Mousa Abu Marzook.

The interview of Hamas’ second highest ranking official, Mousa Abu Marzook, conducted recently by the Forward, shed light on the differing political strategies of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas – the two groups which govern Palestinian territories – but it also focused attention on Stanley L. Cohen, the Manhattan based Jewish lawyer who represents Marzook.

“Mousa Abu Marzook’s first-ever interview with a Jewish publication was arranged, at the Forward’s request, by his attorney, Stanley L. Cohen, who was present for the entire exchange,” the Forward writes.

Cohen represented Marzook in 1995 after he was arrested  in New York at John F. Kennedy International Airport.  Israel had been seeking his extradition from the U.S. at the time but Marzook was able to return to Jordan.

The defense attorney who has claimed in the past that Israel was “the principal beneficiary” of the September 11th attacks and that the Mossad played a role in bringing down the World Trade Centers in New York, also represented a Texas based imam with links to former Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden .  The client, Moataz al-Hallak, was implicated in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

“Did my client gets faxes from bin Laden or Waleed at his mosque? Perhaps.  The list has 10,000 mosques around the world.  Bin Laden sends a lot of faxes,” Cohen once told Newsday.

After his cousin was killed in a suicide attack in Israel, Cohen says Marzook “offered his condolences”.

At the time of publication Mr. Cohen had not responded to thh Algemeiner’s request for comment.

“I spent a day with Arafat in Ramallah on the West Bank,” Cohen told Newsday. “I had lunch with the alleged mastermind of the Achille Lauro ship hijacking.”

The 1985 hijacking occurred off the coast of Egypt, when four Palestinian terrorists held the crew and passengers hostage, before murdering Leon Klinghoffer, a Jewish man bound to a wheelchair, and throwing him overboard.