Monzer al-Kassar argued Wednesday that he was merely helping Spanish intelligence when he explored a deal to sell weapons to Colombian terrorists for use against the United States.

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Syrian arms dealer argued Wednesday that he was merely helping Spanish intelligence when he explored a deal to sell weapons to Colombian terrorists for use against the United States.The attorney for Monzer al-Kassar, 62, told a Southern District of New York jury in closing argument that his client never intended to sell weapons to the Colombian rebel group FARC and was only continuing his long history as an intelligence asset to Spain."There is no case here," attorney Ira Sorkin told the jury in Judge Jed Rakoff's courtroom. "This was a sting against an individual in Spain created out of whole cloth by the [Drug Enforcement Administration] using paid informants to get al-Kassar."But prosecutor Brendan McGuire came back in rebuttal to call the defense of aiding Spanish intelligence a "cat-and-mouse claim.""Al-Kassar and Moreno are guilty of all the charges in the indictment," McGuire said. "This is not a close case. The evidence is overwhelming."McGuire and Boyd Johnson, Assistant U.S. Attorneys for the Southern District, have spent 2 1/2 weeks trying to prove that al-Kassar and co-defendant Luis Felipe Moreno Godoy, 59, conspired to provide support to foreign terrorists and kill Americans. The pair allegedly agreed to sell millions of dollars in weapons to two undercover informants posing as rebels with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC.According to the government, they agreed to arrange the delivery of weapons purchased in Eastern Europe and shipped to Suriname for transport overland to Colombia. The weapons in the alleged deal included anti-aircraft missiles to be used by FARC against U.S. helicopters in Colombia as well as grenade launchers, machine guns and millions of rounds of ammunition.Their cover was a purportedly legitimate sale of arms brokered between Romania and Nicaragua.During the sting, more than $400,000 was wired from New York to Spain as down payment, but no weapons ever changed hands.Al-Kassar has been described by prosecutors as one of the world's most prolific and shadowy arms dealers. The government says that since the 1970s he has provided military equipment to violent factions in Nicaragua, Brazil, Cyprus, Bosnia, Croatia, Somalia, Iran and Iraq.The alleged conspiracy took place between February 2006 and May 2007, and culminated with al-Kassar's arrest in Spain and the arrest of Godoy in Romania on June 7, 2007.The evidence at trial included a tape recording by an informant of a December 2006 meeting in a Beirut hotel room and accounts of three days of meetings in February 2007 with the two purported FARC representatives, Carlos and Luis, at al-Kassar's house in Marbella, Spain. The Marbella meetings were not recorded -- a fact the defense tried to exploit as a hole in the prosecution.The evidence also included conversations between al-Kassar and his high-level contact with Spanish intelligence in the first three months of 2007 and two recorded phone calls on June 7, 2007, the day he was arrested with a briefcase full of incriminating materials.The conversations and the calls were painted by the defense as evidence that al-Kassar was keeping the intelligence officer informed as to the progress of a deal he never intended to complete.But the prosecutors said that testimony and the recordings show al-Kassar was lying to the official because he never mentioned FARC and continued to present the deal as a legitimate one between Romania and Nicaragua."It's about al-Kassar protecting himself," McGuire said Wednesday, adding that the calls were all "about his risk of arrest."Johnson, in his closing on Tuesday, said the "cat-and-mouse" defense, in which the defendants say "they were trying to investigate the informants themselves for Spanish intelligence, is a defense that makes absolutely no sense.""Al-Kassar lied to the very intelligence officer he claims was working on the deal," Johnson said. "They were working for themselves."The motive, Johnson said, was that the two men "were obsessed with the money" -- more than 3 million euros in exchange for providing missiles, rifles, explosives and other material.And the two men, he said, "knew that the weapons were going to be used to shoot down the Apaches, the Hawks" -- U.S. helicopters in Colombia.Sorkin, of Dickstein Shapiro, tried to turn it around in his closing, saying the materials in al-Kassar's briefcase were so extensive that his client must have been planning to turn them over to his intelligence contact on the day he was arrested, for there was no reason he would otherwise be carrying them.The materials included end user certificates for the shipment of materials, correspondence with the Romanian arms maker and a company brochure, photographs of the alleged arsenal, a map showing Suriname and Colombia, and a schematic of the ship that would carry the arms and even a picture of the ship."The government would have you believe he would be running off to show pictures of the ship to the No. 2 FARC guy" in Bucharest, Sorkin said."We know also that this whole thing was developed by the DEA," he said. "It was a sting operation. It wasn't real and, at no time in this case ... did Godoy or Kassar ever say they were out to kill Americans or blow up Americans or harm Americans."Roger Stavis of Gallet, Dreyer & Berkey represents Godoy. In his closing on Tuesday, Stavis said that "al-Kassar was not an informant and Moreno was not an informant doing the bidding of Spanish intelligence -- they were assets. They provided information over the years."By contrast, Stavis said, the government informants were former narcotics traffickers themselves who "were paid millions of dollars over the years" to do the DEA's bidding, including "hundreds of thousands of dollars in this case.""The DEA's investigation of this case was an absolute disgrace," Stavis said. "You can't trust it and if it's the foundation for this prosecution, then their case is crumbling."The two men are charged with money laundering, and four conspiracies: conspiracy to provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization; conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals; conspiracy to kill U.S. officers or employees; and conspiracy to acquire and use an anti-aircraft missile.
If convicted the pair face possible life sentences. After being charged by Judge Rakoff, the jury began its deliberations and had yet to reach a verdict by the end of the day.

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