Michael Sang Correa was charged with torturing five men believed to be opponents of Yahya Jammeh following an unsuccessful plot to remove him from power in 2006.

A jury that heard the case in U.S. District Court in Denver found Correa guilty of torturing people. He also was charged with conspiring with others to commit torture while serving in a military unit known as the “Junglers,” which reported directly to Jammeh, in the latest international trial tied to his regime.

Correa came to the U.S. in 2016 to work as a bodyguard for Jammeh, eventually settling in Denver, where prosecutors said he worked as a day laborer. Correa, who prosecutors say overstayed his visa after Jammeh’s ouster in 2017, was indicted in 2020 under a rarely used law that allows people to be tried in the U.S. judicial system for torture allegedly committed abroad.

Survivors traveled from Gambia, Europe and elsewhere in the U.S. to testify, telling the jury they were tortured by methods such as being electrocuted and hung upside down while being beaten. Some had plastic bags put over their heads.

Prosecutors showed the jury photos of victims with scars left by objects including a bayonet, a burning cigarette and ropes. The men were asked to circle scars on photos and explain how they received them.

The defense had argued Correa was a low-ranking private who risked torture and death himself if he disobeyed superiors and that he did not have a choice about whether to participate, let alone a decision to make about whether to join a conspiracy.

But while the U.S. government agreed that there’s evidence that the Junglers lived in “constant fear,” prosecutors said some Junglers refused to participate in the torture.

In 2021, a truth commission in Gambia urged that the perpetrators of crimes committed under Jammeh’s regime be prosecuted by the government. Other countries have also tried people connected with his rule.

Last year, Jammeh’s former interior minister was sentenced to 20 years behind bars by a Swiss court for crimes against humanity. In 2023, a German court convicted a Gambian man who was also a member of the Junglers of murder and crimes against humanity for involvement in the killing of government critics in Gambia.

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Particles from the sandy ground of a courtyard in the West African nation where the military officer fell during one of the 2006 beatings lodged in his eyes, causing damage requiring several surgeries, he testified.

Sanyang, a former military officer in Gambia, took the stand in U.S. District Court in Denver against one of the former soldiers he said beat him — Michael Sang Correa.

Correa is on trial in after being indicted in 2020 under a rarely used law that allows people to be prosecuted in the U.S. judicial system for torture allegedly committed abroad.

He is charged with torturing Sanyang and four others and being part of a conspiracy to torture alleged coup plotters while serving with the Junglers, a military unit that reported directly to former Gambian president Yahya Jammeh.

Sanyang told jurors he eventually agreed to sign a false confession but wiped blood from his head onto the paper to show he had been tortured. Then, after refusing to confess on television, he was shocked with wires plugged into a wall socket and beaten again, he said.

Bleeding, he read his confession for the television camera, but only the audio was recorded to conceal the torture, he told the court.

“I had to save my body,” Sanyang said of why he agreed to confess, adding he did not join the failed insurrection against Jammeh, who ousted the previous president of Gambia in a coup of his own in 1994.

Sanyang spent nearly a decade in prison after being convicted of treason and fled to nearby Senegal after his release.

Correa came to the U.S. to serve as a bodyguard for Jammeh in December 2016 and overstayed his visa after Jammeh was ousted in 2017, according to prosecutors. Since sometime after arriving, Correa had been living in Denver and working as a day laborer, they said.

Sanyang and other alleged victims traveled from Gambia, Europe and elsewhere in the U.S. to testify this week about their torture. Prosecutors showed the jury photos of victims with scars left by things including a bayonet, a burning cigarette and ropes. The men were asked to circle scars on photos and explain how they received them.

Correa’s lawyers have not disputed that the defendant was involved in Sanyang’s torture even though Sanyang said Correa, like the other Junglers, was wearing a face mask. Sanyang said he knew Correa from working with him at the president’s official home and recognized his “walking gait.”

But his lawyers argue Correa was a low-ranking private who risked being tortured himself or even killed if he refused Jammeh’s orders.

Demba Dem testified Wednesday that his torturers put a black plastic shopping bag over his head and beat him as he was handcuffed.

Another time, they put a heavy bag of sand on his back and then held a piece of hot metal close to his nose. Then they hung him upside down, his wrists and ankles tied, beating him again.

The former teacher who became a member of the Gambian parliament as part of Jammeh’s political party said Correa used a stick to beat him.

Dem, who said he was not part of the planned coup, later moved to the Netherlands with his family after seeking asylum and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He was reluctant to talk on the witness stand about the impact the torture had on his life other than saying it was “very bad” and asking a prosecutor to move on.

Still, Dem said he was “happy” to be in court to try to hold one of his abusers accountable.

“I have to do it but I feel satisfied,” he said.

The trial is scheduled to continue into next week.

In 2021, a truth commission in Gambia urged that the perpetrators of crimes committed under Jammeh’s regime be prosecuted by the government. Other countries have also tried people connected with his rule.

Last year, Jammeh’s former interior minister was sentenced to 20 years behind bars by a Swiss court for crimes against humanity. In 2023, a German court convicted a Gambian man who was also a member of the Junglers of murder and crimes against humanity for involvement in the killing of government critics in Gambia.

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After moving to Denver, Michael Sang Correa was indicted in 2020 under a rarely used law that allows people to be tried in the U.S. judicial system for torture allegedly committed abroad. He is charged with both torturing five people suspected of involvement in the failed 2006 coup against Yahya Jammeh as well as being part of a conspiracy to torture alleged coup plotters while serving in a military unit known as the “Junglers,” which reported directly to Jammeh.

Correa’s lawyer, Jared Westbroek, told jurors that the persistent threat hanging over him shows he did not have a choice about whether to participate, let alone a decision to make about whether to join a conspiracy.

“Following an order is not the same as making an agreement,” said Westbroek, who noted that it is hard for Americans who live in a “very blessed country” with freedom to understand Correa’s situation.

But while federal prosecutors agreed there’s evidence the Junglers lived in “constant fear,” a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice’s human rights unit told jurors that some Junglers refused to participate.

“The defendant is on trial today because of the choices he made,” Justice Department attorney Marie Zisa told jurors, urging them to find Correa, who was sitting with his lawyers, guilty of all six charges.

One of the alleged victims, a soldier, was stuffed into a bag, suspended high in the air and then dropped to the ground, Zisa said. Some people were tortured before they were questioned by a panel investigating the coup, while others were later subjected to torture, including beatings that could last hours, she said.

“The victims have not forgotten his cruelty,” Zisa said.

Zisa and the prosecution’s first witness, Maggie Dwyer, a senior lecturer in African Studies and International Development at the University of Edinburgh, focused more on Gambia’s history since it became independent from Britain in 1965 and Jammeh — rather than on the alleged actions of Correa himself.

Jammeh, a member of the military, seized power in a coup from the country’s first president in 1994, and survived three significant coup attempts, making him suspicious of the very military he depended on to keep him in power, Dwyer testified.

Jammeh was a 22-year dictator of Gambia, a country surrounded by Senegal except for a small Atlantic coastline, and was accused of ordering opponents tortured, jailed and killed. He lost a presidential election and went into exile in Equatorial Guinea in 2017 after initially refusing to step down.

Correa came to the U.S. to serve as a bodyguard for Jammeh in December 2016, but he remained and overstayed his visa after Jammeh was ousted, according to prosecutors. Since sometime after 2016, Correa had been living in Denver and working as a day laborer, they said.

Correa is the third person to be tried under a U.S. law that allows people to be charged with committing torture abroad, according to the group Human Rights Watch. The two others were U.S. citizens given lengthy prison sentences.

Charles “Chuckie” Taylor, Jr., the son of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, was convicted in 2008 in connection with torture in Liberia from 1997 to 2003.

In 2023 , Ross Roggio of Pennsylvania was convicted of torturing an employee in Iraq while operating an allegedly illegal manufacturing plant in Kurdistan.

Other countries have also prosecuted those tied to Jammeh’s regime.

Last year, Jammeh’s former interior minister was sentenced to 20 years behind bars by a Swiss court for crimes against humanity. In 2023, a German court convicted a Gambian man who was also a member of the Junglers of murder and crimes against humanity for involvement in the killing of government critics in Gambia.

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Lucy Grace Nelson appeared in federal court in Denver briefly Thursday after being arrested on a single federal charge of malicious destruction of property. Her ankles and wrists were shackled. She wore a purple tie-dye shirt and red-and-black checked pants, as she sat in the jury box with other defendants waiting for their cases to be called.

Nelson rocked back and forth slightly as Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter informed of her rights and Nelson’s mother watched from the front row of the gallery.

When Neureiter questioned lawyers about why federal charges were brought, Nelson began to speak but her attorney, public defender Jennifer Beck, rushed across the room to stop her. Cassie Wiemken of the U.S. Attorney’s Office said the federal government had a compelling interest to prosecute the case because of the danger posed by the “incendiary devices” allegedly used.

After Neureiter noted that Nelson did not report any income or expenses in her application for an attorney, Beck told him that she receives support from her family.

Nelson’s mother and attorney declined to comment after the hearing.

Nelson’s sister, Jennifer McCown, said that her sister loves her family and has been recently volunteering to feed the homeless.

“She’s a loving, intelligent person who wouldn’t hurt another person for the world,” McCown said in a text. She did not comment on the allegations Nelson is facing.

Nelson was arrested Monday on separate state charges after police said she returned to the dealership in Loveland with “additional incendiary devices” and materials used in vandalism. However, it wasn’t clear whether state prosecutors have filed formal charges against her. Police said Wednesday that they expected federal charges to be filed.

Nelson was released from jail after her arrest on the state charges after posting bond. But she was taken into federal custody on Thursday and will remain detained for now. She is scheduled to return to court for a hearing Tuesday to determine whether she will continue to be held while she is being prosecuted on the federal charge.

A conviction on the charge carries a penalty of at least five years in prison.

The case comes amid rising concerns voiced by Democrats and some Republicans about Musk’s influence over the administration of President Donald Trump and follows recent protests at Tesla storerooms elsewhere in the U.S.

Trump and cost-costing chief Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have been moving to slash the size of the federal government through large-scale layoffs, contract cancellations and other moves.

According to the federal criminal complaint filed against Nelson, she is suspected of starting fires by igniting Molotov cocktails crafted from empty liquor bottles near vehicles that apparently did not cause much damage.

Photos included in the filing showed a small fire on the ground near vehicles. The dealership estimated that several incidents of vandalism over the course of about a month caused between $5,000 and $20,000 in damages, with an estimated $5,000 in damage to the vehicles.

Loveland police spokesperson Chris Padgett has said police were investigating the possibility of someone else being involved.

In one of the incidents, someone spray painted an obscenity believed to be directed at Musk before being chased away by a security guard, according to a Loveland police affidavit.

Police said that at the time of Nelson’s arrest, they saw in her car cans of spray paint, gasoline, bottles and various cloth pieces that could be soaked with an accelerant.

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As the elevator descended, the door swung out and caught the side of the mine shaft, the guide fell out, was dragged and ended up landing on top of one of the tourists as the elevator continued its descent, investigators determined.

The harrowing account of the October accident that killed Patrick Weier, 46, at the Mollie Kathleen Mine in the mountains near Colorado Springs was included in an investigative report obtained by AP in response to a public records request.

The sheriff’s office announced earlier this month that Weier’s death was caused by “operator error” but did not explain how he died or what the error was. State mining regulators inspected the mine after the accident and did not find any problems with the equipment there.

Steve Schafrik, a University of Kentucky associate professor of mining engineering, said that at commercial mining operations, an elevator will not move if the safety systems are not in place and functioning. However, he said he did not have experience with operations in former mines that are now only used for tours.

Surveillance video showed that in the minutes prior to his death, Weier loaded the group of tourists onto the lower level of a double-decker, cage-like elevator for a 1,000-foot descent into the mine. But he had trouble squeezing in himself because it was so crowded, said the report by the Teller County Sheriff’s Office.

The tourists who were in the lower section with him told investigators that Weier had asked them to squeeze together more so he could fit inside, according to the report. A woman suggested that he ride in the upper level of the elevator since the people were smaller, but she said he didn’t respond.

Weier barely had enough room to reach his hand out to close the door, and he did not appear to have secured its latch, the report said.

Within a few seconds of starting the descent, passengers said the elevator started to hit the wall of the shaft. Weier cursed and said things like “I can’t stop this,” and debris was flying at the passengers in the dark. Some lost their hard hats and, without much light, they had to rely mostly on sounds to try to make out what was happening.

According to the report, about halfway down the shaft, the door opened, came off its track and bent as it scraped along the elevator shaft. Investigators believe Weier fell out after ringing the bell to tell the operator to stop the elevator. At first he was trapped between the shaft wall and the still-moving elevator and ultimately fell into the top elevator car.

When the elevator suddenly stopped, the group in the compartment above then said someone else was in their car — Weier. His body landed on top of a woman, who said it felt like she was being suffocated by it.

A woman in the lower car was pinned by the bent door until others could free her.

Two women in the top car decided to climb up a ladder seeking help. They said the ladder was breaking as they went, but both made it up safely.

The accident left a second group of tourists stuck for hours 1,000 feet below ground, as authorities worked to make sure the elevator could safely bring them back up.

No one answered the phone at the mine and its owner did not respond to telephone messages or an email. The mine’s website says it is closed until further notice.

Weier had a 7-year-old son and was from the nearby town of Victor. Some people who went on tours at the mine with him have donated to an online fundraiser for his son, saying his knowledge about the area’s mining history left an impact on them.

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The agency announced the reward Monday for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Jeremiah Hight, 23, in the Dec. 11 shooting at a home in Towaoc on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation.

The FBI investigates serious crimes on the reservation in the Four Corners region, where New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado meet. It said an arrest warrant was issued for Hight, a member of the Ute Mountain Ute tribe, on Thursday after he was charged with murder, assault with a dangerous weapon and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence.

Authorities have not released any details about what led up to the shooting, and Hight’s arrest warrant was sealed. The FBI’s wanted poster for Hight said the shooting was “targeted at a residence.”

The boy who died was identified as Zamias Lang, Montezuma County coroner George Deavers said Tuesday.

An online fundraiser to raise money for his funeral described him as a “bright and loving” child.

In a video message after the shooting, tribal chairman Manuel Heart called the shooting “senseless” and urged people to let authorities investigate the shooting rather than retaliate on their own. Heart also said he was working on a resolution to ask the federal government to hire more police officers for the reservation and another to ban shooting within either of the reservation’s two communities — Towaoc and White Mesa, Utah.

“We are not going to have any more of these type of events where somebody gets shot,” he said.

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DENVER (AP) — A Colorado man repeatedly made online threats about killing the top elections officials in his state and Arizona — both Democrats — as well as a judge and law enforcement agents, according to a guilty plea he entered Wednesday.

Teak Ty Brockbank, 45, acknowledged to a federal judge in Denver that his comments were made “out of fear, hate and anger,” as he sat dressed in a khaki jail uniform before pleading guilty to one count of transmitting interstate threats. He faces up to five years in prison when he’s sentenced on Feb. 3.

Brockbank’s case is the 16th conviction secured by the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, which Attorney General Merrick Garland formed in 2021 to combat the rise of threats targeting the election community.

“As we approach Election Day, the Justice Department’s warning remains clear: anyone who illegally threatens an election worker, official, or volunteer will face the consequences,” Garland said in a statement.

Brockbank did not elaborate Wednesday on the threats he made, and court documents outlining the plea agreement were not immediately made public. His lawyer Thomas Ward declined to comment after the hearing.

However, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Colorado said in statement that the plea agreement included the threats Brockbank made against the election officials — identified in evidence as Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and former Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, now the state’s governor.

Griswold has been outspoken nationally on elections security and has received threats in the past over her insistence that the 2020 election was secure. Her office says she has gotten more frequent and more violent threats since September 2023, when a group of voters filed a lawsuit attempting to remove former President Donald Trump from Colorado’s primary ballot.

“I refuse to be intimidated and will continue to make sure every eligible Republican, Democrat, and Unaffiliated voter can make their voices heard in our elections,” Griswold said in a statement issued after Brockbank’s plea.

Investigators say Brockbank began to express the view that violence against public officials was necessary in late 2021. According to a detention motion, Brockbank told investigators after his arrest that he’s not a “vigilante” and hoped his posts would simply “wake people up.” He has been jailed since his Aug. 23 arrest in Cortez, Colorado.

Brockbank criticized the government’s response to Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk convicted this year for allowing a breach of her election system inspired by false claims about election fraud in the 2020 presidential race, according to court documents. He also was upset in December 2023 after a divided Colorado Supreme Court removed Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot.

In one social media post in August 2022, referring to Griswold and Hobbs, Brockbank said: “Once those people start getting put to death then the rest will melt like snowflakes and turn on each other,” according to copies of the threats included in court documents. In September 2021, Brockbank said Griswold needed to “hang by the neck till she is Dead Dead Dead,” saying he and other “every day people” needed to hold her and others accountable, prosecutors said.

Brockbank also posted in October 2021 that he could use his rifle to “put a bullet” in the head of a state judge who had overseen Brockbank’s probation for his fourth conviction for driving under the influence, under the plea agreement, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors say Brockbank also acknowledged posting in July 2022 that he would shoot without warning any federal agent who showed up at his house. Prosecutors earlier said in court documents that a half dozen firearms were found in his home after his arrest, including a loaded one near his front door, even though he can’t legally possess firearms due to a felony conviction of attempted theft by receiving stolen property in Utah in 2002.

The investigation was launched in August 2022 after Griswold’s office notified federal authorities of posts made on Gab and Rumble, an alternative video-sharing platform that has been criticized for allowing and sometimes promoting far-right extremism, according to court documents.

And although Brockbank only pled guilty for threats made between September 2021 and August 2022, prosecutors say he’s made more since then.

In December 2023, after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Trump should not appear on the state’s primary ballot, Brockbank allegedly told his stepfather in a text that he was adding the four judges who backed removing Trump to “my list.” The U.S. Supreme Court later restored Trump to the ballot.

And this July, prosecutors say, Brockbank continued to threaten Griswold because her office triggered the investigation of Peters by notifying authorities about the data breach in 2021.

Peters was sentenced to nearly nine years behind bars this month for allowing access to the county’s election system to a man affiliated with My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell — a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election. Authorities investigated separate threats made against her trial judge, Matthew Barrett. Most of the messages appear to have been strongly worded opinions but none appeared to rise to the level of a crime, Mesa County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Wendy Likes said Tuesday.

In 2022, a Nebraska man pleaded guilty to making death threats against Griswold in what officials said was the first such plea obtained by the Election Threats Task Force.

The Justice Department task force’s longest sentences so far — 3.5 years in prison — were handed down in separate cases involving election officials in Arizona. In one case, a man who advocated for “a mass shooting of poll workers,” posted threatening statements in November 2022 about two Maricopa County officials and their children, prosecutors said.

In the other, a Massachusetts man pleaded guilty to sending a bomb threat in February 2021 to an election official in the Arizona Secretary of State’s office.

Another man was sentenced on Monday to 30 months in prison for sending threatening messages to an Maricopa County Elections Instagram account.

___

Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.

When the story was retold by Jenny Jacobsen during a trial that ended this week with the shooter found guilty and sentenced to life in prison, it provided Erika Mahoney with some solace during a difficult two weeks focused on what happened that day in the college town of Boulder.

The thought of her father, Kevin Mahoney, having one final moment of joy has provided Erika Mahoney some peace of mind ever since Jacobsen first reached out last year to share the story. It has also led to a bond with Jacobsen, who she calls her “earth angel.”

Erika Mahoney said the story sounded exactly like her father, a retired hotel development executive, who loved everyone and appreciated a good joke.

“What more could you wish for, that before the most horrific thing, there was laughter and a moment of peace,” she said.

It is one of several bonds Erika Mahoney, a journalist and mother of two, has formed with people impacted by the shooting that have comforted her and provided answers about what happened to her father. Those ties deepened during the trial, which she also faced with the support of all the victims’ families, a tight-knit group after many court delays.

“This tragedy proves how connected we all are,” she said. ”We have to find a way to love another more.”

Since the night of the shooting, she has thought a lack of love could be to blame for it.

“I wish the young man behind the gun had received more love in his life because maybe this wouldn’t have happened,” she told the judge during Ahmad Alissa’s sentencing.

Erika Mahoney, 34, became a “soul sister” to another young woman who lost her mother in the shooting: Olivia Mackenzie. Her mother, Lynn Murray, was working as an Instacart shopper when she was killed at a checkout stand. Her father later died of a heart attack, which she believes was caused by the shooting. They bonded the year after the shooting when they met at a coffee shop and both jumped when a loud car passed by, which helped Erika Mahoney realize it was a sign of the trauma she had been suffering.

During this month’s trial, they went to a yoga class filled with mostly older people. Erika Mahoney said it felt like being in a room with parents.

“We felt so loved and connected to each other,” Mackenzie, 28, said.

During the trial, Erika Mahoney got to see her father’s last terrifying moments for the first time. Before, she had thought that maybe he was shot without knowing what was happening. But in court she saw surveillance video of her father, her protector, running from the gunman in the parking lot, trying to get back to the store. He finally fell in the main driveway leading to the store.

Shaken by the image, she stayed home from court the next day but watched online as witnesses testified, including police officer Richard Steidell, who ended the attack by shooting and wounding the gunman.

Steidell’s testimony provided another bit of comfort for Erika Mahoney: He told jurors that he later moved Kevin Mahoney’s body out of the parking lot so it would not be run over by an armored vehicle being brought in to help protect police before Alissa eventually surrendered.

Erika Mahoney had previously believed that her father’s body was left where it had fallen, alone, for hours in the aftermath of the shooting and investigation. Hating the idea, she said she had sometimes imagined herself being on the ground with her father, holding his hand, to reimagine how he died.

She got Steidell’s number and reached out by text to thank him.

“It’s funny the things we become grateful for,” she wrote.

Steidell said seeing and moving the bodies of Mahoney and a woman shot near the entrance was something he had struggled with after the shooting. So her gratitude provided consolation to him too.

“It helped me tremendously,” he said.

During the trial, Jacobsen explained what led to that final laugh with Kevin Mahoney in March 2021, when social distancing measures were still in place because of the COVID-19 pandemic. She said she had been absentmindedly following him too close as they left the store, so she apologized and he smiled. She gave him more space but then realized they were parked next to each other.

They smiled at each other and put their groceries in the trunk at the same time. After Kevin Mahoney hit a button that beeped to close his trunk, Jacobsen teased him by saying “Ooh, fancy,” causing him to laugh loudly, throwing his head back, before he left to return his shopping cart. Seconds later he would be dead.

She also shared on the stand how she crouched underneath her steering wheel to hide after hearing the shooting begin. She jumped at each shot, she said, and her body shook, fearing she would be shot. She thought about her daughter. When she finally looked out her window, she said she made brief eye contact with Alissa and then saw him focus on and shoot the woman near the entrance, Tralona Bartkowiak, before going inside its sliding doors.

“The only thing that separated us that day is that he had a cart and I didn’t have a cart,” she said later.

Jacobsen said she thinks Erika Mahoney will be in her life forever now.

“I could tell her that story every day if she wanted me to,” she said.

Erika Mahoney said it broke her heart to hear Jacobsen thinking about her daughter as she hid. Jacobsen’s experience also made her think again about her father’s final moments, in light of the fatal chase of her father seen on the video. She now believes her father was also thinking about his family in his final moments.

“He fought hard to live,” she said. “He had some time to think about life.”

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Sometime before the 2021 attack, Moustafa Alissa recalled waking up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and his son, Ahmad Alissa, telling him to go talk to a man who was in his room. Moustafa Alissa said they walked together to his son’s room and there was no one there.

Moustafa Alissa also said his son would sometimes talk to himself and broke a car key fob he feared was being used to track him, echoing testimony on Monday from his wife. He said he didn’t know exactly what was wrong with his son but that in his native Syria people say someone acting that way is believed to be possessed by an evil spirit, or djin.

“We thought he probably was just possessed by a spirit or something,” Moustafa Alissa said through an Arabic interpreter in court.

Ahmad Alissa was diagnosed after the shooting with a severe case of schizophrenia and only was deemed mentally competent to stand trial last year after a doctor put him on the strongest antipsychotic medication available. No one disputes he was the gunman at the supermarket but he has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

The defense says he should be found not guilty because he was legally insane and not able to tell the difference between right and wrong at the time of the shooting.

Prosecutors and forensic psychologists who evaluated him for the court say that, despite his mental illness, he did not experience delusions and knew what he was doing when he launched the attack. They point to the planning and research he did to prepare for it and his fear that he could end up in jail afterward to show that Alissa knew what he was doing was wrong. However, the psychologists said they thought the voices played some role in the attack and don’t believe the attack would have happened if he had not been mentally ill.

When District Attorney Michael Dougherty asked why Moustafa Alissa did not seek out treatment for his son, he said it would be very hard for his family to have a reputation for having a “crazy son.”

“It’s shameful in our culture,” he said.

During questioning, Moustafa Alissa, whose family owns several restaurants in the Denver area, also acknowledged that Ahmad Alissa had promised to return a gun he had that had jammed a few days before the shooting and that he went to the shooting range at least once with his brothers. Despite his concerns about his son’s mental state, he said he did not do anything to try take guns away from him.

Given that, Dougherty suggested that his son’s condition may not have been as bad as his family is now portraying it.

“He was not normal but we did not expect him to do what he did,” Moustafa Alissa said.

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She saw Ahmad Alissa for the first time since then during his murder trial on Monday, saying repeatedly that her son, who was diagnosed after the shooting with schizophrenia, was sick. When one of Alissa’s lawyers, Kathryn Herold, was introducing her to the jury, Herold asked how she knew Alissa. Ahidid responded “How can I know him? He is sick,” she said through an Arabic interpreter in her first public comments about her son and the shooting.

Alissa, who emigrated from Syria with his family as a child, began acting strangely in 2019, believing he was being followed by the FBI, talking to himself and isolating from the rest of the family, Ahidid said. His condition declined after he got COVID several months before the shooting, she said, adding he also became “fat” and stopped showering as much.

There was no record of Alissa being treated for mental illness before the shooting. After the shooting, his family later reported that he had been acting in strange ways, like breaking a car key fob and putting tape over a laptop camera because he thought the devices were being used to track him. Some relatives thought he could be possessed by an evil spirit, or djinn, according to the defense.

No one, including Alissa’s lawyers, disputes he was the shooter. Alissa has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in the shooting. The defense says he should be found not guilty because he was legally insane and not able to tell the difference between right and wrong at the time of the shooting.

Prosecutors and forensic psychologists who evaluated him for the court say that, while mentally ill, Alissa knew what he was doing when he launched the attack. They point to the planning and research he did to prepare for it and his fear that he could end up in jail afterward to show that Alissa knew what he was doing was wrong.

Alissa mostly looked down as his mother testified and photographs of him as a happy toddler and a teenager at the beach were shown on screen. There was no obvious exchange between mother and son in court but Alissa dabbed his eyes with a tissue after she left.

The psychiatrist in charge of Alissa’s treatment at the state mental hospital testified earlier in the day that Alissa refused to accept visitors during his over two year stay there.

When questioned by District Attorney Michael Dougherty, Ahidid said her son did not tell her what he was planning to do the day of the shooting.

She said she thought a large package containing a rifle that Alissa came home with shortly before the shooting may have been a piano.

“I swear to God we didn’t know what was inside that package,” she said.

Dougherty pointed out that she had told investigators soon after the shooting that she thought it could be a violin.

After being reminded of a previous statement to police, Ahidid acknowledged that she had heard a banging sound in the house and one of her other sons said that Alissa had a gun that had jammed. Alissa said he would return it, she testified.

She indicated that no one in the extended family that lived together in the home followed up to make sure, saying “everyone has their own job.”

“No one is free for anyone,” she said.

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