Guard Wants Harsh Sentence for Terror Suspect

Pepe (AP)

Why did they scrawl the cross on his chest? Because from their point of view this was all part of their jihad against the "Crusaders." From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

NEW YORK — A former federal prison guard said he will tell a judge on Monday that he was stabbed in the eye and left for dead by a top aide to Usama bin Laden as the aide tried to escape prison in 2000. "Now I'm going to kill him," are the last words Louis Pepe says he heard before he was stabbed with a sharpened comb in an attack by Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, the alleged bin Laden associate, and an accomplice, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed.

Pepe, 46, said Sunday he plans to speak at Salim's sentencing because he is outraged that Salim could face as little as 18 to 21 years in prison for an attack he says was more brutal than the government revealed.

"I hate to go, but I got to go," said Pepe, who was left with limited vision and brain damage. "I thought that you wouldn't have to see him no more."

Salim still faces trial and a possible life sentence on conspiracy charges in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. Mohamed is serving life after his conviction in the embassy bombings case, which included charges related to the stabbing.

In the interview Sunday with The Associated Press, Pepe sat in his wheelchair in a small room in the Queens house where he lives with his parents. A white cowboy hat signed by corrections officers he trained rested on a shelf above him.

Pepe said the government and Salim have combined to sanitize what happened on Nov. 1, 2000, portraying the assault as quick and almost entirely Salim's doing after the guard failed to handcuff the inmates.

Pepe said he will tell the judge how he properly handcuffed the inmates before they slipped free, blinded him with hot sauce, beat him repeatedly and even tried to rape him before stabbing him to get his keys in a bid to free other suspected terrorists.

"Both of them did it, not just one," Pepe said excitedly, his right eye wide open and a piece of gauze resting in the socket where the left eye used to be.

"They started, 'Bam, bam, bam, bam!'" he said, shouting as he thrust his fist and arm down repeatedly in a re-enactment.

Pepe said the attack lasted an hour, rather than the 20 minutes that prison authorities maintain it took for help to arrive from less-isolated parts of Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center.

Prison authorities say a videotaping system didn't function properly that day so it was impossible to verify how much time passed.

Pepe's memory seems intact, though the brain damage he suffered leaves him with speech difficulties and an inability to read.

Pepe described how he resisted throughout the attack, even giving the inmates his house keys when they demanded his prison keys. He said the inmates scrawled the sign of the cross in his blood on his chest before they left him for dead.