Terror suspect alleges feds in Chicago covering up torture evidence

Chuck Goudie

A suburban man, who has admitted laundering money for terrorists, says federal authorities in Chicago are covering up evidence that he was tortured into confessing. In this Intelligence Report: the case against Muhammad Salah.

Very blunt documents filed in federal court by lawyers for Muhammad Salah allege a conspiracy between US prosecutors and the Israeli government, that they are in cahoots to cover up evidence that Salah and other Palestinians were tortured while in Israeli custody. They are suggesting the judge in the case is being used as a stooge and trying to inject a controversial reporter into the case.
Mohammad Salah contends that in 1993 police tortured him into admitting that he was an agent of Hamas, the Palestinian terror organization.

Salah was held and interrogated for almost two months by Israeli authorities, he says, in torturous bondage and subjected to beatings and mental punishment. The confession at the end of it all resulted in his five year prison sentence and the federal money laundering charges now facing him in Illinois.

Salah’s lawyers now say the Israeli government and American prosecutors are covering up the evidence of torture and manipulation. In stinging papers filed with the court obtained by the I-Team, Salah’s lawyers charge that the “GOI and the prosecution devised a way to … cover up material evidence which is known to exist,” that the “prosecution has stonewalled” legal defense requests for the evidence, and that they are “hiding behind the conspiratorial agreement with the Israelis, attempting to use this court as it’s foil.”

Salah’s lawyers claim the court is aware of the material and that prosecutors are engaged in a “dishonest obstruction of justice,” that the court and prosecutors are constantly “consulting with each other so that certain evidence remain secret, which leaves the defense in the dark..”

Salah’s lawyers are now injecting controversial former New York Times reporter Judith Miller into the case, saying that in 1993 Israeli officials allowed her to witness the Salah interrogation, and therefore, the governments cannot claim material from what she witnessed is now suddenly classified.

Salah’s lawyers want access to Israeli documents that would explain why Judith Miller was allowed to witness the Salah interrogation and even participate in it, playing the good cop as Israeli authorities played bad cop.

It is not the first time Miller is in the middle of a courtroom firestorm. Last year Miller served jail time for contempt of court after refusing to disclose her sources in the White House leaks case.

The Salah hearing on whether to allow his confession as evidence will resume later this month.

Copyright ©2006 ABC Inc., WLS-TV Chicago.