Accused shooter not tortured in Yemen, official says
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - The man accused of killing an Army private outside an Arkansas recruiting center never suffered torture or beatings while jailed on an immigration violation in Yemen, an official with the country's embassy said yesterday.
Embassy spokesman Mohammed Albasha denied assertions by Abdulhakim Muhammad's lawyer that abuse radicalized the man into becoming a terrorist. Instead, Albasha said, the once-idealistic college student from Tennessee found his own way to religious anger after converting to Islam following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Muhammad's assertions "are not credible because he is attempting to find any pretext to justify his violent actions, even those that are completely false," Albasha said in a statement to the Associated Press. "He was not subjected to torture that has driven him to become a terrorist against his own fellow American citizens. These allegations are absurd."
The 23-year-old Muhammad appeared briefly yesterday in Little Rock District Court. Judge Alice Lightle formally appointed lawyer Jim Hensley, who raised the abuse assertion Thursday, to represent him.
Muhammad, who was silent during the hearing, has pleaded not guilty Monday to a capital murder charge in the death of Private William Long. Another soldier, Private Quinton I. Ezeagwula, was wounded in the shooting.
