Men testify via closed circuit TV to defend convicted terrorist

SACRAMENTO -- In an unusual nighttime hearing, two men testified from Pakistan on Wednesday as alibi witnesses for convicted terrorist Hamid Hayat.

The Lodi man was arrested in 2005 after returning from two years visiting family in Pakistan. He was convicted the next year and sentenced to 24 years in prison after telling FBI agents he trained at a pair of camps and returned to the U.S. to carry out attacks. U.S. v. Hayat et al., 05-240 (E.D. Cal., filed June 5, 2005).

Hayat's new legal team, led by appellate specialist Dennis P. Riordan of Riordan & Horgan in San Francisco, say their client was wrongly convicted due to ineffective counsel. Hayat's original lawyer, they've argued, was too inexperienced at the time to handle such a complex and difficult case.

In a series of evidentiary hearings that have stretched out for weeks, a legal team has also tried to establish that Hayat could not have been in the camps when prosecutors say he was.

Another key contention of their case is that a 2000 bout with meningitis left Hayat with a diminished mental capacity, making him vulnerable to suggestive questioning by agents.

The bulk of Wednesday's hearing focused on testimony by a man identified as Hayat's uncle, Muhammad Anas. Speaking through an interpreter by closed circuit television from a law office in Islamabad, Anas vividly described Hayat's illness and its aftermath and the week he said his nephew spent in the hospital.

"He was not in his senses," Anas said of the night he testified Hayat got ill while staying with his family in Rawalpindi. "He was screaming and shouting like he was in pain."

"He was slow before, too, but after this he become more slow and lazy," Anas added.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andre Espinosa repeatedly tried to poke holes in the timeline Anas presented and show that Hayat was absent from Rawalpindi for long periods.

He asked numerous questions about Hayat's visits to Pakistan in 2000 and from 2003 to 2005, delving into minutiae such as how family members traveled back and forth between Anas' home in Rawalpindi and the village of Behboodi, where other family members lived.

"Each time Hamid visited Behboodi, how did you know where he was going when he left?" Espinosa asked.

Anas replied that Hayat usually traveled with his mother -- Anas' sister -- and they would call him when they arrived.

Another man, named Rafaqat, testified he was friends with Hayat and regularly saw him in Behboodi during periods when the government alleged he was training. He also described Hayat as timid and easily frightened.

The closed circuit testimony followed months in which government attorneys sought to bar several potential alibi witnesses.

The hearings were scheduled to end Thursday night. The scheduled witnesses include people identified as Hayat's aunt and another uncle. They gave declarations stating that Hayat's meningitis was originally misdiagnosed, delaying treatment, and that his personality had changed once he recovered.

In earlier phases of the hearing, Riordan brought in experienced federal defenders who testified about the resources needed to mount an effective defense in a federal terrorism trial.

Earlier this month, Hayat's original attorney, Wazhma Mojaddidi, testified about the lack of funds available for Hayat's defense and the conflicts between her and attorney Johnny Griffin III, who successfully defended Hayat's father from terrorism charges that were brought at the same time.

Mojaddidi is now a family law attorney in Sacramento, and was three years out of law school when Hayat was tried.