Judge Declares Mistrial in Case of Man Who Knew 9/11 Hijackers

By MICHAEL BRICK
Published: May 4, 2006

A judge in Manhattan federal court declared a mistrial today after a jury
reported that it was deadlocked in the case of Osama Awadallah, a Jordanian
college student accused of lying to a federal grand jury about his relationship
with two Sept. 11 hijackers.

The jurors sent a note to Judge Shira A. Scheindlin indicating that further
deliberations would be fruitless. One juror was holding out for a not guilty
plea. Prosecutors then requested that Judge Scheindlin set a date for a new
trial as soon as possible.

Mr. Awadallah's lawyer, Jesse Berman, said the mistrial "shows that there are
doubts to the government's case," according to The Associated Press.

If convicted, Mr. Awadallah, 25, faces a maximum sentence of five years on each
of two counts of perjury, as well as deportation. He has waited --- free on bail
for much of the time since he was charged --- as his fiercely contested case
made its way through the courts.

In recent years, Mr. Awadallah has been a student at San Diego State University,
where he is scheduled to graduate this month.

The mistrial brings to a close one more chapter in a four-and-half-year legal
battle in which prosecutors said Mr. Awadallah lied when he testified under oath
at an October 2001 grand jury hearing that he did not know one of the hijackers,
Khalid al-Midhar, and denied having written his name in a school notebook before
conceding in a later hearing that he had met Mr. Midhar.

Mr. Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, another hijacker, had been living in San Diego
until about a year before they boarded American Airlines Flight 77, the plane
that crashed into the Pentagon. Mr. Awadallah was arrested on Sept. 21, 2001,
after F.B.I. agents found a scrap of paper with the name "Osama" and
Mr. Awadallah's old phone number in a car that Mr. Hazmi had left at Dulles
International Airport, near Washington.

In the trial, Mr. Berman painted a very different picture, that of a young
immigrant, 21 at the time of the attacks, with limited English, disoriented
after nearly three weeks of solitary confinement and with no reason to mislead
the grand jury.

"We're not saying this gave him license to lie," Mr. Berman said. The defendant,
he said, was "exhausted and confused."

In the trial held in a courtroom less than half a mile from ground zero, the
prosecutors argued that Mr. Awadallah had lied, presenting transcripts of his
testimony and a detailed chronology of how his account had changed during
several hearings and interviews with law enforcement.

Mr. Awadallah has never been charged with conspiring in the 9/11 attacks or
knowing about them in advance.

In his first grand jury appearance, Mr. Awadallah repeatedly denied knowing
anyone named Khalid. But prosecutors showed him an examination booklet they
discovered at his college, in which was written: "One of the quietest people I
have met is Nawaf. Another one, his name is Khalid."

Mr. Awadallah at first said that some of the handwriting was not his. When he
returned to the grand jury on Oct. 15, 2001, he said that he recognized it as
his writing and that on several occasions he had met a friend of Mr. Hazmi's
named Khalid.

Mr. Berman argued that the first photocopy of the examination booklet that
Mr. Awadallah was shown was smudged, and that reading it was all the more
difficult because his client had not had access to his eyeglasses while in
custody or on the witness stand.

In part what has been on trial is the government's treatment of Mr. Awadallah.
After being detained as a material witness in San Diego on Sept. 21, 2001, he
was held incommunicado for 20 days in maximum security solitary confinement,
although he was not charged with a crime. Mr. Awadallah has said he was
terrified and disoriented by a long, severe detention.

During his grand jury testimony, Mr. Awadallah was handcuffed to his chair, a
practice generally reserved for potentially dangerous witnesses. His defense
lawyers have argued that the shackling impeded him from leaving the room to
consult with his lawyers, who were not allowed inside the grand jury room but
were waiting outside.

The case was dismissed once by Judge Scheindlin, then reinstated by the appeals
court. With a jury chosen and ready to sit last May, the prosecution held up the
trial, accusing Judge Scheindlin of bias and filing an appeal to remove her from
the case, which failed.

The same jurors were recalled, but some persuaded the judge that they could no
longer serve and were replaced.

Carla Baranauckas contributed reporting for this article.

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Mistrial Called in Federal Case of Man Who Knew Hijackers

By MICHAEL BRICK and SARAH GARLAND
May 5, 2006

After six days of angry deliberations audible through courtroom walls, the trial
of a man accused of lying to a panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks ended
yesterday in a mistrial after all but one juror asked the judge to dismiss the
lone holdout for acquittal.

The case, involving a Jordanian college student living in San Diego, has been
viewed as a test of the government's detention policies in terrorism
investigations. The student, Osama Awadallah, gave contradictory testimony to a
grand jury in the case of United States v. Osama bin Laden, but his lawyers had
argued that a long solitary confinement had left him disoriented and confused.

At 3:06 p.m. yesterday, the Manhattan jury charged with deciding Mr. Awadallah's
fate sent out a note saying that one juror had admitted that his mind had been
made up before deliberations began.

"This juror revealed to us that they would be unable in any case to be fair or
impartial," the note said.

Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of United States District Court called the forewoman,
Marianne Delise, for questioning.

"We were wondering if it was possible to get this juror replaced," Ms. Delise
said.

Judge Scheindlin then called the holdout, David Lipschultz, 49, a subway
conductor turned nurse, who said he was deliberating in good faith. She sent him
back to the jury room.

"I believe he just disagreed with them virtually throughout the deliberations,
and he wasn't able to convince them and they weren't able to convince him,"
Judge Scheindlin said. "If we go around calling that a refusal to deliberate,
we're essentially not accepting dissent."

With that, she declared a mistrial. Her decision came just four years after she
dismissed the same perjury charges against Mr. Awadallah. The charges were
reinstated by an appellate court in November 2003.

Mr. Awadallah, 25, who is free on bail and planning to graduate from San Diego
State University this month, declined to comment. His lawyer, Jesse Berman,
praised the holdout juror, calling him "a true and honest juror who wanted to
decide the case on all the evidence."

The contentious end suited deliberations that included shouting matches and
sharply worded notes to the judge. A panel of 11 jurors was left to deliberate
on Monday after Judge Scheindlin dismissed a sick juror, and divisions among the
remaining jurors quickly became clear.

In the courtroom, as lawyers came and went, voices from the jury room carried
through the walls.

"We're going to be here forever," a man yelled.

A woman responded, "Because of you."

The jurors first announced a deadlock on Monday afternoon, but Judge Scheindlin
encouraged them to debate with open minds toward a verdict. Unintelligible
shouting lasted through Tuesday, and on Wednesday the jury heard a reading of
hours of testimony by the F.B.I. agents who had detained Mr. Awadallah.

That testimony proved central to the debate among jurors, as notes and
interviews after the trial showed that the holdout had argued in favor of
examining a broad array of evidence, while the balance of the panel had sought
to focus on Mr. Awadallah's testimony to the grand jury investigating 9/11.

Transcripts of that testimony became public in the course of the trial,
providing a strange window on some humdrum activities of one of the Sept. 11
hijackers. In his testimony, Mr. Awadallah described helping Nawaq Alhazmi, a
hijacker on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, with basic functions of
his home computer. There were never any allegations that Mr. Awadallah knew of
plans for the attacks.

In the transcripts, government lawyers pointedly outlined the contradictions as
Mr. Awadallah discussed whether he knew Khalid al-Midhar, another hijacker.

"It seems suspicious," said George Toscas, an assistant United States
attorney. "Do you understand that?"

Mr. Awadallah responded, "What does suspicious mean?"

After hearing the testimony of the F.B.I. agents read back, jurors continued
deliberating on Wednesday afternoon. Before they left, Judge Scheindlin reminded
them that the options to acquit, convict or declare a deadlock remained open
despite her earlier charge to continue deliberating. The jurors indicated that
they understood.

"Well, I just want to say for the record, that certainly that puts my mind at
ease," Judge Scheindlin said.

Jurors resumed deliberations yesterday, and Mr. Awadallah passed the time
wandering from the courtroom to a prayer chamber.

Lawyers for the government said they would seek a new trial, but no date was
set.

Outside the courtroom, Mr. Lipschultz said one juror had derided him as a
terrorist sympathizer.

"For the last six days, I felt like the eye of the storm," he said. "Everyone
was completely convinced of his guilt. I wasn't completely convinced of his
innocence but I had reasonable doubt."

Ms. Delise, the forewoman, said, "We did our best and put our hearts into it."

Another juror, who would not give her name, said the issue wasn't
Mr. Lipschultz.

"There's a bigger issue. It's that justice still has not been served," she said.