NYC terror witness tells of friendship, betrayal (AP)

NEW YORK – Betim Kaziu and Sulejah Hadzovic grew up across the street from each other in Brooklyn. Hadzovic says they bonded over video games as kids and remained close until discovering a new passion as young men: jihad against fellow Americans.

Their story of friendship, radicalization and betrayal is playing out in federal court, where Kaziu has pleaded not guilty to charges he plotted with Hadzovic to provide support to overseas terrorists. Hadzovic testified against him as the government's star witness at a trial that is entering its second week. Kaziu's attorneys say he was never a danger.

Unlike the cases of Najibullah Zazi, mastermind of a foiled suicide attack on New York City subways, or Faisal Shahzad, the failed Times Square bomber, Kaziu's suspected exploits have gotten little attention, in part because the plot didn't get far. But his case carries many of the same themes of homegrown terrorism.

When asked by prosecutors to explain his motivations, Hadzovic replied, "We were upset at what was happening in places like Abu Gharaib prison and Guantanamo Bay, how they were humiliating and torturing Muslims there. ... It's what ultimately made us want to go and fight in jihad."

He also told jurors he grew to believe that he could no longer live in the United States because "being a Muslim, we're stereotyped and somebody sees somebody with a beard, they automatically label him a terrorist."

For years, U.S. authorities have warned that disaffected young men influenced by the online teachings of American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a leader of al-Qaida in Yemen, and other jihadists are a mounting threat as grave as any from established terrorist groups.

The Internet provides "the wandering mind of the conflicted young Muslim or potential convert with direct access to unfiltered radical and extremist ideology," says a 2007 New York Police Department study on the homegrown threat.

The budding terrorists can come from good families and never show up on the law enforcement radar. Many make pilgrimages to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they seek martyrdom by fighting American forces or — as with Zazi and Shahzad — by returning to U.S. soil to do harm.

Kaziu, 23, and Hadzovic, 21, are U.S.-born sons of Islamic immigrants from the former Yugoslavia who met in sixth grade.

They began to drift as teenagers, Hadzovic testified.

"I used to cut school and go to the park and smoke cigarettes," he recalled. They later dropped out of high school and embraced strict forms of Islam, he said.

That meant "growing beards and shortening our pants and abstaining from any type of sexual activity with women and, of course, not eating pork, not drinking and not going clubbing," Hadzovic said.

Like al-Awlaki, they were inspired by Omar Hammami. Known as Abu Mansur al-Amriki, or "the American," Hammami implored others to follow his path and join the Somalian militant group al-Shabab.

"We like the fact that (Hammami) was offering daughters and crops for those who wanted to get married," Hadzovic testified.

The men soon formed a plan to travel to Egypt to study Islam and eventually make their way to Somalia, which they code-named "the beach," or elsewhere to join a Muslim insurgency, Hadzovic said.

Al-Qaida and other groups "put out a call to arms asking young men around the world to join the fight," Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth DuCharme said in opening statements. "Betim Kaziu answered that call."

Hadzovic said his parents were so against his decision to leave the United States that they tried to hide his passport. He also testified that Kaziu planned to finance his travels in part with a settlement of a lawsuit he filed over breaking his arm on some monkey bars.

The two made the trip to Cairo in 2009. There, Hadzovic said, they attended school, sought to obtain AK-47s and considered whether to take up arms in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine or Somalia.

But Hadzovic began to waver. He recalled hearing President Barack Obama's speech in Cairo in 2009 that extended a hand of friendship to Islam and thinking he had made a mistake.

Kaziu, he said, told him: "Don't let (the speech) fool you. It's like throwing sand in your eyes to blind you from the truth."

Hadzovic defied his friend and returned home to make peace with his parents. About three week later, federal authorities approached him and demanded answers about his travels.

He eventually agreed to plead guilty and cooperate against his friend to avoid charges carrying a potential life sentence. He now faces a maximum 15 years in prison.

Prosecutors say that once on his own, Kaziu tried, but failed, to join al-Qaida groups in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans. He eventually made his way to Kosovo.

On the Albanian coast, he "recorded his goodbye, contemplating how he would soon depart for paradise — a reward for those who die a martyr," DuCharme said.

"He was caught before he could complete his mission to kill Americans overseas," the prosecutor said.

Defense attorney Henry Steinglass said in his opening statement that the alleged martyr video and another made before Kaziu went overseas of the Statue of Liberty with hands making gestures imitating flames were "basically a joke."

Steinglass argued that most of evidence against Kaziu is widely distributed anti-American propaganda — and that it isn't a crime to look at it.

"You may have very strong reactions to this material, hate-type material is one way to look at it," the lawyer said. "But I am confident that all of you will follow the judge's instructions to focus on the evidence."

Last week, Kaziu, his beard gone, looked on impassively as his former friend testified about an email the defendant sent after the last time they saw each other in Cairo.

"I don't want to see you making any mistakes," Kaziu wrote. "I see that in this situation you are in error. ... Put your faith in Allah."

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Jury may have doubted key Mumbai attacks witness (AP)

CHICAGO – Five days of testimony from the government's star witness in the trial of a Chicago businessman accused in the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks provided a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a Pakistani militant group and its suspected ties to the country's main intelligence agency.

But jurors' split verdict in the case suggests they didn't always take David Coleman Headley — an admitted terrorist with a troubled past — at his word, underlining the difficulties federal prosecutors face winning complex terrorism cases that involve questionable cooperating witnesses and a complicated web of terror networks.

"Jurors are always looking for corroborating evidence," said former U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton. "Mr. Headley avoided the death penalty and it's understandable that jurors would want evidence that his testimony was independently confirmed, but didn't find it."

After two days of deliberations, jurors cleared Tahawwur Rana, a Pakistani-born Canadian, of any involvement in the three-day siege that has often been called India's 9/11. He was convicted of two lesser charges: providing material support to the terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was blamed in the attacks, and in a plot that never was carried out against a Danish newspaper that in 2005 printed cartoons of Prophet Muhammad. He faces up to 30 years in prison on the two charges.

Though defense attorneys called it a "conflicting decision" and planned to challenge the verdict, experts say the jury's split ruling isn't wholly surprising, especially because so much of the trial focused on Headley's testimony.

The 50-year-old American Pakistani pleaded guilty to laying the groundwork in the attacks on Mumbai and conducting surveillance in Copenhagen. He agreed to testify against his school friend Rana to avoid the death penalty and extradition.

Those facts probably weren't lost on jurors, who heard defense attorneys chip away at Headley's credibility for days, portraying him as a manipulator, who lied to FBI agents and the judge and worked as a Drug Enforcement Administration informant to get lighter sentences after two heroin smuggling convictions.

Experts said the evidence in the Denmark plot seemed easier to verify independently of Headley, who spent days on the stand detailing in emails, recorded conversations and testimony how he worked for both the Pakistani intelligence agency known as the ISI and Lashkar. His testimony took up more than half the trial, and had been highly anticipated worldwide after Osama bin Laden was found hiding out in a military garrison town outside of Islamabad. The trial fueled fears that could put pressure on the already frayed U.S.-Pakistani relations and inflame tensions between Pakistan and India.

Prosecutors presented Rana's videotaped arrest statement to the FBI where he said he knew Headley had trained with Lashkar. They also played a September 2009 recorded phone conversation between the men where "targets," including the Danish newspaper, were discussed.

But when it came to the Mumbai accusation, evidence either originated from Headley or one of the other six Pakistani men charged in absentia in the plot.

Seth Jones, a RAND Corp. political scientist, said it is generally easier for the government to prove that somebody is supporting a group than helping in a plot.

"Headley did not appear as crucial as the government had hoped in prosecuting Rana," Jones said. "There just was insufficient evidence to support his direct involvement in the Mumbai attacks."

Rana was accused of allowing Headley to open a branch of his Chicago-based immigration law business in Mumbai as a cover story and travel as a representative of the company in Denmark. In court, a travel agent showed how Rana booked travel for Headley and prosecutors showed emails from the Danish newspaper.

The Indian government expressed disappointment with the jury's ruling and said it would examine the verdict and evidence to decide whether to formally charge Headley, Rana and others in its own investigation into the Mumbai rampage, which left more than 160 people dead.

"When Rana has been held guilty of assisting the Lashkar -e-Taiba and guilty of supporting terrorist acts in Denmark how have they separated him from the Mumbai attacks?" said Ujjawal Nikam, the special public prosecutor in the Mumbai attack trial in India. "It appears that there are some apparent contradictions in this verdict."

Still, the split verdict was considered at least a partial win for the Justice Department, with U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald calling it a clear message to "all those who help terrorists."

Headley's testimony may not have been enough to convict Rana in the Mumbai attacks, but it might have been the only shot prosecutors had, said Pat Rowan, the former head of the Justice Department's national security division.

"There's a lot of individuals out there who are cooperators, and they have a lot of baggage, and you're not really sure how they'll come across when they testify," Rowan said.

Roy Black, a high-profile Miami defense attorney, said the benefit to using a cooperating witness, such as Headley, is that the prosecution has someone who can tell the entire story, and then the jury can parse out what they believe.

Jurors weren't available to explain their verdict. The names weren't released due to the sensitivity of the case, and they declined to speak publicly. The only hint of what was being discussed during deliberations is the one question they had about the affiliations of two other men charged in absentia in the case. The judge directed them to look at the evidence.

"It's not uncommon for juries who think it was a close case to want to show how close they thought it was by dividing up the counts and finding people guilty of one and not the other," said Stuart Baker, a former senior Homeland Security official and former general counsel of the National Security Agency.

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Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan in Washington and Muneeza Naqvi and Ashok Sharma in New Delhi contributed to this report.

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Sophia Tareen can be reached at http://twitter.com/sophiatareen

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Top gov. witness in terror trial returns to stand (AP)

By SOPHIA TAREEN and EILEEN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Sophia Tareen And Eileen Sullivan, Associated Press – 59 mins ago

CHICAGO – The federal government's star witness was expected to reveal more potentially damaging details on Tuesday about the alleged close ties between Pakistan's main intelligence agency and the militant group blamed for the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks.

David Coleman Headley returned to witnesses stand in the terrorism trail of a Chicago businessman accused of collaborating in the three-day siege of India's largest city — a day after gave a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba and described how he was recruited by a member of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as ISI, to take part in the Mumbai plot.

As the government's first and main witness in the trial of his longtime friend Tahawwur Rana, Headley's testimony outlining links between the ISI and Lashkar could inflame tensions between Pakistan and India and place even more pressure on the already frayed U.S. and Pakistani relations.

It also could add to the questions about Pakistan's commitment to catch terrorists and the ISI's connections to Pakistan-based terror groups, especially after Osama bin Laden was found hiding out earlier this month in a military garrison town outside of Islamabad.

Headley already pleaded guilty to laying the groundwork for the Mumbai attacks that killed more than 160 people including six Americans, and he agreed to testify against Rana to avoid the death penalty, making him one of the most valuable U.S. government counterterrorism witnesses.

"Headley's testimony is a nail in the coffin of U.S.-Pakistani strategic cooperation," said Bruce Riedel, a former White House adviser on Middle Eastern and South Asian issues. "Until now his commentary has gotten very little attention outside India, now it will finally get the attention it deserves here."

The Pakistani government has denied the ISI orchestrated the Mumbai attacks, and a senior ISI official said Tuesday that the agency has no links to the terrorists behind the rampage. When asked about the testimony being heard in Chicago, the officer said "it is nothing." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because his agency doesn't allow its operatives to be named in the media.

On Monday, Headley, a Pakistani-American, spent hours detailing the formulation of the attacks and Rana's alleged help in providing cover for his surveillance activities in India.

Speaking so softly at times that attorneys had to remind him to speak louder, Headley said he has been involved with Lashkar-e-Taiba for more than a decade, but he wasn't working with someone in the ISI until years later after he was arrested by tribal police near Afghanistan. It was then he said he met a major in the ISI and told him what he and Lashkar were planning.

This ISI major, Headley said, was "very pleased" with what he heard and asked if Headley would work with one of his ISI associates. Headley agreed and said he was released from custody. Headley soon received a call from a man he referred to during his testimony as "Major Iqbal," which the U.S. government says is an alias. Headley said he then met Iqbal in a safe house in Lahore, Pakistan and described his plans with Lashkar and his assignment to take videos of Mumbai in preparation of an operation.

Headley said ISI provided financial and military assistance to Lashkar, and he assumed they worked under the same umbrella. He said Iqbal and his Lashkar handler, Sajid Mir, were in communication, but he would meet with them separately in Pakistan. Headley said when he would take videos of sights in Mumbai, he would first share them with Iqbal and then with Mir.

"All these things I discussed with Major Iqbal, I went over it with Sajid again," Headley told jurors.

Before moving to Mumbai in late 2006, Headley said he first came to Chicago, met with Rana and explained the plot in hopes of persuading Rana to let him open a branch of his immigration services business as a cover. With Rana's help, Headley said he set up an immigration consulting business in Mumbai and secured work visas to travel in and out of India..

Rana, a Canadian citizen who has lived in Chicago for years, has pleaded not guilty in the case. His name is the seventh one on the federal indictment, and the only defendant in custody. Among the six others charged in absentia are Mir and Iqbal.

Rana is also accused of helping arrange travel and other help for Headley, who planned a separate attack that never happened on a Danish newspaper, which printed cartoons of Prophet Muhammad that angered Muslim.

Headley and Rana, both 50, met as classmates at a prestigious military boarding school in Pakistan and have stayed in touch. Defense attorneys told jurors their client was taken advantage of by his friend and did not know what was in store. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker said Rana was not duped and knew of the plans, both in Mumbai and Denmark.

Defense attorneys were expected scrutinize Headley's credibility as a witness, saying he has been motivated to change his story and that he was working for the U.S. government even as he said he was working for Lashkar and ISI.

Headley, born Daood Gilani in the U.S., has also been an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration after a drug conviction.

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