After presenting more than 120 witnesses and more than 100 hours of secretly recorded conversations, federal prosecutors rested their case on Wednesday against a militant Muslim cleric and 10 other men charged with waging a bombing and assassination conspiracy in and around New York.
For the last five months, in a heavily guarded courtroom in lower Manhattan, the prosecutors have presented extensive evidence to support their contention that the men plotted to blow up several local landmarks and to kill such figures as President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.But their evidence also raises serious questions that lawyers for Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and his 10 co-defendants are certain to exploit when they begin presenting their case in Federal District Court next week. Among those questions are how much of the plotting was spurred by the government's chief informer, whether the plots charged were truly part of a single overarching conspiracy and whether the evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt that all the defendants were criminally involved.
According to the prosecution, the conspiracy included a lethal bombing that did occur - the February 1993 attack at the World Trade Center in Manhattan that killed six people - and plots for subsequent, even deadlier, bombings that were not carried out.