[AnNahar] Spies working for Britain's MI5 intelligence agency donned wigs and makeup Tuesday to testify against a Pakistani al-Qaida suspect on trial in New York for allegedly plotting to blow up a British shopping center.| Why is he on trial in the U.S. if the plot was hatched and promulgated in Britain? |
District judge Raymond Dearie prohibited court artists from drawing the faces of a total of five members of MI5 who are expected to testify, allowing only blank faces and generic haircuts to be depicted.
The witnesses entered the federal court in Brooklyn from a side entrance, precluding any possibility of mingling with members of the press and public who use the main public entrance into the courtroom.
Two of the men, as well as the one woman agent, wore heavy black and dark-brown wigs and partially shielded their eyes behind spectacles. Two of the men were bearded; the other male agent appeared clean-shaven, with short graying hair.
From behind their disguises, the four agents said they watched the defendant visit a Manchester shopping center, allegedly the intended target. They also monitor him as he visited a mosque, an Internet cafe and traveled to Liverpool.
The agents all identified the defendant, who is representing himself in court, as the man they knew by the codename "small panel" as part of Operation Pathway that led up to his initial arrest in Britain in 2009.
U.S. government prosecutors say Naseer helped al-Qaida planned an assault on the shopping center as part of coordinated attacks that also targeted the New York subway and a Danish newspaper. Prosecutors called it one of the most serious terror plots since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.
- Denies the charges -
Naseer, who denies the charges, faces life in prison if convicted.
He is charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaida and with conspiring to use a destructive device. The surveillance officers said they followed the defendant in the company of two other men, code-named Happy Skater and Glass Pendant.
Naseer, acting as his own defense attorney, cross-examined two of the spies who once tailed him.
One wore a John Lennon-style dark brown wig and thin-rimmed spectacles. The second pointedly stayed silent when Naseer opened his cross-examination with a two-times greeting of "good morning."
Crucially to the government's case, the officers said they had never seen the defendant -- who was in Britain as a student -- go to college, carry any books or in the company of a woman.
The defense argues that Naseer was embarked on a quest to get married and not carry out the attack.
He was first arrested in 2009 in Britain with 11 other men suspected of preparing an attack against the Manchester mall, and was extradited to the United States from Britain in 2013. The other men were released without charge, but Naseer was arrested for a second time in July 2010 at the request of Brooklyn prosecutors, who accused him of participating in the plot to attack the New York subway in 2009.