Terrorism Case Against Pakistani Man Is Going to Jury

As arguments in Abid Naseer’s trial on terrorism
charges came to a close on Monday, jurors had
heard from British intelligence officers in
disguise, an F.B.I. attaché who observed Osama
bin Laden’s dead body and Mr. Naseer himself
arguing that he was an innocent man.

Mr. Naseer, 28, a Pakistani, is accused of
planning to attack a Manchester, England,
shopping mall in a plot by Al Qaeda that would
have also included the New York City subway
system and a Danish newspaper. But the alleged
plot was never carried out.

The strongest link between Mr. Naseer and
terrorist activity was in emails: a series of
messages that he wrote to the address
sana_pakhtana@yahoo.com that discussed
women and marriage in often-awkward phrases.

The Yahoo account was that of a Qaeda handler
who also corresponded with an admitted Qaeda
supporter and terrorist plotter, Najibullah Zazi .
Like Mr. Naseer’s emails to sana_pakhtana, Mr.

Zazi’s were full of references to his “marriage,”
which Mr. Zazi testified was code for a bombing
plot.

Mr. Naseer argued that his emails were innocent
chatter about girls with a friend he met in an
Internet chat room — who he had no idea was a
Qaeda affiliate.

Now, jurors in Federal District Court in Brooklyn
will decide which side to believe. Was Mr. Naseer
going into Tesco stores because that is what a
typical student in England would do? Or was he
scouting for bomb ingredients? Was he returning
home to Pakistan to see his family, or to train
with Al Qaeda? Did he delete all emails from his
account the day he sent his final email to the
sana_pakhtana address because he needed more
space, or because he was covering his tracks as
the attack neared?

In the government’s closing argument, a
prosecutor, Zainab Ahmad, hit on the danger of
the alleged plot.

“That man wanted to drive a car bomb into a
crowded shopping center and watch people die,”
she said.

She spent much of her time discussing the emails.
“The fact that Sohaib is emailing with the
defendant shows you the defendant is Al Qaeda,”
she said, using a name for the sana_pakhtana
account holder.

She dismissed exchanges like “How are you?” and
“What’s the weather like?” as “chitter-chatter.”

“They want to make these emails seem normal,”
Ms. Ahmad said. “They want to make sure these
emails don’t arouse suspicion.”

The important passages, she said, were those
where Mr. Naseer went into detail about women
and cars — a car bomb was one of the methods
he was considering, she said.

For instance, Mr. Naseer wrote once that a
woman named Huma seemed “weak and difficult
to convince.” That, Ms. Ahmad argued, referred
to a hydrogen peroxide bomb, which requires a
long time to become concentrated enough to
work, though the prosecutor did not point to
evidence in the trial backing up that point.

“Think about what good code it is: two guys
speaking about cars and girls,” she said.
She also highlighted apparent inconsistencies in
Mr. Naseer’s argument. In Mr. Naseer’s final
email to the sana_pakhtana address, days before
he was arrested in England, he refers to his
wedding later in the month.

Mr. Naseer had broken up with his girlfriend by
that point and was not speaking to her, Ms.
Ahmad said, making it hard to believe that he
was planning to marry her. In the email, he also
says he wishes sana_pakhtana could be at the
wedding. Either “the defendant wants his
random Internet friend to come to his wedding,”
Ms. Ahmad said, or he is alerting his Qaeda
handler that an attack is ready.

Mr. Naseer is representing himself, and much of
his summation was tedious; he spent more than
two hours reading transcripts aloud.

However, when he broke from that, he was
engaging, making eye contact with jurors as he
read from a white legal pad as he said that the
government had not proved its case.

“Did anyone say anything about the defendant’s
extremist views?” he said. “Did anyone give
evidence to the fact that Abid Naseer and his
friends were preparing explosive material?”

Did anyone say “that I’m the one who can tell
you that the defendant Abid Naseer was trained
by Al Qaeda?” he said. Did anyone “tell the court
during this trial that Abid Naseer is connected to
Al Qaeda?”

“We all know the answer. It is a two-letter word:
no,” he said.

“With all the resources, with all the PowerPoint
slides,” he said, “with all this showing off, no
promise was fulfilled.”

He argued that he had represented himself and
testified “so he can be candid and honest about
everything.”

He also told jurors that he and the men arrested
with him in Britain were released by the
authorities there because “there was insufficient
evidence to prosecute anybody by the U.K.

government,” which is consistent with earlier
accounts of the case.

Jurors will begin deliberating on Tuesday about
whether Mr. Naseer provided support to a
terrorist organization, was part of a conspiracy
providing support to a terrorist organization,
and conspired to use a destructive device (a
bomb, in this case).