The father of a prison guard who was brutally stabbed in the eye by one of Osama bin Laden’s suspected lieutenants has a message for the sentencing judge: Give him life.
In a bid to get a softer sentence, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, whose grisly rampage at the Metropolitan Correctional Center left guard Louis Pepe brain-damaged, will try to convince a federal judge today that he wasn’t motivated by terrorism.
While Salim, who is also accused in the 1998 African embassy bombings, is sitting in Manhattan federal court, Pepe will be undergoing another operation to prepare his eye socket to be fitted with a glass eye.
His father, Franklin Pepe, told The Post yesterday that his son, 44, has just started speaking again, nearly two years after the horrific attack left him fighting for his life in intensive care for 10 weeks.
“It’s worse than being dead,” Pepe said, who visits the hospital most days with his wife, Margaret. “Not a day has gone by that he hasn’t suffered.
“He is just starting to talk, but it’s still very difficult to understand what he’s saying. He can recognize people, though, and he understands what has happened.
“He gets so depressed. We just want him to be able to come home soon.”
Franklin Pepe said he believes that Salim, who prosecutors suspect was once a member of al Qaeda’s ruling council, should be given the stiffest sentence possible.
“This guy [Salim] knew exactly where to put that goddamn comb to cause the most damage,” he said. “He didn’t aim for the shoulder. He should get the maximum sentence. That’s my opinion.”
Salim, a Sudanese national, faces life in prison if Judge Deborah Batts rules that his attack was aimed at influencing government policy or retaliating against the United States.
If he is judged to have had a different motive, he could receive just 14 to 17 years behind bars.
Grisly photographs of the crime scene, showing Salim’s blood-spattered cell and the comb he fashioned into a crude knife, have been presented to the judge. One chilling photograph shows Louis Pepe soon after the attack, with his head bandaged and the top of the comb protruding from his face.
Defense lawyer Richard Lind said he was still considering whether Salim, who is believed to be of Iraqi descent, will testify today.
Lind has pointed out that the government has the burden of proving that Salim was motivated by terrorism.
“We’re challenging that,” Lind said before the hearing began last week.
Salim, who was 45 at the time of the attack, has pleaded guilty to driving the comb into Pepe’s eye and into his brain while being escorted into his cell.
A hot-pepper sauce, believed to have been made partly out of Tabasco, was sprayed on other guards.
Louis Pepe has been described as a caring, gentle guard who made the mistake of being too trusting, allowing Salim to be escorted back to his cell without handcuffs.
Prosecutors in Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jim Comey’s office claim that the Nov. 1, 2000, attack was part of a hostage-taking scheme aimed at freeing prisoners, and allege that a scrawled ransom note was found in Salim’s cell.
The note, filled with spelling errors, said, “We are all Muslims who were accused falsly of bombing the embassy in Africa.
“We have captured the tenth flr. in MCC and we have several lawyers and officals. If the government worrys about the safty of its citzines it has to comply with all our demands, otherwise, it will be responsible for any consequences.”
Salim was being held in custody on federal charges that he helped organize the 1998 terror attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
He is still to face trial on the bombing charges. His cellmate at the time of the attack, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, was convicted and sentenced to a life term for his role in the bombing. At the trial last year, one of the other bombers, Jamal Ahmed al Fadl, testified that Salim approved the destruction of U.S. military property, even if civilians were nearby.
Salim was arrested in Germany in September 1998, the month after the embassy bombings killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.
Prosecutors claim that Salim, who was educated as an electrical engineer, once tried to buy uranium to build a nuclear bomb while running front companies for bin Laden that purchased weapons.