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Injured prison guard urges harsh sentence for al-Qaeda leader
A former federal prison guard wants to set the record straight about an assault by an alleged top aide to Osama bin Laden: He says the stabbing that left a sharpened comb stuck in his left eye was even more brutal that the government has revealed.Louis Pepe, 46, said he plans to speak at Mamdouh Mahmud Salim's sentencing set for Monday because he is outraged Salim could face as little as 18 to 21 years in prison for the attack that was carried out during an attempted prison break in 2000. "I hate to go, but I got to go," said Pepe, who was left with limited vision and brain damage. Pepe recalled that the last words he heard before he was stabbed in the attack by Salim and an accomplice, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, were: "Now I'm going to kill him." Salim still faces trial and a possible life sentence on conspiracy charges in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. Mohamed is serving a life sentence after his conviction in the embassy bombings case, which included charges related to the stabbing. In an interview Sunday with The Associated Press, Pepe sat in his wheelchair in a small room in the Queens house where he lives with his parents. A white cowboy hat signed by corrections officers he trained rested on a shelf above him. Pepe said the government and Salim have combined to sanitize what happened on Nov. 1, 2000, portraying the assault as quick and almost entirely Salim's doing after the guard failed to handcuff the inmates. Pepe said he will tell the judge how he properly handcuffed the inmates before they slipped free, blinded him with hot sauce, beat him repeatedly and even tried to rape him before stabbing him to get his keys in a bid to free other suspected terrorists. "Both of them did it, not just one," Pepe said excitedly, his right eye wide open and a piece of gauze resting in the socket where the left eye used to be. "They started, 'Bam, bam, bam, bam!'" he said, shouting as he thrust his fist and arm down repeatedly in a re-enactment. Pepe said the attack lasted an hour, rather than the 20 minutes that prison authorities maintain it took for help to arrive from less-isolated parts of Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center. Prison authorities say a videotaping system didn't function properly that day so it was impossible to verify how much time passed. Pepe's memory seems unimpaired, though the brain damage he suffered leaves him with speech difficulties and an inability to read. Pepe described how he resisted throughout the attack, even giving the inmates his house keys when they demanded his prison keys. He said the inmates scrawled the sign of the cross in his blood on his chest before they left him for dead. In the end, Pepe walked out of the cellblock, the sharpened comb still stuck in his eye. He said Sunday that he had warned the government before the attack not to let terrorism inmates bunk together or be issued sturdy plastic combs and condiments such as hot sauce and honey. "You gotta be careful," he said. "You never know what they're going to do." For more than two years, Pepe was hospitalized. He suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed, along with pneumonia, a collapsed lung, seizures, infections, a blood clot and high fevers. He underwent brain surgery and spent three weeks in a coma. Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-05-03 |
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