Final witness called in Tarek Mehanna terror support trial

By Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff

Janice Bassil, defense attorney for alleged terror supporter Tarek Mehanna of Sudbury, said today that the defense tried to provide context for jurors. (Milton J. Valencia/Globe Staff)

A total of 31 days of testimony ended today as the defense team for accused terrorism supporter Tarek Mehanna called its last witness in his federal trial in Boston. As they rested their case, defense lawyers insisted they had proved that the young Sudbury man was not an Al Qaeda sympathizer.

The jury in US District Court could begin deliberating the case Friday afternoon, following what are bound to be dramatic closing arguments from both the prosecution and defense.

“I think we’re going to be able to show that the government never proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt,” attorney Janice Bassil, one of Mehanna’s lawyers, said this afternoon, after the defense rested its case. “They did a lot to try and exaggerate things to scare the jury, but this case is about what happened, not what he said or what he thought. There is still freedom of speech in this country.”

The legal wrangling is far from over, however, as both prosecution and defense are set to argue over proposed jury instructions, a critical stage in the trial process.

Mehanna, 29, an American citizen from Sudbury, faces life in prison if convicted of charges of conspiring to support terrorists, conspiring to kill in a foreign country, and lying to federal investigators.

Prosecutors say Mehanna traveled to Yemen in 2004 in search of terrorism training, so that he could carry out jihad, or holy war, in support of Al Qaeda against US soldiers in Iraq. He failed to find a camp and returned to the United States.

Mehanna is also said to have supported Al Qaeda by translating the group’s documents into English and distributing them on the Internet.

Defense lawyers say Mehanna had the First Amendment right to distribute the information, that he was expressing his own opposition to US foreign policy and in defense of Muslims, and that he never worked in partnership with any terror organization. The documents he distributed were, in some cases, based on citations of the Koran, they said.

The defense attorneys also maintain that Mehanna travelled to Yemen in search of schools, to further his studies in Islamic jurisprudence and Arabic.

The defense’s last witness was Marc Sageman, of Sageman Consulting LLC, a sociologist by trade who said he served as a spy in the CIA, and who worked with the Afghan commanders who overthrew the Soviet Union’s occupation of their country in the 1980s.

Sageman, who is also a certified doctor and psychiatrist, has become a leading analyst in studying the definition of a terrorist from a social science perspective, and he has advised national security agencies ranging from the FBI to the CIA, the Secret Service, and Army special operations units.

Defense attorneys had sought to use his testimony to argue that Al Qaeda does not seek to recruit members or raise money on the Internet, thereby diluting the argument that Mehanna provided “material support” to the organization.

Sageman was also used in an effort to refute the testimony of Evan Kohlmann, a prosecution analyst who told jurors that Al Qaeda looks to inspire and recruit its followers by reaching them on the Internet.

Sageman said he uses a “scientific method” for his studies, while Kohlmann “tells stories.”

He also argued that Al Qaeda’s greatest recruitment time was before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and it occured in countries where the Internet was rarely used. He said the distribution of information on the Web has not worked.

“Al Qaeda is basically vanishing right now. It’s bankrupt,” he said.