Terror suspect’s lawyers say he was lured into murder-for-hire plot by ‘hulking gangbanger’

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Adel Daoud | Mug shot

Two months after an undercover federal agent allegedly tricked Adel Daoud into pushing the detonator on a fake car bomb to blow up a downtown Chicago bar, Daoud’s cellmate at Kankakee County Jail delivered grim news about the agent.

“He’s dead,” the inmate told Daoud, according to federal prosecutors.

“For sure?” Daoud asked.

“For sure, he’s dead,” the inmate replied.

That’s when Daoud allegedly promised to give the inmate a “gift,” prosecutors wrote in a document filed in federal court Wednesday. The inmate allegedly then told Daoud, “Yeah, he dead as hell man.” And Daoud allegedly replied “Alright, good. I’m relieved.”

Prosecutors want to play jailhouse recordings like this one of Daoud if the Hillside terror suspect goes to trial as expected this summer. They charged him in August 2013 with trying — unsuccessfully — to have the agent killed.

He was also charged with trying to use a weapon of mass destruction and trying to damage or destroy a building by blowing it up in connection with his September 2012 bomb plot.

But Daoud’s attorneys wrote in their own filing Wednesday that the feds enlisted a “hulking gang-banger” who wanted to be out of jail and home for Christmas to lure their “diminutive teenage” client into the murder-for-hire plot in late 2012.

“Needless to say, the gang-banger was an imposing figure, especially for the diminutive teenage defendant, who had never before been in jail, much less arrested,” Daoud’s lawyers wrote.

They also said the “gang-banger” — who faced 34 “serious felonies” in Cook County — has been out on bond “for some time now” while his own case is pending.

Meanwhile, Daoud’s lawyers want to prohibit prosecutors from bringing up Daoud’s friend, Abdella Ahmed Tounisi, at Daoud’s trial.

Tounisi, 20, is expected to plead guilty in June to trying in April 2013 to join the al-Qaida affiliated terror group Jabhat al-Nusrah in Syria. Tounisi, of Aurora, allegedly began helping Daoud plan his attack but backed out when he began to suspect the undercover agent was indeed a “spy.”

However, Daoud’s lawyers did reserve in their motion the right to “revisit the issue” if Tounisi is called to testify.


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