The defense petition contains several startling claims of evidence linking others to the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The blast killed 168 people. McVeigh, the defense says, was a patsy used by neo-Nazis and international terrorists.
The government has consistently said that McVeigh and co-defendant Terry Nichols carried out the attack. Neither Jones nor prosecutors would comment on Tuesday's filing. U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch Friday renewed his longstanding gag order on lawyers in the case. Jones' petition Tuesday was the second time in 10 days that he asked for a delay in the trial. Matsch last week rejected a defense motion to cancel, delay or move the trial because of the publicity and ordered jury selection to proceed Monday. The defense request called for eleventh-hour action by an appeals court that would overrule a judge in a volatile case awaiting trial. Matsch in January limited defense access to some U.S. intelligence records. The defense, however, says it has made a strong case for foreign involvement, particularly by a cadre of Oklahoma-based neo-Nazis and extremists, and is entitled to investigate further. |
The defense says that:
Also at the meeting, the defense says, were Ramzi Yousef, accused mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and three other terrorists. The meeting was to discuss bombings, Angeles told defense investigators on videotape and in a signed statement. The Rocky Mountain News disclosed the claim of a Nichols link to Yousef in January. * Saudi Arabian intelligence officials told the U.S. government on the day of the bombing that Iraqi-hired terrorists were responsible.
Mahon told the Rocky Mountain News he had nothing to do with the bombing. But he confirmed that he got money he believes came from Iraq. He said he received money orders for $ 100 a month starting in 1991 shortly after sending Iraqi representatives copies of videotapes of anti-Gulf War demonstrations he had sponsored in Tulsa and Chicago. The money orders were mailed from the same Washington ZIP code of the Iraqi interests section and stopped a month after the bombing. ''A hundred dollars a month is all, for (expletive) sake,'' Mahon said. ''That's not much. I can barely afford to buy a pizza, let alone a bomb.'' In Tuesday's petition, the defense argued that Nichols and neo-Nazis operating from an eastern Oklahoma white supremacist compound called Elohim City carried out the attack. A German national, Andreas Strassmeir, was living there at the time of the bombing. Federal informant Carol Howe said he talked about the need to blow up federal installations. Strassmeir, who was in the U.S. illegally at the time, returned to Germany in January 1996 without being interviewed by the FBI. Howe told the FBI two days after the bombing that she had infiltrated Elohim City and warned her contact that the group was discussing the need to take action against the federal government. Jones said he will tell a jury that: ''Timothy McVeigh's defense is that 1) he did not rent the Ryder truck, 2) he did not assemble a bomb . . . 3) he did not drive the Ryder truck to Oklahoma City and 4), he did not detonate the bomb.'' |