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TERROR TRIAL
Pole-vault questions for father of suspect
Defense tries to show he said what FBI wanted to hear
Demian Bulwa, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, March 10, 2006
Source

Sacramento -- Do terrorists pole vault?

It's an unusual question, but testimony Thursday in U.S. District Court suggested it might be relevant in the trial of a Lodi ice cream truck driver.

Umer Hayat, 48, is accused of lying to the FBI by denying firsthand knowledge of Pakistani terrorist camps and by denying that his 23-year-old son attended one in late 2003.

He made the denial June 4 at the FBI's Sacramento office, but changed his story when pressed. During six hours of videotaped interviews, he said that he visited a below-ground paramilitary camp in late 2004.

Hayat confessed, according to the government. But defense attorneys said he fabricated the admissions after he was psychologically bullied, and told agents whatever they wanted to hear.

At the camp, said Hayat, whose primary language is Pashto, more than 1,000 men from around the world -- including white Americans -- fired high-powered rifles, swung curved swords and learned to pole vault across bodies of water.

"They got those stick, the long stick," Hayat said on the videotape, which was played this week for jurors, who followed along in a transcript. "You know ... when you want to jump something, they was trying to stick like here and jump maybe 16 feet over there."

"They used it like a vaulting pole," responded FBI Agent Timothy Harrison.

"Yes sir," Hayat said.

"They must have been very tall ceilings," Harrison said. "This is a very deep basement?"

"Very deep basement, yes," Hayat said. "Very, very deep basement, yes."

Hayat's attorney, Johnny Griffin, took aim at the details of the confession Thursday while cross-examining Harrison. He suggested that his client wasn't making sense when he recalled that all of the trainees at the camp wore ninja-style masks.

Griffin then asked about the pole vaulting.

"You didn't take that as a literal description of what was happening, did you?" Griffin asked.

Harrison responded: "I believe at times that Umer Hayat was a poor judge of the distances involved in jumping with a pole."

According to an online version of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the pole vault was "originally a practical means of clearing objects, such as ditches, brooks, and fences," and became a competitive sport in the middle of the 19th century. Today it is an event judged on how high a bar the vaulter can clear using a long, flexible pole.

Hayat's son, Hamid Hayat, is accused of supporting terrorism by attending the training camp and faces three counts related to initially lying about it. His federal trial in front of a separate jury started last month.

Starting Tuesday, the juries will begin hearing some testimony simultaneously. But they will issue separate verdicts.

The younger Hayat's trial also revolves around his alleged videotaped confession at the FBI office. In his five-hour statement, Hayat described attending a camp in a mountaintop field in a different province of Pakistan with 35 to 200 Pakistani men.

On the videotapes, father and son seemed to have difficulty understanding the agents in English, and they gave many answers that had been previously suggested by the agents -- who did most of the talking.

However, as the prosecution has stressed, the suspects volunteered new information to the agents on videotape, disagreed at times with questions, and never denied an involvement with the training camp.

Umer Hayat is a naturalized U.S. citizen who moved from Pakistan 30 years ago. His son was born in Stockton but has spent half his life in Pakistan.

E-mail Demian Bulwa at dbulwa@sfchronicle.com.

Page B - 6

interesting

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... ss.bayarea

His father, Umer Hayat, 48, said he visited the same training camp in late 2004 out of curiosity. However, he provided details that were at odds with his son's account of a small camp in a field. The father said he witnessed more than a thousand men from around the world wearing ninja masks, firing machine guns, swinging swords and learning to pole vault in a giant basement.

So people learn to set off explosives, and hope to vault of a big wall before the big bang? Sounds like a Bond movie in the making!

rainbowgirl28 wrote:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/14/BAGK4HNF2Q1.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea

His father, Umer Hayat, 48, said he visited the same training camp in late 2004 out of curiosity. However, he provided details that were at odds with his son's account of a small camp in a field. The father said he witnessed more than a thousand men from around the world wearing ninja masks, firing machine guns, swinging swords and learning to pole vault in a giant basement.

I don't know about you guys but thats exactly how my PV practices go.

sounds like fun to bad my practices only include the swords guns and pole vaulting we dont have the ninja masks

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 9/LODI.TMP

Umer Hayat, for example, told FBI agents that he had visited his son's camp out of curiosity in late 2004. While the son spoke of training with as few as 35 men in a field, the father described an underground room in a different province of Pakistan where 1,000 masked men, including Americans, fired machine guns, swung curved swords and learned to pole vault across bodies of water.

"You didn't take that as a literal description of what was happening, did you?" the elder Hayat's attorney, Johnny Griffin, asked FBI agent Timothy Harrison.

"I believe at times that Umer Hayat was a poor judge of the distances involved in jumping with a pole," Harrison responded.

Now he says he faked the story.

I guess we no longer have to worry about terrorist pole vaulting into our second story windows

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ ... 60305/1001

Hayat: Story faked
Out on time served, Lodi man says his tales of terror camps were pulled from TV, newspapers and 'Mutant Ninja Turtles'

Jeff Hood
Lodi Bureau Chief
Published Saturday, Aug 26, 2006
Umer Hayat speaks about his ordeal with his daughter Raheela and his grandson Jial Usman at his side at his home in Lodi on Friday. Hayat was sentenced Friday to time served and three years’ probation.
Credit: Victor J Blue/ The Record

SACRAMENTO - Umer Hayat made it all up, he said.

There was no underground terrorist training camp. There were no masked warriors from Chechnya, Afghanistan, Malaysia and other countries learning to pole vault over water obstacles. Lodi's Muslim leaders weren't part of al-Qaida.

The 48-year-old Lodi man said Friday that he concocted the story because FBI agents failed to believe him in June 2005 when he denied that either he or his son had any connection with terrorist camps in Pakistan.

His vivid images were nothing more than his recollection of what he had seen on television and in newspapers, along with "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" videos his family watched, Hayat said.

"My son is not a terrorist, and they were not believing the truth," Hayat said, referring to FBI agents. "They keep questioning over, like, five, six hours. Every question 10 times, 11 times. I was very tired, because it was 2 a.m. in the morning. I wanted to go home, and I just made a story."

It cost him more than a year of his life.

Hayat spoke freely for the first time in nearly 15 months Friday, after U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. sentenced him to time already served in custody and three years' probation. Hayat, originally charged with lying to the FBI for denying he and his son had visited terrorist camps, pleaded guilty May 31 to lying about the amount of cash he was taking to Pakistan for a 2003 visit.

Hayat, who owes the government $3,700 in fines and court costs, said he hopes eventually to get a job working with computers and might resume selling ice cream on Lodi's streets from his beige van as soon as today. He repeatedly stressed that he loves the country in which he has lived for 30 years.

"This is my country. I'm a U.S. citizen. My children are born here," said Hayat, naturalized in 1993. "I'm going to die here and bury here, my friend."

Hayat's eldest son, 23-year-old Hamid Hayat, was found guilty in April of supporting terrorists by attending a training camp in 2003 and 2004, and of lying to the FBI. He faces up to 39 years in federal prison, but his sentencing has been postponed as defense attorneys seek a new trial.

With lawyers Johnny Griffin and Silky Sahnana by his side, Umer Hayat speaks to the media Friday in front of the federal courthouse in Sacramento
Credit: Victor J Blue/ The Record
"I'm still missing my son in the jail," Umer Hayat said. "He is innocent, and I hope they give him a fair trial."

Umer Hayat served 11 months in jail and was released May 1 under house arrest after his trial ended with the jury deadlocked on both lying charges. Those charges were dismissed in return for Hayat's guilty plea related to the $28,053 he and his family had in their possession when they were questioned at Virginia's Dulles International Airport in 2003.

"We think the sentence imposed by the court is wholly appropriate, given the false statements Umer Hayat made in 2003 and 2005," Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Tice-Raskin said, still convinced Hayat lied last year to the FBI. "We think justice has been served."

Hayat, however, isn't so sure. He said he was trying to help the FBI with its investigation by agreeing to wear a hidden microphone during conversations with Lodi's Muslim spiritual leaders and had no idea he might be arrested for his statements until his attorney, Johnny L. Griffin III, arrived at the FBI office and ended the interview.

"For everybody - all American people or Muslim people - any questions from the FBI, I would advise them to don't talk to them without a lawyer," said Hayat, adding he was unaware at the time of his right not to speak to investigators.

"They were doing their job, but they got the wrong people."

Hayat said it was unfair that he and his son were swept up in an investigation that initially focused on Lodi's Muslim spiritual leaders, imams Shabbir Ahmed and Mohammed Adil Khan. Although he said the U.S. justice system worked, calling jurors "responsible people," he lashed out at paid FBI informant Naseem Khan, who infiltrated Lodi's Muslim community and earned the Hayats' trust.

Khan, who was paid more than $200,000 in wages and expenses by the FBI for his work in Lodi over three years, later testified against the Hayats.

"He's a big liar," Hayat said, reminding that Khan once told the FBI he saw Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's right-hand man, in Lodi in the 1990s. Prosecutors later acknowledged that was highly unlikely. "Somebody else is going to pay him money, and he's going to do something against somebody else."


Hayat said he rejected a deal prosecutors offered: In return for his testimony against his son, the government would drop the charges against the elder Hayat.

"They wanted me to say (Hamid Hayat) is a terrorist," Hayat said. "I said no way. I love my kids, and I knew my son's case."

The charges cost Umer Hayat all his financial assets, he said, including his home, which was mortgaged by his brother to pay attorneys' fees. Now Hayat, his wife and children live in a converted garage on the Acacia Street property.

He said he isn't worried that some Lodi residents may fear he does have connections with terrorist groups in Pakistan, because he has been embraced warmly by the community since he returned to Lodi on May 1 with a monitoring device locked on his ankle. The device was cut off at the U.S. District Courthouse before he left Friday.

"Even the kids passing by say, 'Hey, Umer, what's going on? Why did they put you in the jail?'" Hayat said. "The people here have known me for so many years."

Hayat said he has been taking classes since Aug. 2 through CalWORKs' Stockton office to learn job-seeking skills. He said he hopes he can apply those skills a finding a full-time job and make ice-cream sales a part-time occupation.

"I'm a hard worker," Hayat said. "I worked in the fields. I pruned grapes and picked peaches."

His immediate plans, however, were to attend Friday's Muslim prayer services.

"I'm going to pray today and thank Allah for giving me freedom," Hayat said, adding he supports President Bush and does not sympathize with any terrorist organization. "I'm glad it's over now."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... ss.bayarea

Lodi man convicted of aiding terrorists gets 24 years in prison
Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, September 10, 2007

(09-10) 12:57 PDT SACRAMENTO - A federal judge sentenced a Lodi man today to 24 years in prison for supporting terrorists by training with them in his family's homeland of Pakistan.
Hamid Hayat, 25, was convicted in April 2006 of providing and attempting to conceal material support and resources to terrorists and of making false statements to federal agents.
At a hearing today in Sacramento, U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell Jr. agreed with federal prosecutors that Hayat believed in violent jihad, had trained at a terrorist camp in Pakistan and returned to the United States in May 2005 to commit terrorist acts once he was ordered to do so.
His conviction was a significant victory for authorities who said they had broken up a budding al Qaeda-linked terror operation in Lodi after his arrest, but presented a murky case during a trial that revolved around controversial confessions.
Federal prosecutors had sought a 35-year sentence, while the defense had asked for nine years.
Hayat's attorneys, Dennis Riodan and Donald Horgan, plan to appeal his conviction and sentence in part by asserting ineffective assistance of counsel, they wrote in court papers.
In May, Burrell denied Hayat's bid for a new trial, rejecting defense assertions of juror misconduct and faulty evidence.
Hayat's father, Umer Hayat, also was charged in the case, but the jury deadlocked in his trial and he has since pleaded guilty to an unrelated charge.
The cases were the product of an aggressive FBI investigation of Muslims in Lodi, which the agency opened soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The FBI hired an informant to infiltrate the community and get close to a pair of Pakistani clerics who were in this country on religious-worker visas. One was the imam of Lodi's only mosque; the other was spearheading an effort to build a private school nearby for Central Valley Muslim youths.
The informant, 32-year-old Pakistan native Naseem Khan, stumbled upon Hamid Hayat, who expressed enthusiasm for radical groups in Pakistan, in the summer of 2002. Khan, who had lived in Lodi before moving to Oregon, became Hayat's best friend while instigating talk of holy war and wearing a hidden microphone.
The younger Hayat was born in Stockton and grew up in Lodi; his father came to the United States from Pakistan 30 years ago and is a naturalized citizen.
The dual trials in Sacramento centered on the FBI's lengthy, videotaped interrogations of the Hayats in June 2005 at the agency's office in the capital. The tapes of the younger man's provocative talks with Khan had made him an investigative target.
The father and son spoke matter-of-factly with agents about paramilitary training and the alleged existence of a terrorist cell in Lodi.
Defense attorneys said at trial that the men had been manipulated into telling agents whatever they wanted to hear and had cooperated in a misguided attempt to be helpful. The men often gave answers suggested by agents, who did most of the talking.
Their confessions featured conflicting and sometimes bizarre details. Umer Hayat, for instance, told FBI agents that he had visited his son's camp out of curiosity in late 2004.
And although the son, who has a sixth-grade education, told agents he had trained with as few as 35 men in a mountaintop field outside the Pakistani city of Balakot, the father described a basement in a different province where 1,000 masked men, including Americans, fired machine guns, swung swords and learned to pole vault across rivers.
E-mail Henry K. Lee at hlee@sfchronicle.com.