New Haven Independent

Hassan Abu-Jihaad, who was convicted last February in U.S. District Court in New Haven, is seeking a new trial or a directed verdict of acquittal. His lawyers argued his case back in New Haven Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Mark. R. Kravitz.

The government argued that the former sailor leaked sensitive information about the Navy’s movements to members of a London-based terrorist cell.

Abu-Jihaad faces 25 years in jail.

The defense argued Tuesday that there wasn’t enough evidence against the defendant for a jury to convict and that the government never proved he knew the information he was providing to terrorists was dangerous.

To read Abu-Jihaad’s lawyers motions and the government’s response, click here, here, and here.

Read previous coverage of his case here, here, and here.

During Tuesday’s morning’s hearing, the judge came back again and again to one question: Did Abu-Jihaad intend for emails he sent to Babar Ahmad, whom British police tied to a radical website known as Azzam Publications, to be copied onto a floppy disk? British police found the floppy disk, containing a so-called U.S. Navy battle-group document, in Ahmad’s home in 2001.

The defense indicated that Abu-Jihaad had directed that his emails containing the document be destroyed after reading. Much of the argument by both the government and the defense centered around whether Abu-Jihaad could have foreseen that his email could have been copied onto the disk, which the judge indicated was a necessary element for conviction.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Nardini, one of three lawyers representing the government, likened the situation to Mission Impossible. On that old TV series, the hero is told that amessage will self-destruct but the instructions remain just as valid after the message is destroyed as before.

Defendant Abu-Jihaad was the only person who could have sent the material and had to know how the Azzam site was a proponent of violent jihad against the U.S., Nardini argued.

Defense attorney Dan E. LaBelle told the judge that there was no way that his client could know that his instructions were not going to be obeyed and that his e-mail would be edited and a floppy disk made.

Another aspect of the case centered whether the so-called battle-group document was accurate of even a secret. The document showed the dates that ships of the Constellation battle group, containing the guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold, the ship on which Abu-Jihaad was serving as a signalman, would be in Hawaii, Australia and the Straits of Hormuz off Iran.

LaBelle, an attorney with the Westport law firm of Halloran & Sage, said the information in the email was flawed. A reporter for the Freemantle Times published a story about the battle group’s movements two weeks before it arrived in the region, he said.

The professorial Judge Kravitz closely questioned the five lawyers arrayed before him about the briefs they had submitted earlier and points of law. He seemed relaxed but in charge, frequently changing glasses to read or to look out over the five lawyers and defendant arrayed before him. At one point, after closely questioning a lawyer, he leaned back with his hands locked behind his head in a move that seemed dismissive.

The judge pleasantly greeted each lawyer, and told the defendant that it was good to see him again. He joked to the lawyers that even if they may have bored a spectator whom he spotted leaving the courtroom, he wasn’t a bit bored by them.

“I have no idea when I’ll be issuing this decision,” the judge told the lawyers. He repeatedly said during the hearing that he would have to reread this testimony or that part of the pleadings or briefs.

The bareheaded defendant, a bearded young man wearing a short-sleeved prison jumpsuit and basketball-type sneakers, sat looking at the judge for the first hour of the hearing, moving only to pour himself a glass of water. He never took notes and had neither paper nor pen before him.

After a while, however, he seemed to relax a little, even draping his arm over the empty chair to his left and whispering points to his lawyers about the government attorneys’ remarks. After the hearing, U.S. marshals put handcuffs back on him and whisked him away. They refused to say where he was being held.

Neither government nor defense lawyers would comment on the proceedings.