by TChris

In a resounding rejection of the government's ambitious use of the Patriot Act against a computer science student who helped maintain websites that the government claimed were used to recruit terrorists, a jury has acquitted Sami Omar Al-Hussayen of charges that he provided expert assistance to terrorists.

Al-Hussayen ... was acquitted on all three terrorism counts, as well as one count of making a false statement and two counts of visa fraud. Jurors could not reach verdicts on three more false statement counts and five additional visa fraud counts, and a mistrial was declared on those charges.

TalkLeft's background on this misguided prosecution is collected here. Kudos to Hussayen's attorneys for protecting not only their client, but liberty and freedom of speech, as well.

by TChris

For those who have the time and hard drive space to keep track of all the Bush administration's misleading statements, add this one to the list:

Two months ago, the Bush administration released its annual report card on counterterrorism and gave itself an A. The number of terrorist attacks around the globe, according to the State Department report called "Patterns of Global Terrorism," was at the lowest ebb in the past 34 years.

Not long afterward, however, the report was pilloried by academics, a lawmaker and others. They said its math defied the reality of a steady growth in the number and significance of terrorist attacks in 2003, as well as the worst type of attacks spreading from just a few countries to at least 10.

Yesterday came the State Department's response to its critics: "Oops. Busted. Our bad." Translated from its bureaucratic equivalent: "We anticipate that a correction to the 'Patterns of Global Terrorism' will be publicly issued as soon as possible."

[O]ne senior official, speaking on the condition that he not be cited by name, said the corrections could fill eight pages, including a revised chronology of events, "a list of some things that should have been put in or left out," and various explanatory notes.

Officials have not yet determined whether those statistics, chronologies, and explanatory notes will include, for instance, the truth.

Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and former deputy director of State's counterterrorism office ... said that even using the report's own data, as presented in its statistical tables, the total number of terrorist incidents in 2003 rose, not fell, compared with 2002.

Will the administration still find a way to give itself an A when the report is revised?

Jury selection is beginning in the case of five Palestinean brothers accused of aiding Hamas by supplying keyboards and modems.

Defense attorneys have said the case, introduced with much fanfare by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in December 2002, was being pursued by overzealous Justice Department officials targeting Muslim men with ties to the Middle East. Prosecutors are preparing two trials. In the first, they will bring charges of conspiracy, export violations and money laundering for sending computer parts to Syria and Libya. In the second, they plan to allege that the brothers -- Bayan Elashi, Ghassan Elashi, Basman Elashi, Hazim Elashi and Ihsan Elashyi -- sent money to Hamas or to senior Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzook. Marzook is married to Nadia Marzook, who is a cousin of the brothers. No date has been set for the second trial.

....Defense lawyers have said that export violations are typically classified as regulatory crimes for which violators pay civil fines. They have said some large U.S. companies only paid fines -- and faced no criminal action -- for illegally shipping equipment to Libya and Syria. U.S. attorneys have also said the brothers are linked to a Muslim charity called the Holy Land Foundation, which had an office across the street from their computer company in suburban Dallas.

About three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, the U.S. government shut down the Holy Land Foundation, saying it was being used to send money to terrorists. President Bush said the charity sent money to Hamas which used it "to support schools and indoctrinate children to grow up into suicide bombers." No criminal charges have been filed against the Holy Land Foundation.

James Ujaama was charged and convicted for building websites and providing laptops. These five brothers sent money to charity. Because the charity is Hamas, they knowingly aided or supplied material support to terrorists? How about catching Osama bin Laden instead of the little fish who supported middle eastern charities?

by TChris

Ansar Mahmood took a break from his job delivering pizzas for Domino's to take some pictures of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains to send to his family in Pakistan. He knocked on the door of a nearby water treatment center and asked an employee to take his picture in front of the scenic view. When he returned to Domino's in Greenport that evening, the police were waiting for him.

He was handcuffed and placed in a holding area at the police station, in Hudson. There he was questioned by a stream of federal agents who had converged on this quiet city in Columbia County, a popular antiques center 109 miles north of New York City.

They wanted to know why he was interested in the water-treatment facility, what connection he had to the World Trade Center attack. Mr. Mahmood recalled explaining that he did not even know that there was a water-treatment plant.

Racial profiling? Not much doubt of that. An illegal detention? Absolutely. It isn't a crime to photograph scenery (or even public buildings), and no terrorist is going to ask someone to take his picture in front of a potential target. Mahmood was one of thousands of people swept up and detained in the wake of 9/11. Whatever unreasonable suspicions law enforcement agents may have harbored could have been dispelled by questioning Mahmood without taking him into custody.

Mahmood was working legally with the benefit of a green card, but he's still detained. Investigators who searched his apartment learned that he helped out a Pakistani couple by co-signing their apartment lease and registering their car in his name. On the questionable advice of a court-appointed lawyer, he pled guilty to "harboring illegal aliens" (even though he didn't know their visas had expired) and now faces deportation.

Activists are fighting on his behalf, and they've attracted some impressive supporters, including Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Richard Durbin of Illinois, Jon Corzine of New Jersey, Russell Feingold of Wisconsin and Patrick Leahy of Vermont. This is a fight they -- and Mahmood -- deserve to win.

ABC News Australia is reporting that the Taliban offered to give Osama bin Laden to the U.S. a year before the 9/11 attacks.

United States and Taliban officials met secretly in Frankfurt almost a year before the September 11 attacks to discuss terms for the Afghans to hand over Osama bin Laden, according to a German television documentary. No agreement was reached and no further negotiations took place before the suicide hijackings in 2001, which bin Laden subsequently hailed in a videotape as the work of his Al Qaeda network.

ZDF television quoted Kabir Mohabbat, an Afghan-American businessman, as saying he tried to broker a deal between the Americans and the purist Islamic Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, who were sheltering bin Laden. He quoted Taliban foreign minister Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil as saying: "You can have him whenever the Americans are ready. Name us a country and we will extradite him". [link via Buzzflash]

by TChris

Trent Lott's knack for saying in public what other right-wingers in power only mutter behind closed doors cost him his position as Senate majority leader. Now it should cost him his job.

In an interview, Lott defended the torture of prisoners.

"Hey, nothing wrong with holding a dog up there, unless the dog ate him, scared him with a dog," Lott said. When WAPT news anchorman Brad McMullan noted that a prisoner died at Abu Ghraib, apparently after a beating, Lott responded, "This is not Sunday school; this is interrogation; this is rough stuff."

No Trent, beating a man to death is not interrogation; it's murder. But Trent doesn't mind murdering prisoners, because in his view, they deserve to die anyway.

Some of the prisoners "should not have been prisoners in the first place, probably should have been killed," he added.

The Trent Lott defense to murder: "He had it coming."

What happened here?

Nabil al-Marabh was No. 27 on the FBI's list of terror suspects after Sept. 11. He trained in Afghanistan's militant camps, sent money to a roommate convicted in a foiled plot to bomb a hotel and boasted to an informant about plans to blow up a fuel truck inside a New York tunnel, FBI documents allege. The Bush administration set him free - to Syria - even though prosecutors had sought to bring criminal cases against him and judges openly expressed concerns about possible terrorist ties.

....Even the judge who accepted al-Marabh's plea agreement on minor immigration charges in 2002 balked. "Something about this case just makes me feel uncomfortable," Judge Richard Arcara said in court. The Justice Department assured the judge that al-Marabh did not have terrorist ties.

Here's the Administration's explanation:

U.S. News and World reports President Bush has a new advisor for homeland security, and she occupies a higher rung than Ashcroft at homeland security council meetings:

As President Bush 's new top adviser for homeland security, Frances Fragos Townsend, is most likely headed for some bittersweet encounters with Attorney General John Ashcroft. Thinking Townsend was a Clinton loyalist, the AG forced her to leave the Justice Department, where she'd worked for Janet Reno. Turns out she's a Republican. Now Townsend will chair Bush's homeland security council meetings, while Ashcroft will be just a participant. Thus, she'll feel free to second-guess him, which, say folks who know her, she'll be more than happy to do.

[link via Wonkette]

Should local police have access to federal terrorism files? Civil liberties groups say no and are objecting to the policy which is in effect in New York and Vermont.

Critics of the pilot program caution that it poses an "enormous risk" of arrest and detention of people without cause. However, officials announcing the new information-sharing system last week emphasized that civil liberties will be protected. "It's a very dangerous assumption that just because the information is in the system, it's right," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "In the drive to collect data and share it, there has been a neglect of the safeguards that are absolutely essential to protect us from the misuse of information.

The FBI wants to see the program spread to other states. Here's how it works:

by TChris

The Transportation Security Agency's screening of luggage may or may not make our lives safer, but letting the agency's workers snoop through luggage in private makes our property less safe.

Since last March, federal screeners have been arrested for theft from passengers' property at John F. Kennedy International Airport, as well as Miami International, Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County and Denver International airports.

Although TSA spokesperson Ann Davis characterizes the problem as "quite small," theft and property damage claims have been piling up at TSA, and airlines are starting to worry that they must contend with yet another customer service issue. The TSA's response to the "quite small" problem: a request that Congress limit its liability for damaging or stealing passengers' property to no more than $3 million a year.

by TChris

The death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan made headlines by virtue of his celebrity: Tillman gave up a $3.6 million contract with the Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army after 9/11. It's making headlines again because the Army admits he was probably killed by friendly fire.

The manager of Denny's Restaurant in Avon, Colorado (on I-70, past Vail, just before Eagle) is certain that two of the seven most wanted terrorists stopped in for salads Wednesday night. He says they were acting rude and obnoxious. They told him they were Iranian and driving from New York to the West coast. The manager says he had difficulty getting the FBI interested in his sighting.

We're not suprised. After Timothy McVeigh's photo and perp walk were published following the OKC bombing, there were hundreds of reports of sightings of him around Oklahoma City on the days leading up to the bombing. All of them were subsequently discredited.

Also, the al-Qaeda terrorists from 9/11 who came to this country in the months prior to the attacks reportedly were polite and obviously trained to avoid calling attention to themselves. These guys don't seem to fit the terrorist profile--only a Middle Eastern one. Cross-racial identification is a particular problem in eyewitness identifications.

How wise is it to tie up FBI agents with phone calls from anxious citizens instead of having them coordinate with Homeland Security and intelligence agencies to track the terrorists down and find them on their own? America's Most Wanted really is just a tv show, even if they occasionally get their suspect.