Lawyers for a Bridgeview man accused of funneling money to Mideast terrorists are asking a federal judge to block prosecutors from using a confession against him because he says he made the statement to Israeli police after being beaten, threatened and tortured for almost three months in 1993.
Defense lawyers for Muhammad Salah argue that Israeli interrogators obtained a 50-page handwritten statement with tactics such as forcing Salah to sit on a tiny, tilted chair until his legs cramped and went numb, locking him in a small “refrigerator” cell, threatening his family and recruiting other prisoners to beat him.
“What happened to me over the … months was an ongoing nightmare of unmitigated and unbearable terror, threats, physical and psychological abuse, and sensory and sleep deprivation,” Salah said in a nine-page affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago.
Federal prosecutors allege that Salah passed money to Hamas to further the militant Islamic group’s terrorist aims in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Salah pleaded guilty to a similar charge in Israel in 1993 and served more than 4 years in prison. But Salah’s lawyer, Michael Deutsch, said Monday that his client had no other choice, in light of the interrogation tactics.
“It’s so sophisticated and so unrelenting,” attorney Michael Deutsch said. “I don’t think it’s possible to hold out. Even the strongest person at some point gives in.”
Federal prosecutors have until Nov. 7 to respond to Salah’s motion to suppress the statements. A spokesman for U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald declined to comment Monday.
An indictment last year charged Salah and two other Palestinians with participating in a 15-year conspiracy to finance Hamas, saying they laundered millions of dollars, including money that went to buy weapons.
Co-defendant Abdelhaleem Ashqar, a former Howard University professor, is awaiting trial. Mousa Abu Marzook, whom authorities described as a high-ranking Hamas leader, remains a fugitive, authorities said.
Salah was accused of traveling throughout the U.S. and to London, Israel and the West Bank on behalf of Hamas from 1989 to 1993. Prosecutors alleged that, as recently as 1999, Salah paid for a Chicago-based associate’s trip to Israel to meet Hamas members and scout locations for possible terrorism.
In motions filed Monday, Salah’s lawyers described a seemingly different man: a father of five with no criminal record who went to the Middle East in 1993 to provide what he said was humanitarian aid for Palestinians.
On Jan. 25, 1993, Salah was arrested, beaten by soldiers in a Jeep and taken to a military interrogation facility in the West Bank city of Ramallah, according to his affidavit.
Interrogators from Israel’s domestic security service deprived him of sleep, struck him during questioning and covered his head with a hood that smelled of vomit and urine, Salah said.
Salah said he was forced to sit in a small chair with his arms handcuffed behind his back, a position designed to cause intense pain.
Interrogators threatened his family in the U.S., saying they could instruct the FBI to harm them, Salah said.
Salah said at times, he was held in a cold, closet-sized cell. He said that, on other occasions, he was put with other prisoners who pretended to be sympathetic to his plight. But when he wouldn’t make incriminating statements, the prisoners beat him severely, kicking him in the groin and threatening him with a razor, he said.
Salah signed several statements, including some in Hebrew, a language he didn’t understand, Deutsch said. Deutsch said the statements included information that interrogators fed to him.
Salah also made an audio tape in which he said his confession was true, Deutsch said.
Defense lawyers argue that the statements were coerced and that Salah was denied his right to a lawyer and to remain silent.
———-
mjhiggins@tribune.com
