Muhammad: Guilty of ‘jihad,’ not murder

— In what he described as his “final motion,” confessed soldier-killer Abdulhakim Muhammad denounced what he called a “sham trial” and said he is guilty of “jihad,” not murder.

“I’ve fulfilled my obligations and Islamic duty of Jihad as a Muslim citizen,” Muhammad wrote in the letter, which he addressed to “The Tyrannical Court of the United States.”

“Now whatever you enemies of Allah decide against me in the coming weeks, it doesn’t matter. I’m ready!!”

The latest letter to Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herb Wright, who will preside over the trial, is dated July 9, the day Muhammad turned 26.

Muhammad faces a potential death sentence in the trial that will begin Monday on charges of capital murder, attempted capital murder and unlawful discharge of a firearm from a vehicle.

He is accused of killing Army Pvt. William Long, 25, of Conway and wounding Quinton Ezeagwula of Jacksonville in a drive-by shooting on June 1, 2009, at the Army-Navy Career Center on North Rodney Parham Road in Little Rock.

The letter’s date is the same as that on a letter Muhammad sent to KLRT-TV, Channel 16, the Little Rock Fox affiliate. In both letters, Muhammad pledged allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and said he wanted to renounce his American citizenship.

According to the U.S. State Department’s website, however, a person wishing to renounce his citizenship must appear in person before a U.S. consular or diplomatic officer in a foreign country and sign an oath of renunciation.

Pulaski County chief deputy prosecutor John Johnson declined to comment on the letters.

In the letter to Wright, Muhammad called his attorneys, Patrick Benca and Claiborne Ferguson, “kaffirs,” an Arabic word meaning unbelievers, and said they do not represent him and never will.

Muhammad also said he wanted to “wish peace” upon his “fellow Muslim soldiers imprisoned here and abroad.”

Among others, he named Omar Khadr, the Canadian teenager sentenced in a U.S. military trial to serve 40 years in prison for killing an American solider; American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh; and Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, who is charged in the fatal shootings of 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas.

Arkansas, Pages 13 on 07/16/2011

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