BY DAN HORN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
On the night he learned that two friends were murdered near his home, Ahmad Fawzi Issa says he wept over the loss of "my brothers."
He says the victims seemed like family because they gave him a job when no one else would and helped him buy a car.
"They were very nice people to me," Mr. Issa said Tuesday during the penalty phase of his aggravated murder trial in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court. "They didn't deserve to die."
But prosecutors say the two friends -- brothers Maher Khrais and Ziad Khreis -- were the victims of an elaborate murder-for-hire scheme that Mr. Issa planned.
They told jurors that Mr. Issa, who was convicted of aggravated murder last week, deserves a death sentence because he hired the hit man, provided the murder weapon and arranged the time and place for the fatal ambush.
Mr. Issa responded to those charges for the first time Tuesday when he took the witness stand to deny any involvement in the Nov. 22 shootings.
After convicting him last week, the jury is expected to begin deliberations today to determine whether he should die for his crime.
"I don't deserve to die for something I didn't do," Mr. Issa said. "I didn't have anything to do with it. . . . They were like my brothers."
Choking back tears, Mr. Issa recalled how Mr. Khrais gave him a job at his Save Way convenience store in East Westwood when he couldn't find work anywhere else. He said Mr. Khrais' brother, Mr. Khreis, shared an apartment with him when he first moved to Cincinnati. "I never, ever could think of hurting them," Mr. Issa said. Before Mr. Issa took the stand, jurors also heard his brother and mother describe how he worked hard and sent money home to his financially-strapped family in Jordan. His mother, Sara Issa, sobbed as she described her shock over the murder charges against her son.
"He's not a man to do things like that," Mrs. Issa said. "He doesn't have any of these things in him."
Although prosecutors called no witnesses Tuesday, they urged jurors to remember the evidence that led to Mr. Issa's murder conviction. It includes friends who claimed to have seen him with the murder weapon prior to the shootings and a statement from the accused hit man, Andre Miles, linking Mr. Issa to the crime.
As they have throughout most of the trial, prosecutors made no mention of Mr. Khrais' wife, Linda Khriss. She was charged with orchestrating the plot last year but was acquitted on all counts three months ago.
