Fatal Convictions (29 page)

79

Nara was waiting in the hallway when court recessed for lunch. She fell in stride with Alex and Shannon as they made their way down the escalators and out of the building. As they were heading toward the cars, Nara asked how things went that morning.

“I’m going to peel off,” Shannon said, heading toward her car. “I’ll just grab a quick salad and meet you back in the courtroom.”

“Do you really think it’s a good idea for Nara and me to do lunch together?” Alex asked. “We might get the tabloids talking.”

“If you avoid body contact, you should be okay,” Shannon said over her shoulder.

Alex drove down Princess Anne Road until he found a Subway. He needed something quick so he could get back to court and prepare for the afternoon witnesses. Alex looked around to make sure no reporters had the same idea. He and Nara each ordered a sub and found a booth toward the back.

Nara took a few bites and leaned forward. She took a sip of her drink and kept her voice low. “How did it go this morning?”

“I’m really not supposed to say,” Alex said.

“The judge said you couldn’t talk to me about the
witnesses
. How did your
opening statement
go?”

Sometimes the woman was too smart for her own good.

Alex chewed a bite of sub and eventually swallowed. He looked at Nara and decided that he couldn’t lie. She trusted him. If they were ever going to have any kind of relationship, he needed to be straight with her.

“I didn’t give it.”

Nara froze mid-bite and stared at him. “What?”

“I didn’t give it. Taj Deegan took the case 180 degrees from where I expected she would go with her opening. I decided it would be best if I waited until we begin our case to give mine.”

Nara looked at him as if he had sprouted a third eye. “Are you serious? You didn’t say
anything
?”

Alex shrugged. “It’s not like I won’t be able to give an opening. I just
delayed
it for strategic reasons until the commonwealth’s case is over.”

Nara’s face grew stormy. “Why do you keep holding back on us? What could Taj Deegan possibly have said to make you throw away your entire opening?”

“Shh,” Alex said. People were starting to look at them.

“I’m tired of sneaking around and being quiet, as if we’re ashamed of our case. The least you could have done was to deliver the opening statement that we all worked so hard on last night.”

Alex felt like he was in the middle of an E. F. Hutton commercial as the other conversations in the sub shop suddenly receded. He kept his own voice low, hoping that Nara would catch the hint. “I can’t tell you everything that Taj Deegan said. But, Nara, I’m not holding back . . . and I think by now you should cut me a little slack.”

Alex turned and glared at some of the people who were staring at him and Nara. The onlookers quickly looked away. He returned his attention to Nara and leaned forward. “Frankly, after putting my life on the line, I hoped I might get a little more trust. Why isn’t anything ever good enough for you?”

Nara snorted. “Don’t turn this on me. Every time we disagree on something, you go into your ‘trust me’ routine.” She wrapped her half-eaten sandwich and crinkled up the bag of chips as she talked. “‘I’m the lawyer, Nara. I know what’s best.’ Do you know how condescending that sounds?” She gave him no chance to answer. “I think I’ll just wait outside.”

Alex tried to dissuade her, but Nara threw her trash away and walked out the door. She stood in front of the Subway looking out at the parking lot with her arms crossed. It was early December and probably forty degrees, but Alex no longer cared. He took his time and ate the rest of his sub. Then he stood in line to get a cookie for dessert.

It was a long, silent ride back to the courthouse.

80

The first witness Taj Deegan called that afternoon was the mosque’s diminutive bookkeeper, Riham El-Ashi. She walked down the aisle, affirmed that she would tell the truth, and gave Khalid a look of empathy. Deep lines of concern furrowed her brow.

Alex felt sorry for the woman. He also relaxed a little; Shannon would be cross-examining this witness.

Riham lowered the mic and stated her name for the record. During her direct examination, Judge Rosenthal had to remind her several times to speak up. To compensate for the witness’s lack of enthusiasm, Taj Deegan seemed to ask her questions louder and move around the courtroom more. Alex noted that some of the jurors were starting to struggle with heavy eyelids.

Riham testified about the importance of the zakah to Muslims. She explained the mosque’s system for securing donations and how the money was counted and deposited. She listed the persons who had access to the funds at every step in the process, including Khalid Mobassar. Riham also testified that only she and the three imams had the authority to wire funds from the mosque accounts.

Next, Taj Deegan asked questions about the donations in the weeks prior to Ja’dah Mahdi’s murder. Deegan had prepared a few charts and graphs, which Riham reluctantly agreed were accurate. The charts demonstrated that donations to the general operating account were about half their normal amount during the weeks leading up to the murders. The building fund, on the other hand, increased dramatically during that same time frame.

“Did somebody authorize a transfer of $20,000 from the mosque’s building fund to an account in Beirut, Lebanon, two days before the murders?” Taj Deegan asked.

“Yes.”

Deegan turned to the judge. “This might be a good time to inform the jury of a stipulation between the commonwealth and defense counsel.”

Shannon stood. “No objection.”

Taj Deegan grabbed a piece of paper from her counsel table and turned to the jury. “In order to avoid the inconvenience of having the commonwealth subpoena an officer of the Bank of Virginia, both sides have stipulated that the $20,000 wired from the mosque’s building fund was authorized in an online transaction from an unknown computer. The user who authorized the transaction signed in with the user name and password assigned to Khalid Mobassar.”

Before sitting down, the prosecutor turned back to the witness. Deegan apparently wanted to remind the jury that they could expect Riham to help the defendant if she could. “Thank you for being here today,” Deegan said, as if the witness had a choice. “I know you’re very close to the defendant and that this has been very difficult for you.”

“You’re welcome,” Riham said, falling for the prosecutor’s trick. Alex wanted to gag.

Shannon, however, didn’t seem to be the least bit bothered by it as she bounced to her feet. “Good afternoon, Ms. El-Ashi.”

“Good afternoon.”

“As I understand it, you’re basically saying that about half the donations normally intended for the operating account instead got put in the mosque’s building account during the three weeks prior to Ja’dah Mahdi’s death. Is that right?”

The witness nodded. “Yes, that’s correct.”

“And that could have been done by anyone who had access to the safe, because they could have come in at night and taken some of the checks and the next day deposited them in the building account using a deposit stamp. Is that correct?”

“Yes, that’s also correct.”

“Then let’s list on this easel all the people who had access to the mosque’s safe.”

In almost flawless handwriting, Shannon made a list of the three imams and the three other individuals named by Riham. Both Khalid Mobassar and Fatih Mahdi were on the list. “Now we don’t know for a fact which of these men may have been diverting the mosque’s money. Is that correct?”

The witness furrowed her brow. “Yes . . .” She hesitated, a desire to be 100 percent truthful. “But we do know that the transfer was authorized using Mr. Mobassar’s user name and password.”

“My point exactly,” Shannon said. She seemed confident. Perky. As if she was getting ready for a tumbling pass that she knew she would nail. “Do you know how Mr. Mobassar protected his password?”

“No.”

“Would it surprise you to know that he had all of his user names and passwords on his computer in a Word document entitled ‘FAQs’ and that the document was not password-protected?”

The witness thought for a moment. “No, this wouldn’t surprise me. Mr. Mobassar is a very trusting person.”

“Did you know that anyone could find that document by simply searching Mr. Mobassar’s computer using a search term like
password
?”

“Objection!” Taj Deegan was on her feet. “This witness already said she didn’t know how Mr. Mobassar stored his passwords. How could she possibly know this?”

“Sustained,” Judge Rosenthal said.

“Did Mr. Mobassar always close his door and lock his office when he wasn’t there?”

“Not in the middle of the day. Only when he left for the night.”

“So people could just walk right into his office in the middle of the day and access his computer?”

The witness thought about this. “I guess so.”

“And if we made a list of all the people that could have done that, the list could include virtually everyone who is a member of the mosque. Is that right?”

“Many members come back to our office complex—yes.”

Shannon checked her notes and started asking questions about how Khalid Mobassar received his user name and password. The witness testified that she had personally set up the passwords several years ago and communicated them to the three imams via e-mail.

“Did you use special encryption on the e-mail?” Shannon asked.

“No.”

“Are you aware of all the ways e-mail can be hacked into these days?”

“No, I’m afraid I am not.”

Shannon made a check on her notepad, and Khalid leaned over to Alex. “She’s very good,” Khalid whispered.

Alex nodded. “You haven’t heard her punch line yet.”

Shannon stationed herself in the middle of the courtroom and pushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear. She looked down at the floor for a moment, deep in thought. “Can you think of any reason, if you were going to pay someone to do an honor killing, that you would wire funds from the mosque’s account using your
own
user name and password?”

Taj Deegan wasted no time on this one. “Objection! Calls for speculation. Maybe Mr. Mobassar didn’t know his user name and password could be traced. Maybe he didn’t think the government could gain access to the accounts of a mosque. There may be a thousand reasons, but this witness is the wrong person to ask.”

Shannon turned to the prosecutor. “If you want to testify, perhaps you should get sworn in.”

Rosenthal banged his gavel. “I don’t need counsel talking to each other,” he snapped. “The objection is well-taken and will be sustained.”

The witness looked sheepishly at the judge. “Does that mean I should not answer?”

“Yes.”

But Alex didn’t care about the answer, and he knew Shannon didn’t either. The question had been planted in the jury’s mind. It was the tactic defense lawyers always used when a circumstantial case against them seemed overwhelming. They would argue that the case was
too
perfect. Why would anyone make so many stupid mistakes? Doesn’t it seem more consistent with a setup? It was like a judo expert using his opponent’s weight and momentum to throw him.

“That’s all I have for this witness,” Shannon said.

81

Alex and Shannon both knew that Special Agent Michael Long would be a tougher witness than the mosque’s sheepish bookkeeper. Long took the stand with an air of crisp authority. He was clean-cut, articulate, and handsome enough to have the single women on the jury drooling. Alex had no doubt that Taj Deegan would draw out his testimony as long as she could.

Long’s role was to authenticate the text messages sent from Khalid Mobassar’s cell phone. To get there, he would have to explain the ins and outs of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Patriot Act, as well as the reasons that the Department of Justice had been tapping Khalid Mobassar’s phone. Since Agent Long had a law school education, Taj Deegan turned his testimony into a tutorial on the legal basis for national-security wiretaps.

“So long as the primary purpose of the eavesdropping is to obtain foreign intelligence information, the special court will allow the wiretaps to take place,” Long explained. He discussed the government’s concern that mosques like the Islamic Learning Center were sending funds to Hezbollah to help in the rebuilding of Beirut following the 2006 war. “Hezbollah is a known terrorist organization with a history of attacking innocent civilians and American soldiers. It is one of the two or three most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world,” he testified.

He talked about the specific authorizations that were obtained under FISA and the Patriot Act to record phone conversations and intercept text messages and e-mails sent and received by leaders of the Islamic Learning Center.

“Did those leaders include Mr. Khalid Mobassar and Mr. Fatih Mahdi?” Deegan asked.

“Yes, ma’am, those men were included.”

Shannon stood and addressed the court. “At this time we would renew our earlier objection to the admissibility of any information obtained under the Patriot Act on the grounds that the act is unconstitutional as applied to our client. The Patriot Act does not require probable cause—”

“I know the argument,” Judge Rosenthal said, cutting her off and motioning her back to her seat. “And I’m overruling the objection for the reasons previously stated in my opinion.”

“After the murders of Ja’dah Mahdi and Martin Burns, did the local authorities request access to the phone records and e-mails of the imams at the Islamic Learning Center as well as Mr. Mahdi?” Taj Deegan asked.

“That’s correct. They did.”

“And were you part of the team that searched those records?”

“Yes, ma’am. I supervised that team.”

“Did you find any text messages, e-mails, or phone conversations related to the murders of Ja’dah Mahdi and Martin Burns?”

Long testified about running searches through the digitized programs that recorded conversations and text messages. He explained the various search terms and parameters the authorities used to unearth the messages related to the murder investigation.

Once the technicalities had been covered, Taj Deegan made a Hollywood production of introducing the text messages into evidence and having them read to the jury. She had reproduced them on poster-board blowups that she placed on easels so the jury could read along. After she milked the testimony for all it was worth, she asked the witness whether he personally ran searches on text messages, e-mails, and phone conversations by Fatih Mahdi.

“Yes, ma’am, I did.”

“And did those searches reveal any text messages, e-mails, or phone conversations that would in any way implicate Mr. Mahdi in the murder of his wife or Martin Burns?”

This time, Special Agent Long hesitated for a second or two so that he could have the jury’s undivided attention.

“No, ma’am, they did not.”

“Your witness,” Deegan said.