After only two days of testimony, both the prosecution and the defense rested their cases Wednesday in the trial of Imam Fawaz Damra. The government charges the imam of the Islamic Center of Cleveland unlawfully became a naturalized citizen in 1994; they claim he concealed his ties to terrorist groups on his citizenship application and he persecuted individuals on the basis of race, religion or national origin.
In a surprise move, Damra's defense team did not call any witnesses, including two experts whose pretrial statements in court documents "justified" Damra's inflammatory language toward Jews. This week, one witness from Chicago declined to testify, apparently bowing to pressure from Jewish leaders there. In a pretrial hearing, prosecutors discredited the other defense expert's testimony, saying it was largely plagiarized.
After closing arguments on Thursday, the jury of eight women and four men will begin its deliberations. If convicted of the immigration fraud charges, Damra, 41, of Strongsville faces a $5,000 fine, up to five years in jail, and deportation.
On Wednesday, jurors watched several hours of videotape seized by Immigration and Naturalization agents from the offices and home of Sami Al-Arian, who is under indictment as the alleged leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in North America. The videos showed Damra, standing on the dais along with Al-Arian and other top PIJ leaders, repeatedly soliciting donations for PIJ at conferences in Chicago and Cleveland in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Damra also praised the violent acts of several Palestinians who killed Jews in stabbings and bus explosions.
In one 1991 video filmed at the Beit Hanina social club in Cleveland, a group for Palestinians, Damra exhorted the audience to contribute to the International Committee for Palestine (ICP), which the imam said "for security reasons' is the name of PIJ in America. ICP was the "active arm of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in America," Damra said.
In several videos, he called on Palestinians to aim their rifles "at the sons of monkeys and pigs, the Jews" and that "terrorism alone is the path to liberation."
The government's key expert witness, Matthew Levitt, senior fellow for terrorism studies at the Washington Institute of Near East Studies, testified Wednesday that PIJ, founded in 1981, is one of the most violent of the Palestinian Islamic terrorist organizations and engages in shooting attacks and suicide bombings.
Both the U.S. Treasury Department and the State Department have listed PIJ as a "designated terrorism organization." This means the government has frozen the group's assets and any financial dealings with PIJ are illegal.
PIJ is "bent on the destruction of Israel and opposes any recognition of Israel and any peace deal relinquishing an inch, a mote of land," Levitt testified. "To achieve these goals, PIJ engages in murder."
While many Palestinian groups have softened their stance since the 1993 Oslo Accords, PIJ has not, Levitt said. On the videotapes, the PIJ leaders passionately declare that Palestine will extend from the sea (the Mediterranean) to the river (Jordan River), borders that would eliminate any state of Israel.
In one video, young school children chant "Death to Israel."
In pre-trial hearings, U.S. District Court Judge James S. Gwin refused to allow Levitt to testify that Damra was a top operative in PIJ, a statement Levitt made in a summary of his expected testimony filed with the court. The judge said such testimony was hearsay.
In her cross-examination of Levitt, defense attorney Nancy Hollander sought to show his lack of objectivity, referring to his employer as pro-Israel. Levitt's Orthodox Jewish faith and attendance at a Jewish day school and university were evidence of potential bias, she indicated in her questions. Furthermore, she suggested Israeli persecution of Palestinians by asking if it were not true that the latter lost their homes and farms when Israel took their land in 1948. Furthermore, she said, Palestinians have lived in refugee camps patrolled by armed Israeli soldiers ever since.
Government witnesses this week testified that when Damra was the imam at a Brooklyn mosque in the late 1980s, he helped found the Afghan Refugee Center, also known as Alkifah Refugee Center. Alkifah trained Muslim resistance fighters to help expel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan.
After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, Alkifah provided structure and support for what would become Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, the government says. However, during pre-trial hearings, Gwin ruled that witnesses could not mention Bin Laden or Al Qaeda, because such language would unfairly inflame the jury.
Retired INS agent William West testified that he seized the PIJ videotapes, along with thousands of pages of documents and brochures, in 1995, when he and subordinates searched the offices and home of Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida professor. Al-Arian is slated to go to trial in January on charges that he is the alleged mastermind of PIJ in North America. Gwin refused to allow West to testify about associations Al-Arian had with other Palestinians.
The judge dropped the government's charge that Damra lied when he failed to disclose on his citizenship papers his arrest for assault at JFK International Airport. Defense attorney John Cline argued that the assault case was dismissed and sealed and thus, under New York law, Damra could legally deny the arrest occurred. Although the prosecution argued that federal law trumps any state law and that the INS requires disclosure of arrests, Gwin ruled that no reasonable jury would convict Damra on the charge.
The judge also denied as evidence a document showing Damra was a founder of Alkifah because his signature was obviously forged. Cline asked the judge for summary judgment acquitting Damra of all charges. Gwin said he would take the motion under consideration