EL PASO, Texas (KTEP) - An officer with the U.S. Marshals Service had a nickname for a Lebanese man who claimed to be a member of the terrorist group Hezbollah.
As they walked him to a podium in the courtroom during his arraignment Thursday he called him “Rocky" Balboa.
Basel Ebbadi, 22, had bruising near his left eye.
U.S. Magistrate judge Robert Castañeda asked what happened to Ebbadi’s eye.
Defense attorney James Todd Dunham told the court the injury is new. The lawyer later told KTEP he had not seen it last week when he visited Ebbadi in jail.
He said he is discussing the injury with the U.S. government's attorneys prosecuting the case.
“That is a concern, obviously,” Dunham said. “But what’s more of a concern is just the case itself.”
Ebaddi was arrested on March 9 by Border Patrol after crossing the border in El Paso. He allegedly told agents he was a member of Hezbollah in Lebanon during an interview.
He told agents he was recruited by the terrorist group at the age of 7 and trained to “kill non-Muslims,” according to a complaint filed in federal court. During a medical exam, Ebbadi also allegedly said he came to “make a bomb,” but later told agents he was only joking.
“If he was really sent as a terrorist, why would he say that,” Dunham said.
The attorney said he has no reason to not believe what agents reported his client said or that Ebbadi was lying about his comment being a joke.
“This would be the most inept terrorist ever. I am shocked that they want to give him the max over this,” Dunham said the U.S. Department of Justice is pursuing the maximum penalty of six months imprisonment for Ebbadi’s illegal entry charge.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas and the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office directed questions about Ebbadi’s injury to the U.S. Marshal’s Service. KTEP has reached out to the federal agency for comment.
“Everything that has happened in his past, he is trying to escape,” Dunham said. “He is trying to escape. This man is fleeing the kind of ideology of hate and fear that we are always hearing about.”
Ebbadi’s arraignment was postponed until April 10 while the government provides Dunham with a copy of an interview with his client.
“If that was his intent, why would he go tell border patrol” Dunham asked. “The logic of it, if he was a bomb maker, would he do what he did?”
Federal judge Robert Castañeda set his bond at $10,000.
