Attorney: Man charged with Hamas ties was tortured

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
A man charged with laundering money for the Palestinian militant group Hamas was "threatened, tortured, beaten and made to fear for his life" before he signed statements admitting being part of the terrorist group, his lawyer told a federal judge Friday. Muhammad Salah would never have signed the statements after his 1993 arrest if he had not been deprived of sleep by his Israeli captors and made to sit in a tiny chair with a foul-smelling hood over his head, his attorney Michael E. Deutsch told U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve. Prosecutors say that Salah's statements were made voluntarily and therefore meet the standards imposed by the American system of justice for evidence used at criminal trials. Salah was born in Jerusalem and moved to the United States in 1970. He is a naturalized American citizen and has long lived in the Chicago suburb of Bridgeview, Illinois.