A man who used several aliases to evade the American justice system can’t reliably be placed at the crime scene where a controversial imam was found stabbed to death in Arizona in 1990, the accused’s lawyers said at an extradition hearing Friday.
American authorities collected several different names while gathering evidence in case, but not all of them have been properly linked back to Glen Cusford Francis, argued Karen Molle and David Chow.
Several names connected to Francis have been presented already to Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Keith Yamauchi during the extradition hearing. On Friday, two more were added to the mix: Benjamin Q. Wall and Benjamin Wall Phillips.
The names are key, Francis’ lawyers argued, because authorities connected them to DNA evidence gathered at the Tucson, Ariz. mosque where Dr. Rashad Kahlifa was stabbed to death Jan. 30, 1990.
The forensics evidence provided investigators a break in the cold case and brought the two-decade long international manhunt to an end in Calgary in April.
“If you take that DNA out, there’s no way this man can be committed to stand trial back in the United States, because this man can’t be placed at the crime scene,” Chow said, indicating Francis, who watched from the prisoner’s dock.
The United States is asking for Francis to be extradited to stand trial for murder, “despite the fact they can’t even get some of the names correct,” Chow added.
“That’s asking an awful lot.”
Crown prosecutor David Gates said he was “surprised and astonished” at the submissions and asked for more time to make a response.
According to the case record, an autopsy on the body of Dr. Rashad Khalifa, 54, showed stab wounds to the imam’s head, front and back — including some defensive wounds — sustained during an attack in a Tucson, Ariz., mosque on Jan. 30, 1990, said Gates.
Khalifa was a divisive figure in American Islam. He preached a brand of Islam based on numerology condemned as heretical by fundamentalist Muslims, and reportedly claimed that two verses of the Qur’an were written by Satan, not God.
U.S. newspaper reports say Colorado prosecutors later convicted two members of an Islamic sect called Al Fuqra of conspiring to murder Khalifa, but not of actually stabbing him to death. Notes on how to kill Khalifa, diagrams and photos of the mosque, as well as planned escape routes, were found by detectives, according to news reports.
Earlier Friday, Gates told the Calgary hearing case records show Kahlifa was doused in a chemical and left in his house with all the gas burners on — an attempt by the killer to destroy evidence and “finish off the job,” a Canadian prosecutor says.
A witness who discovered Khalifa’s body found the gas burners in the nearby kitchen turned on, but no flame lit, Gates said. A chemical was placed on the body in “an attempt . . . to destroy evidence,” he said.
According the case record, Francis — using the name Benjamin Phillips — said he wanted to learn about Islam in order to gain access to the mosque three weeks before the murder.
Four years after the killing, in an interview with the FBI, Francis, who was then using yet another alias, was shown the photo of Phillips but responded only that a lot of people looked like him, Gates said.
He denied living in Arizona, but told FBI he’d heard of Kahlifa’s grisly death. “His response was, ‘He got what he deserved,’ ” said Gates.
The prosecutor said DNA evidence links Francis to the crime. The case record shows forensics experts said blood stains found on Kahlifa’s leather jacket worn when he died and on his kitchen counter were a “genetic match” to DNA obtained from Francis during the 1994 FBI interview, said Gates.
“That is compelling evidence, in my submission, that Mr. Francis was at the scene of the crime and involved in the crime,” Gates said.
Francis’ former girlfriend in Dallas told investigators the accused “had many knives and always carried one in his boot,” and indicated Francis had been in Arizona at the time of the murder, said Gates.
Molle led the hearing step-by-step through the case records, however, and showed that there are several instances where the name “Francis” has erroneously been put in to substitute for other names, some of which have been linked to the accused, some of which have not.
Further, she said that evidence gathered in Canada shouldn’t be included in the records, since it hasn’t properly been presented before the court.
The case is adjourned until Sept. 23, when Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Keith Yamauchi will either hand down his decision or pose further questions to the lawyers.
{Source: www.ottawacitizen.com}
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