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| Prosecutors Challenge Purported bin Laden Aide in Officer Stabbing |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 09/11/2002 |
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An alleged ex-top aide to Osama bin Laden said he lied to his lawyer just weeks ago when he said that he stabbed a prison officer in an escape attempt rather than in a bid to force a judge to let him change defense lawyers. Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, testifying Monday at a pre-sentencing hearing in the stabbing case, said he confronted the lawyer, Richard Lind, soon after a July 29 letter containing the escape attempt admission was submitted to the court and said it was 'not completely true.' 'I said I did not attack the [officer] because I wanted to escape,' Salim said, recalling that his lawyer was surprised. 'Is it fair to say that at one point you did not tell the truth?' asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Buehler during cross-examination of Salim. 'In that part, yes,' Salim said, referring to the part of the letter that spoke of escape. Salim, questioned by Lind last week, testified that he attacked officer Louis Pepe on Nov. 1, 2000, in a bid to get prison keys so that he could enter a locked attorney conference room and attack his two lawyers, ensuring they would never represent him. The officer was left brain damaged by the attack, in which he was stabbed in the head with a filed-down comb. 'I had to inflict wounds on them, not just bruises,' he told Buehler as the prosecutor tried to expose holes in Salim's testimony in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Other prison officers stopped Salim from doing further harm after Pepe was attacked. Prosecutors contend that Salim, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder and attempted murder in the attack, actually had plotted to take hostages and ultimately escape from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan. Prosecutors appeared to gain another admission when Salim made a reference to getting away. 'If I started fighting them in a locked room, they could have killed me and I wouldn't have been able to escape,' he said. Salim, 44, should be sentenced to life in prison because the attack was related to terrorism, prosecutors contend. Lind said a prison term of between 14 and 17 years is appropriate. No sentencing date has been set. |
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