MIAMI – Testifying via video from Pakistan, a man accused by the U.S. of conspiring with an elderly Miami-based Muslim cleric to funnel thousands of dollars to Taliban terrorists insisted Monday the money was for innocent purposes, including a potato chip factory run by the cleric's son-in-law.
Ali Rehman was the first of as many as 11 witnesses expected to testify from an Islamabad hotel in defense of 77-year-old Hafiz Khan, who faces four terrorism support and conspiracy counts. Rehman is named in the same indictment and refused to come to the U.S. Other witnesses were unable to get U.S. visas in time.
Rehman said he handled three separate $10,000 transactions for Khan in 2008 and 2009. Most of the money, he testified, went to Anayat Ullah, who is married to Khan's daughter Husna and started the potato chip business with his father-in-law as an investor. Rehman said he has known Ullah since they were children in Pakistan's Swat Valley and wanted to do him a favor.
"That favor was that his father was sending him some money, and I used to deliver it to him or sent it to him," said Rehman...
Prosecutors earlier in the trial played intercepted conversations in which Khan is heard praising use of violence and citing specific attacks carried out by the Pakistani Taliban, including some in which U.S. citizens were killed. They also introduced evidence showing the Pakistani government shut down a religious school, or madrassa, owned by Khan because the Taliban were purportedly using it to indoctrinate children.
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