RALEIGH (AP) — A man who is already serving 45 years in prison for a terror plot that aimed to kill U.S. troops read Quranic verses to jurors Monday and scolded the federal judge and prosecutors at the start of his trial on charges that he plotted to have government witnesses in his earlier trial beheaded.
Acting as his own attorney, Hysen Sherifi, 28, waved off opportunities to resist the government’s case against him. After opening statements by prosecutors, Sherifi read religious verses in Arabic and lectured jurors on their meaning in English.
“We fight for Allah. We have authority. Do you have authority to make laws for mankind?” Sherifi told jurors without describing who else he claimed to represent. “We do not make laws. We follow the laws that have been revealed by Allah.”
Sherifi was one of six Raleigh-area Muslims convicted last year for plotting to attack the Marine base in Quantico, Va., and overseas targets. The case hinged largely on surveillance tapes made by confidential informants paid by the FBI, with no direct evidence any of the men had actually agreed to kill anyone.
A prosecutor said in opening arguments Sherifi tried to hire a hit man to behead government witnesses who testified against him in his terror trial. His brother Shkumbin Sherifi, 22, and former special education teacher Nevine Aly Elshiekh, 47, of Raleigh pleaded guilty to lesser charges last week and could testify against Hysen Sherifi.
Hysen Sherifi was already in custody in the terror case when he asked another inmate in the same lockup to help him hire a hit man, said prosecutor Matthew Blue of the U.S. Justice Department’s counterterrorism section. The fellow inmate contacted the FBI, allowing federal agents to set up a sting operation that included a confidential informant posing as the representative of a shadowy assassin named Treetop.
At Hysen Sherifi’s direction, his brother and Elshiekh spent the first week of 2012 rounding up $5,000 to pay for the initial hit on a government witness, Blue said. Elshiekh hocked her gold jewelry to help finance the beheading, he said.
In the sting, a middleman collected the money and later provided faked pictures appearing to show the targeted witness beheaded. His co-conspirators brought Hysen Sherifi a photo, holding it against the wire separation in the jail’s visiting area, Blue said. Sherifi told the inmate claiming to have murder-for-hire connections he wasn’t satisfied with the killing, Blue said.
“He had one complaint; ‘I wish you wouldn’t have wasted a bullet. I wish you would have just chopped his head off,’ “ Blue told jurors.
Sherifi’s family are ethnic Albanians who fled Kosovo in 1999 during a brutal sectarian war with Serbs. Under questioning from U.S. District Judge W. Earl Britt on Monday, Hysen Sherifi said he is a citizen of Kosovo.
Britt allowed Hysen Sherifi to shout and otherwise lecture jurors for about 15 minutes before telling him to quit. He did.
- EMERY P. DALESIO, Associated Press