SACRAMENTO, April 13: A Pakistani-American on trial on charges of attending a terrorist training camp “believes heart and soul in jihadi violence,” a US prosecutor said on Wednesday in closing arguments.
Federal prosecutor Robert Tice-Raskin told the six-man, six-woman jury the government proved during the seven-week trial that Hamid Hayat, 23, went to Pakistan for terrorist training and lied about it to the FBI when he returned to the United States.
“The defendant admitted that he attended the camp and that he actively trained at the camp,” Tice-Raskin said. “He believes heart and soul in jihadi violence.”
Federal investigators said they uncovered an Al Qaeda cell in Lodi, California, south of Sacramento where Hamid lived with his 48-year-old father, Umer, an ice cream truck driver. Both are US citizens.
But during the trial, no evidence was presented that either of the Hayats had any direct links to the terrorist organization or any plans to launch a terrorist attack.
The two men have been in custody since their arrests last June. Umer Hayat was charged with lying to the FBI about his son’s alleged attendance at the camp.
The prosecutor replayed portions of the FBI’s videotape and reviewed transcripts of Hayat’s June interrogation in which Hayat said he was “awaiting orders.”
Prosecutors based much of their case on the videotape of Hayat and testimony of a paid government informant, Naseem Khan, 32, who secretly tape recorded nearly 1,000 hours of conversations beginning in mid-2002, including phone calls when Hayat was in Pakistan.
Tice-Raskin highlighted portions of the recordings including one in which Hayat refers to journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and beheaded in Pakistan in 2002. “They cut him into pieces and sent him back. That was a good job they did,” Hayat said.
Hayat lived with his grandparents in Pakistan from 1990 to 2000, came back to the United States and then returned to Pakistan in 2003.
In an interrogation videotape, played in its entirety for the jury, an obviously tired Hamid Hayat said he attended the camp, but was unclear about details.
Hayat’s attorney, Wazhma Mojaddidi, has argued throughout the trial that during the interrogation her client was tired and eventually told his questioners what they wanted to hear.
She said that Khan initiated the conversations and encouraged Hamid Hayat to make statements. “He is a liar, he is manipulator.” —Reuters
