Karim Koubriti, Ahmed Hannan, and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi, from Morocco; and Farouk Ali-Haimoud, from Algeria, faced charges of conspiracy to provide material support or resources to terrorists, and to engage in fraud and misuse of visas, permits and other documents. In addition, Koubriti, Hannan, and Ali-Haimoud were charged with actual document fraud.

Ali-Haimoud was acquitted of all charges. Elmardoudi and Koubriti were convicted of terrorist conspiracy, a charge for which they could be sentenced to up to 25 years in prison. Hannan was found guilty of conspiracy to engage in visa and other fraud.

The government indictment said the four had “operated as a covert underground support unit for terrorist attacks within and outside the United States, as well as a ‘sleeper’ operational combat cell.” The unit, it said, was tied to a “loose, transnational network of radical Islamists” that had allegedly launched an “international holy war” in the 1990s.

“Elements of this radical Islamic network established intelligence collection cells in the United States to plan and support future terrorist attacks,” the indictment stated.

The case commenced six days after the September 11 events. Federal agents looking for Nabil Al-Marabh—then number 27 on the FBI terrorist “watch” list—raided a Dearborn house in a working-class neighborhood in the shadow of the giant River Rouge Ford plant. Inside the sparsely furnished apartment they found Ali-Haimoud, Hannan and Koubriti. The three men were taken into custody. Elmardoudi was arrested the following year.

Federal agents assigned to the case traveled to Jordan, Morocco, and Turkey, and from Anaheim, California, to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to New York City. Their 2,000 pages of reports notwithstanding, the government’s case largely rested on the five hours’ testimony of Youssef Hmimssa. In exchange, the government offered Hmimssa 46 months in prison for 10 unrelated felonies he had admitted to committing in three states. Without the agreement, he would have faced sentences of up to 81 years.

Led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino, the prosecution also produced a day planner found in the Dearborn apartment. One page contained crude, stick-like sketches of airplanes and runways. The government claimed that the drawings depicted the flight paths into the U.S. air force base in Incirlik, Turkey, so accurately that the base commander had altered routine flight routes as a precaution. The defendants explained that a mentally ill former roommate, who had later committed suicide, had produced the sketches.

Seeking to show evidence of a broader plot, the prosecution said that the defendants kept the answers to the state’s commercial driver’s license test in their apartment, and hinted that such information pointed to “planned terrorism,” according to the Detroit News.

A video confiscated in the raid was shown. It included footage of trips to Disneyland, Las Vegas, and New York City. The prosecution claimed that the video was part of casing these sites for attack. The court-appointed language expert testified that the person filming the river in Disneyland uttered the words, “Here is a rising cemetery.” However, a defense witness, Algerian-born Naima Slimani Benkoucha, testified that the cameraman had said less menacingly, “What a lovely view.”

At the time of the indictment’s release in August, Robert Precht, a University of Michigan law professor who had defended one of the men convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, said that the footage sounded “like tourist videos.”

The inflammatory language of the indictment would prevent the four from getting a fair trial, Precht said. “It’s all part of a pattern of conduct by the Justice Department to attach these very inflammatory labels to people claiming that they are terrorists in an effort to stoke the fires of popular outrage when, in fact, the actual evidence is extremely skimpy,” Precht said. “It makes it almost impossible for a jury to be neutral.”

In preparation for the trial, a pool of 220 jurors had to fill out a questionnaire of 27 pages. Questions included: Have you ever heard the word “jihad”? Do you speak Arabic? Are you a member of the National Rifle Association, a union, a parent-teacher association? What Internet sites do you regularly visit? What were the last three books you read? Have you or any close friend or relative ever been the subject of surveillance by law enforcement officials?

Two days after the convictions U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft proposed that Congress allow him to seek the death penalty or life imprisonment for terrorist acts. He also wants Congress to allow the government to hold alleged terrorists indefinitely without charges.

Elmardoudi, Koubriti, and Hannan have all announced that they plan to appeal their convictions.  
 
 
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