By Samuel Newhouse
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

CADMAN PLAZA EAST – A high-profile lawyer accused of conspiring to tamper with witnesses – through both bribery and murder – will appear for arraignment Thursday in the Brooklyn federal court.

Attorney Robert Simels was indicted in September in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York for allegedly conspiring to prevent a witness from testifying against his client, Shaheed Khan, a Guyanese businessman and alleged drug trafficker.

Simels had been representing Khan since he was arrested and brought to the United States in June 2006 after an April indictment by federal prosecutors.

During that time, Simels defended his client fiercely and fought to improve Khan’s conditions in prison, for example trying to earn him the right to have a laptop.

In a particularly passionate letter to the court dated March 7, 2007, Simels denounces prison officials for allegedly holding Khan in solitary 23 hours a day, unfairly punishing him for chewing gum, and denying him the chance to see his family.

“The conduct of the prosecution and MCC [Metropolitan Correction Center] in this instance brings to mind Shakespeare’s ‘something is rotten in the state of Denmark,’� Simels wrote. “Only here the stench is emanating from the MCC.�

Khan allegedly ran a violent international drug trafficking organization and imported cocaine into Brooklyn and other places in the city and country.

He reportedly controlled the cocaine industry in Guyana with the aid of paramilitary enforcers known as the “Phantom Squad,� who commit murders and violent crimes to protect Khan’s business interests.

Simels was charged with conspiring to tamper with a witness after a DEA investigation between May and September of 2008, which relied heavily on an informant who was also a “Phantom Squad� member.

According to transcripts of conversations included in the 18-page complaint, Simels wanted the informant to prevent three witnesses from testifying against Khan at his trial.

Simels, with associate and now co-defendant Arienne Irving, allegedly discussed a range of options with the DEA’s informant, from bribing one witness with $10,000 to possibly murdering the mother of a witness who Simels considered central to the prosecution’s case.

Later, Simels stated, according to the transcripts, “All he [Khan] says is to be careful. He says don’t kill the mother...He thinks that if [John Doe #1]’s mother gets killed that...the government will go crazy. That, that they’ll put him into the, the SHU, special housing unit, limit his phone calls, limit my access to him.�

Simels, Irving, and Khan will appear for the arraignment tomorrow at 11:00 a.m., as well as for a status conference at 12:00 p.m.

Simels’ clients have included drug lord Kenneth “Supreme� McGriff and Henry Hill, the mobster immortalized in the film “Goodfellas.�

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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