Four for Four

To each of the 38 charges, the forewoman of the jury gave the same answer. On conspiracy to bomb buildings: "Guilty." On explosive destruction of property: "Guilty." On assault on a federal officer: "Guilty." Again and again and again: "Guilty." But when that calm recitation ended, a different kind of oratory erupted. "Injustice! We are the victims!" shouted Mohammad Salameh, one of the four men on trial, pointing at the jury and pounding his fist on the table. "Allah-Akbar ((God is great))!" shouted the other defendants. "Al-Nasr lil-Islam ((Victory to Islam))!" And from the gallery came a retort New Yorkers in the court could understand. Cried the brother of defendant Nidal Ayyad: "You are all f---ing liars! My brother is innocent."

It was one year and six days after the explosion that killed six people, injured more than a thousand and tore a five-story hole in the World Trade Center. After a five-month trial, a jury of eight women and four men had convicted each of the four defendants on all charges in connection with the bombing. The prosecution called the bombing the greatest terrorist attack ever to take place on American soil. The case, however, did not achieve the | pyrotechnics of the crime. For five months, the jury members twisted in their leather swivel chairs while the government paraded 207 witnesses and more than 1,000 exhibits before them. Only once or twice did proceedings break the staid atmosphere, most notably when a prosecution witness, asked to identify two suspects, pointed to members of the jury.

Only at the end did it all come together. In a masterly six-hour summation, U.S. Attorney Henry DePippo crafted a cohesive argument out of the morass of evidence. Tracing the conspiracy back to April 1992, DePippo wove together phone calls, fingerprints, chemical analysis, chunks of metal and parking stubs into a narrative that led to the on-ramp of the B-2 parking level of the World Trade Center. Throughout the tale, he clearly delineated the roles of Mohammad Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Mahmud Abouhalima and Ahmad Ajaj in the criminal partnership.

By the time of DePippo's summation, the four defense teams had broken ranks. During their cross-examinations of government witnesses, defense attorneys cooperated in raising doubts about each part of the prosecution's reconstruction in hopes of raising reasonable doubt about the overall story.

By the end, however, each defense lawyer was offering a distinct case for his client's acquittal. The government had built a case on "lies and deception," boomed Abouhalima's attorney in a closing argument that sounded more like a sermon. Ayyad's lawyer was less passionate, plodding through a four-hour summation that had the jurors nodding with fatigue. On one occasion, the judge fell into a deep sleep and had to be nudged awake by a court clerk.