The Last Judgment (37 page)

There were bomb-proof and soundproof panels on all the walls. At the front of the room, the high judicial bench had three red leather chairs behind it. But the bench was separated from the rest of the room by a clear, floor-to-ceiling bulletproof shield.

Off to the side was an enclosed booth, about twice the size of a telephone booth, where the witnesses would be protected during their questioning.

At the rear of the room, a one-way viewing window stretched across the entire wall. Behind it, unseen to the occupants of the courtroom, there was a bank of interpreters, who would translate the proceedings into English, Arabic, French, and Korean.

Will Chambers was at the right counsel table, at the end closest to the table of the public prosecutor. At the other end of the right table, Mira Ashwan, defense amicus curiae, was seated.

And between Will and Mira was Nigel Newhouse. The human-rights barrister had graciously cleared his schedule and agreed to appear as co-counsel. Then between Will and Nigel there was one empty chair, for the accused.

Tiny Heftland was seated in the audience section, fidgeting nervously.

Samir Zayed, the prosecutor, was flanked by two legal assistants and also had three clerks and two investigators seated in the row behind the his table.

The press was relegated to a separate viewing room down the hall, where they viewed the proceeding by closed-circuit TV. The lawyers were prohibited from giving interviews to the media during the course of the trial.

About twenty minutes after the scheduled opening of the trial, the three judges, all wearing scarlet robes with white, frilly ascots, entered the room from a side door and took their red leather seats behind the shield.

In the center was Saad Mustafa, acting as president, or chief judge, of the tribunal. The Palestinian lawyer was almost entirely bald, but with black bushy eyebrows above wire-rimmed glasses. His manner was animated and friendly. He proceeded to introduce the other two judges.

To Mustafa's left was Alain Verdexler from Belgium. He was in his late sixties, pale, with thinning sandy-white hair, worn slightly long. He had a courtly, almost bored, expression.

On the other side of the chief judge was Lee Kwong-ju, the South Korean. In his fifties, small, with a round, smooth face and dark-rimmed glasses, he nodded pleasantly when introduced, and his eyes studied the courtroom intensely, though his face was expressionless.

Zayed rose and entered his appearance. Will followed, introducing both himself and Newhouse as his co-counsel. Mira Ashwan was last to stand and introduce herself.

Zayed then stood up and raised numerous objections to the defense list of witnesses, in particular to the “obscenely absurd listing of Foreign Secretary Warren Mullburn,” as well as to their proffer of legal defenses and to the addition of Nigel Newhouse as additional counsel. Judge Mustafa indicated he would handle
all of the objections at the time of the defense case…except for the objection having to do with Newhouse.

“Barrister Newhouse,” Mustafa said, “you withdrew once before as the attorney for the accused. Now you return—just at the final moment. The time of trial. I am concerned that the conflict of interest that prompted you to withdraw previously might still exist—who knows? Perhaps you are doing your client more damage than good…”

Newhouse gestured for an opportunity to rebut the judge's insinuations, but Mustafa ignored him and plowed ahead.

“But I will allow you to continue as co-counsel for the accused. As long as your presence does not hinder or delay these proceedings, or cause confusion or prejudice. Do you understand?”

Newhouse explained that he did.

At that point four armed Palestinian guards brought in Gilead Amahn through a side security door. He was dressed in street clothes, which now hung a little on his frame and shuffled slowly, because his ankles were manacled and his wrists were handcuffed. One guard removed the restraints, and Gilead took the seat next to Will, who patted his back reassuringly as he sat down.

Then Zayed approached the lectern to give his opening argument, immediately turning toward the left of the judge's bench, where the eye of the closed-circuit TV camera was located.

His opening was fierce, rambling, and filled with hyperbole. Gilead was a “devilish monster of epic proportions, a beast of hatred and violence.” The prosecutor forecasted that they would prove he was at the very place of the crime, giving the symbolic order to destroy the “Noble Sanctuary” of Islam—that he was a known associate of the Knights of the Temple Mount cult group, and an insider of their terror-planning committee made up of Louis Lorraine, Yossin Ali Khalid, and Scott Magnit. Even more, he pointed out, swinging his arms athletically around him as he looked into the camera, the accused, that “vile murderer” Hassan Gilead Amahn, was the group's spiritual “messiah”—the supposed reincarnation of the Caliph al-Hakim. “Having posed as the
resurrected person of the last and greatest Caliph,” Zayed went on, “he possessed great spiritual power to further deceive and inflame his followers—the deluded Knights of the Temple Mount.”

Now Will was getting the picture. This was no opening statement. It was the public prosecutor's most creative press conference yet. Barred from giving official interviews to the media, he was delivering it to them instead via closed-circuit TV from the courtroom of the tribunal itself.

Then Zayed proceeded with an even craftier tactic. He described, at great length, the history of the Druze religion. How it had begun from the mind of two preachers, a Persian Afghani and a Turk, who taught a “religion of infidels” based on the “lying belief and utter falsity that the ruler of the Fatimid Empire, Caliph al-Hakim, was the perfect manifestation of God in human form—that after al-Hakim mysteriously disappeared from Cairo in the year 1021, he would one day return, a thousand years later, and bring with him God's Golden Age.”

The prosecutor pointed out how the Druze disciples had been driven out of Egypt as infidels by the “holy followers of Allah.” And, Zayed asked rhetorically, how can we blame the Muslims for that? After all, the Druze religion believes in reincarnation, and had merged Christian mysticism, Judaism, Islam, and Persian Zoroastrianism “into an unholy mix of lies and false ideas.” The Druze declare, he explained, that they are not of the Arabs, but are from a race of Persians, Turks, and Kurds, intermixed with the Christian Crusaders for whom, during the Middle Ages, they acted as guides in the Middle East.

“The Druze men fight in the Israeli army, the IDF, and are the enemies of the Arab nations. But after a thousand years, that false religion has given forth birth, finally, to a bastard beast of murder and mayhem—the subcult of the Knights of the Temple Mount.”

Will Chambers could not help but grudgingly admire the creative and seductive story the public prosecutor was spinning. It
was polemical genius with public-relations charm. According to Zayed, the Knights further twisted the heresy of the Druze, linking themselves, historically, to the Templar Knights of the Crusader period. Then they used ancient Egyptian calendars and dating systems to construct a reincarnation date for the last Caliph that was a number of years
prior
to the full thousand years after 1021, as believed by the Druze. They predicted that the Caliph messiah would have to be Egyptian—which Gilead was—and be both from Cairo and then later reappear in Cairo—again those elements satisfied by Gilead—and have to match the religious upbringing of al-Hakim, who had a Shiite Muslim background and a Christian mother. In this latter regard, the prosecutor argued, Hassan Gilead Amahn fit the bill perfectly.

But the
coup de grace
was Zayed's explanation of the motive of Gilead and the Knights for destroying the “Noble Sanctuary” structures. They had, he pointed out, selectively accepted the Gospel predictions of Jesus, who said that the end would not come until the desecration had occurred within the Jewish Temple. But was that their real motive?

Zayed asked the question, but delivered another answer. That was their theological reason—but they harbored an even darker motive. The bombing of the mosques of the Muslims was, he submitted, a “bloodthirsty payback” for the perceived persecution of their Druze ancestors by Muslims over the last thousand years.

“This,” the prosecutor exclaimed in closing, “was actually an attack not just on our sacred site—nor against the Muslims slaughtered—blown to bits—while praying on their knees—it was an attack on Arabs and Muslims everywhere.”

Then he strode over to the defense table, pointed at Gilead Amahn, and declared, “Behold the man, this accused—who must pay for his blasphemous, murderous acts of violent hatred.”

Lastly, he turned to face the judges and add his final edict.

“He must pay with his life.”

55

“M
AY IT PLEASE THIS TRIBUNAL
,” Will Chambers said as he began his opening statement, “I will not promise you passion or rhetoric. I won't try the ill-fated tactic of trying to inflame your judgment with personal attacks, violent epithets, or tales of genocide. You've heard enough of that from my opponent.

“I promise only proof, evidence, and facts. That ought to be enough, for that is the stuff of justice. And if this tribunal cannot find my client innocent on the basis of facts we will present—facts that are cold, hard, unmistakable, and that transcend politics, perhaps much to the embarrassment of some very powerful people—if this tribunal cannot judge on the basis of the clear evidence and ignore the geopolitical implications, then we have learned nothing in the thousand years since the wars that bloodied the streets of this city, the clash between the world's three great religions as they struggled for control of Jerusalem…and the Temple Mount.”

Will stepped away from the lectern, adjusted his headset slightly, and continued, gazing directly into the eyes of the three members of the tribunal, who sat silently behind the shield.

He then described the three main points that would characterize his defense. First, he said, the defense would wholeheartedly agree with the prosecution that the leadership council of the Knights of the Temple Mount was guilty of mass murder of both Jews and Muslims.

But second, Will stressed, Gilead Amahn was no follower—let alone a leader—of that secret religious cult. Even the Druze
had condemned the violent breakaway subgroup—why should we believe, Will asked, that Gilead Amahn, an evangelical Christian, would, in such a short time, have been converted to the Knight's violent ideology? Gilead's mere presence at the scene, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and the promised signs of His coming, was no proof that he was a conspirator.

Lastly, Will promised that the defense would launch a “fearless and ruthless pursuit of truth—revealing the dark forces that lurked behind the Knights and unmasking the true culprits behind the Temple Mount massacre.”

When Will concluded and turned back to the defense table, his eyes met those of Samir Zayed, who was smirking and shaking his head.

The tribunal took a two-minute break before the prosecution introduced its first witness. In the interim, Newhouse bent down next to Will at the end of the counsel table.

“When I was much younger,” he began, “and a great deal more foolish, I once promised my little daughter a certain birthday present. It was a much-sought-after doll—one of those dolls that was rather all the rage at the time, I'm afraid, advertised all over the telly. But by the time I got to the stores they were all sold out. So, at her birthday party I was a bit of a cad—couldn't deliver what I promised.”

Will knew where he was going, and smiled. “One of the cardinal rules of trial law, I know,” he replied. “Never make promises you can't keep. So…you're wondering about my ‘unmasking the true culprits' statement…”

“Yes. Have to say I was. Hope you can do it, of course. That would be rather a brilliant turnabout, wouldn't it?”

“I know you don't have the benefit of all the evidence I've turned up,” Will said in a hushed voice. “Some of it you haven't yet seen for lack of time. And some of it…well, honestly…I've kept from you for your own benefit. I don't know how else to say it, Nigel. If my defense blows up—and it could—there could be
some dangerous repercussions. I'll be the target here—no reason for you to catch the shrapnel.”

Nigel's eyes widened only slightly, and his mouth turned up at the sides. He paused for a moment, then rose slowly, patted Will on the shoulder and returned to his seat.

Then the three judges appeared, all in the room rose to their feet, and the prosecution called its first witness.

Dr. Azur el Umal entered the witness enclosure, took the oath, and sat down. He was a middle-aged man, with black hair combed up in a kind of pompadour look and a prominent nose that was slightly crooked, as if it had once been broken but not set properly.

El Umal was a PhD in chemical engineering with a specialty in explosives. He had, he explained, received training over the years in the development of explosive devices—with Interpol and Scotland Yard. He was presently employed, as he had been for many years, in the Preventative Security Organization and the General Intelligence Service of the Palestinian Authority.

“My job is to give expert opinions on the types of explosive devices used by various persons and groups, both legal and illicit, including violent organizations and those using terrorist tactics, after an attack or counterattack takes place.”