions to terrorists and laughed over a fatal bus bombing by Hamas, a federal prosecutor said yesterday.

But a defense lawyer countered that the sheik was just an "ailing and vulnerable man" who was coerced in a videotaped sting that the lawyer likened to a television reality show. The government-produced tape, however, was "all show, no reality," the lawyer, William H. Goodman, told the jurors.

The claims by defense lawyers and the prosecutor, Kelly Moore, came at the start of a trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn that officials say may involve the most money of any terrorism-financing network prosecuted in the nation.

Ms. Moore, an assistant United States attorney, said the evidence would come largely from tapes of conversations secretly recorded during the sting by two paid government informers who worked with federal agents to lure the sheik and his assistant to Frankfurt, Germany, in 2003.

Prosecutors say the tapes show that the sheik, Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad, said that he would do whatever was necessary for jihad and called himself "Osama bin Laden's sheik."

"Vulnerable"?

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