Yemeni Sheik Causes Scene After Conviction

[emad]

Guardian
Friday March 11, 2005 1:46 PM
By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN

Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - A three-year case that saw the government's star witness set himself on fire outside the White House ended with the convictions of a Yemeni sheik and his assistant on terror-funding charges.

After the verdict was announced Thursday, Sheik Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad and his assistant, Mohammed Yahya Zayed, cried out in Arabic that they had been wrongly convicted because jurors had not seen all of the government's surveillance tapes. U.S. marshals rushed the men from court.

Al-Moayad and Zayed were convicted of all but two of the 10 charges in an indictment that accused them of vital roles in a terror funding network that stretched from Brooklyn to Yemen.

However, the sheik was acquitted of the charge that grabbed headlines when he was arrested two years ago in Germany: supporting al-Qaida.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4857850,00.html