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The Tampa Tribune online - Jan 23, 2004
Tapes mire Al-Arian defense
By ELAINE SILVESTRINI
TAMPA - Less than a year before Sami Al-Arian and three codefendants are scheduled to go on trial, defense attorneys are trying to figure out a system to translate 20,000 mostly Arabic wiretap phone conversations.
The volume of evidence in the case has left attorneys scrambling to prepare a defense and frustrated U.S. Magistrate Thomas B. McCoun III, who repeatedly has chided lawyers about the need to plow ahead.
``This may be the largest case in the country'' with regard to the amount of evidence coming from the government, said federal public defender Fletcher Peacock, whose office is representing defendant Hatim Naji Fariz.
The four defendants are scheduled to go on trial in January 2005 on charges they provided financial support to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an organization that has claimed responsibility for numerous suicide bombings in Israel.
Attorneys met with McCoun on Thursday (1/22) to discuss issues relating to the pretrial exchange of evidence, known in legal parlance as discovery.
Peacock's office had planned to hire a team of translators and transcribers at an estimated cost of $1.5 million to $2 million. But Peacock said the committee that oversees budgets recently refused to provide the funding. ``We are in a budget crunch,'' said Peacock, who added the committee was concerned that it was being asked to pay for something that the prosecution should have done.
However Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Zitek said the government doesn't have written translations of most of the tapes. Translators listened to the tapes and prepared summaries of conversations deemed pertinent to the investigation, he said. Although the tapes have been declassified, Zitek didn't know whether the summaries are classified.
Zitek said his office has identified 800 conversations, or about 200 hours of tapes, that are relevant to the case. He said he would provide the defense with a list of those conversations.
http://news.tbo.com/news/MGAU904RRPD.html
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