Did Sacramento terror suspect leave cellphone behind to kill Iraqi police officer?

More than two years after Omar Ameen was arrested in Sacramento, branded as an ISIS terror leader and accused of killing an Iraqi police officer, lawyers are still fighting over where the 47-year-old mechanic was on the day of the slaying.

Ameen’s defense lawyers say Turkish phone records they obtained in December after more than a year of trying show conclusively Ameen is “absolutely innocent,” that the Turkcell phone records show he was 600 miles away in Turkey the day the officer was killed in June 2014.

Now, federal prosecutors say the government’s own analysis of those cellphone records show something entirely different: that Ameen could have traveled to Rawah, Iraq, on June 22, 2014, without his phone to commit the murder, and that there is evidence of Ameen’s phone making three calls before the killing to a phone registered to a “specially designated global terrorist.”

“In the month before the murder, the phone on three occasions has contact with the phone subscribed to by an individual who goes on to be designated by the United States as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist,” prosecutors wrote in court documents filed in Sacramento federal court Wednesday night. “Also in the month before the murder, the phone has contact with a number of individuals who are located in a border city in Turkey known as a hub for travelers to ISIS territory.”

Iraq wants Sacramento man returned to face trial

The difference of opinion stems from a request by the Iraqi government that Ameen be extradited back to his home country to stand trial in the slaying of police Major Ihsan Abdulhafiz Jasim, who court records say was shot to death outside his home by a convoy of ISIS fighters.

American prosecutors have been fighting since August 2018 to convince a federal magistrate judge in Sacramento to recommend Ameen be returned to Iraq to face trial. The judge’s recommendation would then go to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken for a final decision.

The U.S. government contends there is ample evidence Ameen should be returned to Iraq, including five eyewitness accounts placing Ameen in Rawah, his hometown, on or near the day of the murder.

“At bottom, the documents do not prove that Ameen was the holder of the Turkish phone ending in -5280 on the day of the murder, June 22, 2014,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Audrey Hemesath and Heiko Coppola wrote in a 39-page filing. “They therefore cannot obliterate the probable cause established by multiple eyewitnesses that Ameen committed the charged offense.”

Ameen lawyers say phone records show he is innocent

Federal defenders dispute those claims, saying the cell phone records and other evidence place Ameen in Turkey with his wife and three children, where he regularly checked in with authorities as he awaited permission to emigrate to the United States.

“Mr. Ameen was in Turkey during the entire period reflected in the cell phone records, including on the day of Mr. Jasim’s murder in Iraq,” Chief Assistant Federal Defender Ben Galloway wrote in an email statement to The Bee Thursday. “The records provided by the Turkish Government prove that.”

Ameen’s attorneys also say the issue of whether he is returned to Iraq is critical because he likely will face execution if sent back.

Ameen, who has been held in the Sacramento County Main Jail since his arrest at his Arden Arcade apartment, first came to the United States in November 2014, settling first in Salt Lake City and later moving to an apartment along Sacramento’s Eastern Avenue.

Court records and statements from Iraqi officials seeking Ameen’s extradition refer to him as an ISIS terror leader, something his defense lawyers insist is false.

Do phone records tie suspect to terrorist?

In their latest filing, government prosecutors have raised what they say is evidence of Ameen’s phone making three calls in May 2014 to a phone registered to Marwan Mahdi Salih Al-Rawi, who they say was designated a “global terrorist” in 2019 by the Treasury Department.

“The Al-Rawi surname is typically a reference to people who are from the town of Rawah located in the Al-Anbar province in Iraq, i.e., Omar Ameen’s hometown,” they wrote.

The calls lasted 96 seconds, 27 seconds and 137 seconds, respectively, they say.

“Granted, the designation of Marwan as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist did not occur until 2019, five years after the contact with the -5280 phone, but the association is still concerning, and consistent with the allegation in the extradition request that Ameen maintained ties to terrorist organizations,” prosecutors wrote.

But Galloway noted Salih was sanctioned over finances.

“The government fails to mention that Mr. Salih was sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2019, not as an ISIS terrorist, but as the CEO of a Turkish financial services company that allegedly facilitated financial transactions between Iran’s Quds Force and Hamas-related entities,” Galloway wrote.

Feds cite sudden change in cellphone use by suspect

Prosecutors also noted that the four months of cellphone records show a change in the pattern of usage just before the killing.

“Where in May there were 83 outgoing calls from the phone, in June there were none, and then in July and August only a handful,” prosecutors wrote, adding that they day of the killing the only recorded activity was two incoming phone calls that lasted less than a minute.

“This evidence does not prove that Ameen was in Turkey for multiple reasons,” prosecutors claim. “First, there is no evidence before this Court that these individuals spoke with Ameen on that day.

“Second, it is not known on the record before this Court whether these two short calls indicate an actual connection in which -5280 answered the call, or whether short calls might also include leaving a voice mail. It is conceivable that no voice-to-voice calls occurred at all on June 22, 2014, and these two people only left messages on the -5280 phone.”

Was cell phone ‘wiped’ clean before FBI raid?

Prosecutors also say that when the FBI raided Ameen’s apartment they seized 14 cellphones, an iPad and a laptop, and that analysis of all the devices “could not find one piece of data to geolocate Ameen during the pertinent time frame.”

In addition, they noted the phone that is the subject of the Turkish records yielded virtually no evidence.

“The physical phone recovered from the apartment in Sacramento is noteworthy because FBI review of the digital forensics report of contents of the phone reveals that it contains almost no information: no call logs, WhatsApp (an app that Ameen has stated he used to maintain contact) contains no information, only five photos (.jpg) from 2012, no photos from 2014, no locational data, no email account,” they wrote.

“From the very limited data left on the physical phone, it would not even be possible to determine who any user of the phone might have been. Yet the Turkish records reflect almost daily usage of the phone. This volume of usage is not consistent with the very limited set of data remaining on the physical phone, possibly suggesting that the phone was wiped, or that the SIM card was swapped out at some point.”

Prosecutors also note the cellphone records have not been certified by Turkcell as authentic, and they have asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Edmund F. Brennan to deny them from being admitted as evidence.

“The Turkish cell phone records are inconclusive and do not establish Ameen’s location on June 22, 2014,” they conclude.

This story was originally published February 18, 2021 at 11:05 AM.