By Milton J. Valencia
Source: The Boston Globe
They gathered in the basement of Ahmad Abousamra’s Stoughton
home in 2006, after they learned the FBI was interested in them, and they
wanted to make sure to get their stories straight, particularly about their
trip to Yemen two years earlier.
“Anything else is speculation . . . The point is there’s no
testimony of us going for such and such false reasons, because we went there
for one reason, to study,’’ Abousamra had said, according to a recording of the
conversation that was played for jurors yesterday in the terrorism trial of
Tarek Mehanna.
Mehanna responded later, “Yeah, but I’m going to leave it at
the things that are documented, that I can’t deny.’’
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All along, a close friend of theirs, Kareem Abuzahra, was
wearing a wire in cooperation with the FBI, and he recorded the conversations
among himself, Mehanna, and Abousamra.
Prosecutors played the taped conversation for jurors in
federal court yesterday in an attempt to show Mehanna and Abousamra were trying
to coordinate their story for investigators questioning their trip to Yemen in
2004, allegedly in search of terrorism training.
The trip to Yemen lies at the heart of Mehanna’s trial on
charges of conspiring to support terrorists and to kill in a foreign country
and of lying to investigators. Abousamra was also charged, but fled to Syria
after he was first approached by the FBI in 2006.
Abuzahra, 31, a close friend of both men from Lynnfield,
agreed to cooperate with investigators and testify under the protection of
immunity from prosecution, and for the last two days he has described a close
circle of friends who spoke of jihad, who promoted the ideology, and who
planned to train in Yemen so that they could fight Americans in Iraq.
“After the American invasion of Iraq, we saw it as an
invasion on Islam, and we saw the Americans as valid targets,’’ he said.
Abuzahra never made the trip to Yemen, though he paid for
the plane tickets for the three men. He told jurors that he received e-mails
from his family during a layover in the United Arab Emirates saying that his
father was ill and that he had not yet filled out US passport information for
his child, so he returned home.
He said that Mehanna and Abousamra later told him they were
not successful in finding terrorist camps. Mehanna returned and Abousamra
unsuccessfully tried to join jihad in Iraq before returning, he said.
Lawyers for Mehanna have yet to cross-examine Abuzahra. They
argue that Mehanna went to Yemen for the reasons he had stated, to look for
schools on Islamic law and the Arabic language. They call Mehanna a budding
scholar and say he cannot be associated with the motives of Abousamra. Defense
lawyers have said that Mehanna returned home after two weeks in Yemen and that
Abousamra went to Iraq, in arguing that the two men had separate intentions.
Defense lawyers are expected to argue through the
cross-examination of Abuzahra that Mehanna had often disagreed with the strict
jihad philosophies of both men on religious grounds.
Abuzahra, a key witness, said that the three men discussed
their intentions for jihad long before the 2004 trip to Yemen. They watched
videos glorifying suicide bombings and downloaded articles about jihad.
Abuzahra even made a video for his family before he traveled
to Yemen in case he did not return. “The purpose of the trip was to go to a
war,’’ he said. “People don’t always come back from a war.’’
Mehanna, he said, was gleeful about the trip, saying, “We’re
actually doing it; we’re finally doing it.’
“We had talked for several years about jihad,’’ Abuzahra
said, “but we were on our way.’’
Milton J. Valencia can be reached at MValencia@globe.com.
Follow him on Twitter @MiltonValencia.
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