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Defense witness claims Lodi cell terror camp is a Pakistani military base
A man on a humanitarian mission in Pakistan says what the U.S. government thinks is a terrorist training camp may actually be a Pakistani military facility."I was at the right location. I'm 100 percent sure of that," said James Lazor, a witness for the defense in the terrorism trial against Lodi's Hamid Hayat. Last month, Lazor was in Balakot, Pakistan searching for the camp and says he encountered Pakistani soldiers when he got close. When he spoke to one of them, Lazor said, "He was a military guy, no doubt in my mind." Hamid Hayat, 23, is accused of training at a terrorism camp. Prosecutors claim his description of the area and the camp matches satellite images showing a complex of buildings tucked in the mountains of Pakistan's northwest Frontier Province. Defense lawyers say Lazor's testimony disputes that. "Their expert sat on the stand and stated that in looking at the images that it cannot be a military camp, and he is clearly wrong," said Wazhma Mojaddidi, who represents Hamid Hayat. "The proof is in that the government is not able to, with all its resources, produce one person whoever went there. Us as the defense, we were able to find someone to go there, and he came back and reported what he saw." Lazor testified that he went to Pakistan this past February, taking blankets to victims of the earthquakes as well as letters from California children to deliver to Pakistani children. He's a private citizen who went there on his own after speaking to friends about the needs of earthquake victims. The defense would not reveal how they discovered Lazor was going there, but he agreed to try to find the terrorist camp armed with maps, a global positioning system device and the coordinates provided by defense attorneys. Lazor said when he went up the trail and was about a mile and a half away, he was approached by a military-type vehicle. "I was stopped by a sergeant from the Pakistani military who said the area wasn't open to civilians and said it was a Pakistani military camp I would not be allowed access to," said Lazor. "He was polite and respectful. I mean if he was a terrorist it would've been a completely different scenario." Lazor, who lead off Tuesday's defense witnesses, said he did very little research on the Hayat case before he went on his quest in Pakistan last month. "I went with an open mind," he said. Also taking the stand was FBI agent Gary Schaaf, one of the agents who interrogated Hamid Hayat which was videotaped after Hayat claimed he attended training at the terrorist camp. Under defense questioning, he acknowledged that he often asked Hayat leading questions during the interview. Schaaf said he, not Hayat, was the one who first mentioned weapons and explosives training and the possibility someone would travel by bus to get there. Besides the charge of training for terrorism, Hamid Hayat also faces three counts of lying to federal agents. The key evidence against him is his videotaped confession, along with secret tape recordings between him and a paid FBI informant, Naseem Khan. On Wednesday, the trial for Hayat's father, Umer Hayat, resumes. The older Hayat, an ice cream truck driver from Lodi, is charged with lying to federal officials about his son's alleged involvement in terrorism. Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-04-05 |
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