Oakland news Jan.14.11 michigan

[Sam hamama <hamama_sam@yahoo.com>]

Man not spy for Saddam Hussein, jury says

Issam (Sam) Hamama may have lied about his ties to Iraqi intelligence, but that didn't make him a full-fledged spy for Saddam Hussein's regime.

That's what a federal jury in Detroit concluded Friday when it acquitted Hamama of working as an Iraqi spy in the U.S. during the 1990s, but convicted him of lying to investigators.

Hamama, 60, formerly of Sterling Heights, was convicted of lying about his contact with foreign governments when he sought security clearance in 2003 to work as a U.S. military translator in Iraq.

"He might have made some bad choices," Antoinette Monastiere, one of the jurors, said of the defendant. But, she stressed, "there wasn't enough concrete evidence that he knowingly and willingly" was a spy for Iraq.

"His associations with diplomats don't make him guilty," said Monastiere of Roseville, a first-time juror whose experience in a case involving national security made her "nervous, more nervous than you can imagine."

At trial, federal prosecutors portrayed Hamama as a liar who betrayed the U.S. government by concealing his life as Agent 6129 -- a paid undercover spy for the Iraqi Intelligence Service who collected information about U.S. activities, then reported it back to Iraq.

The government, court records show, didn't know about that life until Hamama's name surfaced in documents that were seized after the fall of Hussein's regime in 2003. That year, Hamama applied for his translator job, declaring that he had never had contact with foreign governments.

That, the government argued, was a lie.

Maybe so, but that didn't mean he was a spy for a foreign country, countered Hamama's lawyer, Haytham Faraj.

"We feel vindicated," Faraj said after the verdict.

At trial, Faraj described Hamama as a man who loves both the U.S. and Iraq, and whose activities were wrongfully portrayed by the government. He conceded that Hamama did have contact with Iraqi officials in the U.S., but that he thought they were diplomats, not intelligence agents. He also told jurors that his client simply passed along benign information about Iraqi Christians in the U.S.

"Clearly, we've known that he wasn't a spy, and the jury thought that as well" Faraj said. During the trial, some witnesses praised him for his work as a military translator in Iraq. "I would trust my life" with Hamama, retired Lt. Col. James Oliver testified.

Hamama faces up to five years in prison. He will be sentenced May 18.

 

 

 

Sam Hamama

 

 

 

 

 

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