NEW YORK (AP) – Things had been looking up for Sheik Mohammed Ali Hasan al-Moayad as his trial on charges of supporting Hamas and al-Qaida approached.

The government’s star witness set himself on fire in a bizarre protest outside the White House. A federal judge limited some of the strongest evidence linking the Yemeni sheik to Osama bin Laden. Prosecutors began their case dependent on hours of secretly recorded Arabic conversations hard to understand even in translation.

But those tapes proved surprisingly damaging last week as jurors in Brooklyn federal court heard the defendants speak in familiar terms about men prosecutors call some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists. The tapes close with al-Moayad’s prayer for the deaths of Jews and Americans: “Dear God strike them with earthquakes, put them in their coffins, abandon them and defeat them.”

Al-Moayad and his assistant, Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed, also spoke about code names for weaponry and false names for bank accounts. As the trial’s first week ended, lawyers for both defendants said it would be difficult to overcome the bad impression.

“It’s very hard for an American jury to overcome the emotion that’s wrapped up in 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” al-Moayad’s lawyer, William Goodman, said after the last recording was played for the jury.

“This is very disturbing stuff,” Zayed’s lawyer, Jonathan Marks, acknowledged.

Al-Moayad is accused of material support for terrorism, as well as conspiring and attempting to provide material support. He could receive a 60-year prison sentence. Zayed faces the conspiracy and attempt charges. He could serve three decades behind bars.

Marks said he was pleased that few of the inflammatory statements came from Zayed’s mouth. And Goodman said he remained confident he could persuade the jury that the Islamic cleric and his assistant were simply trying to wheedle money for their legitimate charities from two FBI informants who lured them into a sting operation in Frankfurt, Germany.

One informant, posing as a Black Panther turned militant American Muslim, said he needed help funneling $2.5 million to terrorist groups. Al-Moayad and Zayed could take a 10 percent cut for their services, the informant said. The second informant, a Yemeni named Mohamed Alanssi, acted as a go-between.

“Eventually, they said what the government agents wanted to hear,” Goodman said.

German federal police burst into the room after four days, arresting the men on Jan. 10, 2003.

Then Alanssi was dropped as a trial witness after burning himself last November in what he called a protest against government mistreatment. And U.S. District Judge Sterling Johnson excluded evidence allegedly linking al-Moayad to al-Qaida and Afghan training camps from the government’s main case.

But whatever optimism those events generated in the defense camp seemed muted this week as jurors heard al-Moayad and Zayed talking alone and at length about secretly executing the informants’ wishes.

“He said Hamas, jihad or al-Qaida,” Zayed said of the informant on one tape.

“Look, any organization, anything: Hamas, al-Qaida or whatever as long as it is for jihad,” al-Moayad replied.

Al-Moayad closes the final meeting with a prayer: “Dear God, defeat the Jews the tyrants. Defeat the infidel Americans.”

The trial resumes Monday. The government could rest its case as early as next week.

AP-ES-02-05-05 1048EST

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