Mental Illness Cited in Challenge to Terror Case
By BENJAMIN WEISER
Lawyers for an Iranian-American man charged in a 2011 plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States asked a judge in Manhattan on Monday to order the suppression at trial of statements their client made during interrogation on the ground that he was suffering from serious mental illness, a new court filing shows.
In the filing, two experts retained by the defense each said they had diagnosed bipolar disorder in the defendant, Mansour J. Arbabsiar, a former used-car salesman from Corpus Christi, Tex., who was arrested last fall at Kennedy Airport and was said to have confessed to his role in the plot during the first 12 days he was in custody.
The filing was part of a heavily redacted motion asking Judge John F. Keenan of Federal District Court to dismiss all charges.
Prosecutors have said Mr. Arbabsiar “knowingly and voluntarily” waived his rights to remain silent, to have a lawyer present and to be quickly taken before a judge. But the filing shows the defense will challenge whether those decisions were voluntary.
Dr. Michael B. First, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, said he had concluded that Mr. Arbabsiar “was likely cycling in and out of manic episodes during the period” of his interrogation. Professor First said he had examined Mr. Arbabsiar several times at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he is being held pending trial.
“Because I believe that Mr. Arbabsiar was suffering from episodes of mania while he was being questioned by the F.B.I.,” Professor First wrote, “there are serious questions as to whether any decisions made by him during this period were made rationally, with a full understanding of the consequences. Indeed, it is likely that his decisions were influenced, at least in part, by his mental illness.”
He said individuals with bipolar disorder who are in a manic state often “display feelings of invincibility and grandiosity,” and such feelings “may cause them to enter into agreements that they would not otherwise enter into.”
The second expert, Dr. Joel E. Morgan, a clinical neuropsychologist in private practice in Madison, N.J., said an M.R.I. of Mr. Arbabsiar’s brain “indicated abnormalities.”
Mr. Arbabsiar’s lawyers and prosecutors declined to comment.
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