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Al-Qaeda Suspect Salim Faces Resentencing Today for Stabbing of Jail Guard
Suspected al-Qaeda leader Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who plunged a comb into the eye of a jail guard in 2000 while awaiting trial on terrorism charges, faces as long as life imprisonment when he is resentenced today.
Salim, 52, a Sudanese national, pleaded guilty to stabbing officer Louis Pepe with a plastic comb on Nov. 1, 2000, as part of a larger plot to attack his lawyers and force a judge to assign him new counsel. At the time, he was being held at the federal jail in Lower Manhattan awaiting trial as an alleged planner of the 1998 terror attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts in New York sentenced Pepe to 32 years in prison in 2004. A federal appeals court overturned that sentence in 2008, ruling that Batts erred when she concluded Salim’s crime didn’t meet the legal standard for terrorism. The appeals court said a federal sentencing guideline recommended a longer term based on Salim’s actions.
“In light of Salim’s truly violent and horrifying conduct, his attempt to pervert the judicial process and other aggravating factors in this case, this court should impose a guidelines sentence and sentence Salim to life imprisonment,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Kolodner said in court papers.
Supermaximum-Security
Salim is serving his term at the federal supermaximum- security penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, his lawyer Richard Lind said in a telephone interview. Salim will attend the hearing through a video link instead of appearing in court.
Lind has previously argued against a life prison term saying that his client suffers from asthma and kidney disease. He declined to comment on what he intended to say in court today.
As Pepe escorted him to his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan for a meeting with lawyers, Salim knocked Pepe down, blinded him with hot sauce and drove the comb through the guard’s eye and into his brain.
Pepe suffered what prosecutors said were “devastating” injuries as a result of the attack, including severe brain damage, and lost much of the use of the right side of his body. He will give a statement to the court prior to sentencing, court papers show.
Salim pleaded guilty in April 2002 to conspiracy and attempted murder in the stabbing. He still faces trial for the embassy bombings case.
The U.S. said Salim orchestrated and directed the plot for at least five months. Schooled as an electrical engineer, Salim was a close associate of accused terror leader Osama bin Laden and was once a member of al-Qaeda’s ruling council, a witness testified at the 2001 Embassy bombing trial.
The U.S. argued Salim’s crimes deserved an enhancement for terrorism because he was attempting to coerce the federal judge presiding over the embassy case to assign new lawyers.
The case is U.S. v. Salim, 01-CR-0002, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
To contact the reporter on this story: Patricia Hurtado in New York at pathurtado@bloomberg.net.
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