Judge May Drop a Conspiracy Charge in N.Y. Bomb Case : Trial: Relevancy of tying Kahane murder and plot to kill Mubarak to Manhattan scheme is questioned. One defendant will testify for government.

A federal judge told prosecutors and defense lawyers Thursday that he might throw out part of the criminal case against Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman and 14 others for allegedly conspiring to bomb the World Trade Center and other New York facilities and to assassinate political leaders.

At a pretrial hearing, U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey said that he does not see how allegations that the defendants participated in the 1990 murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the radical Jewish Defense League, and in plans to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during a visit to the United Nations are relevant to a charge of seditious conspiracy against the U.S. government. That charge is the first count in a massive indictment returned last August.

Seditious conspiracy is an offense based on a little-used law that forbids plotting violence against the U.S. government or blocking law enforcement.

*

Mukasey did not elaborate on his thoughts. He asked government and defense attorneys to submit legal briefs. Lawyers on both sides said privately that the judge seemed to be signaling that he wants to pare down the case by dropping the murder and assassination elements.

While dropping these charges would deprive prosecutors of an emotional part of their case that would be likely to appeal to a jury, charges related directly to the bomb plot will remain. At the same time, federal officials confirmed that they had bolstered their prosecution by enticing one of the defendants, Abdo Mohammed Haggag, a former confidant of the blind sheik, to testify for the government in return for a recommendation of leniency.

The development means that the government no longer has to base its case so heavily on testimony of FBI informant Emad Ali Salem, who secretly taped the sheik and other defendants for several months. Salem also taped his FBI handlers without their knowledge in recordings that reveal that he had a distrustful relationship with the FBI.

“The less we rely on that guy the better,” one relieved official said of Salem, adding that Haggag now gives the government “a real inside witness.”

Haggag, 34, a former neighbor of the sheik who sometimes acted as his aide and interpreter, has been placed in protective custody and thus was missing from the courtroom Thursday. The sheik and other defendants, who are locked in separate cells for 23 hours a day, were led into court wearing prison clothing and white prayer caps with their hands manacled behind them.

All pleaded not guilty last summer in a conspiracy case that developed several weeks after the first arrests of lower-level “foot soldiers” accused of planting the bomb that destroyed part of the World Trade Center last Feb. 26, killing six persons and injuring more than 1,000. Four of those suspects currently are on trial in federal court.

*

Haggag was arrested last July and charged along with others of plotting a terrorist campaign that included blowing up the trade center, United Nations headquarters and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels and assassinating Mubarak and other leaders.

He also has been accused of participating in military training sessions at a firing range in Pennsylvania with other alleged co-conspirators.

Haggag is the first defendant among the tightly knit group of of Abdul Rahman’s followers to agree to become a government witness. Sources said that he had a falling out several months ago with the cleric, who is regarded as spiritual leader of those in custody.

Before his criminal indictment, the 55-year-old sheik was fighting a deportation order based on a court finding that he had made false statements to gain entry into the United States three years ago.

Ron Kuby, an attorney for the sheik and two other defendants, said that he had learned of Haggag’s defection to the government “but I don’t think it’s all that serious for the remaining defendants.”

“The jury will be in a position to properly assess his testimony. The government has been desperate to get an informant,” Kuby said.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Andrew McCarthy estimated that it is likely to take 3 1/2 months for the prosecution to present its evidence at the trial, which probably will not begin until next spring.