A hearing for a Bridgeview man accused of funding Mideast terrorists will feature “unprecedented” testimony by Israeli security agents and will require special restrictions in the courtroom, federal prosecutors said.
The purpose of the hearing, set to begin March 6, is to determine whether statements made by Muhammad Salah to Israeli police in 1993 can be used against him at his trial.
Salah’s lawyers argue that Israeli police used torture and threats to force him to make a false confession. Prosecutors say Salah made the statements voluntarily and that he has told inconsistent stories about what happened during the interrogation.
In a filing late Friday, prosecutors did not specify what courtroom restrictions they would seek. Those details are expected in a court filing due Dec. 30.
But Assistant U.S. Atty. Joseph Ferguson wrote that prosecutors plan to call as witnesses at least four Israeli officials who participated in Salah’s interrogation. They include two members of the Israel Security Agency who are identified in the court filing only as “Nadav” and “Chaim.”
“The appearance of the ISA operational personnel as witnesses in a proceeding outside Israel is unprecedented,” Ferguson wrote.
ISA agents are at the forefront of Israel’s defense against “ceaseless terrorist operations, which subject the operational personnel to grave risks,” he wrote. The agency’s “activities, procedures and information”–including the identities of its agents –“are classified as a matter of Israeli law.”
Ferguson said that as a result, prosecutors would seek “courtroom procedures necessary to safeguard the personal safety of witnesses … and certain of the information they possess.”
A spokesman for U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald had no comment Monday on the court filing.
Salah’s lawyer, Michael Deutsch, said he isn’t too concerned about ISA agents testifying using code names, but he worried about further restrictions.
Deutsch said he wants to be able to freely question Israeli agents who interrogated Salah. He also said he wants to know what procedures the agents followed and wants to see any reports they wrote.
The hearing should be open to the public, Deutsch said.
Deutsch said those rules would apply if police or FBI agents in the U.S. had interrogated Salah. “All of the sudden, because the statement comes from Israel, the rights of the defendant are limited? … That doesn’t seem fair to me,” Deutsch said.
———-
mjhiggins@tribune.com
