 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Washington Post - November 19, 2004 High-profile N.Y. suspect goes on trial By Michael Powell Attorney General John D. Ashcroft spoke of a terrorism supporter apprehended. A federal prosecutor suggested that an Arab engineer who was a friend of Dhafir's might be proficient in fashioning "dirty bombs." And a federal magistrate denied bail to the oncologist, saying he might escape to Canada over the ice on the St. Lawrence River. But federal prosecutors never filed a terrorism-related charge against Dhafir, 56, who emigrated from Iraq to the United States 32 years ago and became an American citizen. Instead, Dhafir, whose trial starts this week, faces charges that he defrauded a charity he ran and violated U.S. sanctions by sending millions of dollars to feed children and build mosques in pre-invasion Iraq. Dhafir has also been charged with Medicare fraud and tax evasion, accusations that grew out of the federal terrorism investigation. If convicted, he faces at least 10 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines. In a prison interview and a letter to a newspaper, Dhafir has attributed his troubles to anti-Arab bias and fallout from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Humanitarian groups and prominent American corporations have violated U.S. sanctions against Iraq without facing criminal charges, his lawyer contends. "We believe the government targeted him because he's an Arab American," said Deveraux L. Cannick, Dhafir's attorney. "They rushed to the conclusion that this man was sponsoring terrorism. They colored him as the devil incarnate." Dhafir's trial begins at a sensitive time for the Justice Department. In early September, a federal judge in Detroit threw out the convictions of three Arab American men accused of belonging to a terrorist "sleeper operational combat cell." A government review has blamed an overzealous prosecutor for withholding evidence from the defense and misrepresenting other evidence in the case. In June, Sami Omar Hussayen, a Saudi graduate student at the University of Idaho, was acquitted of charges he provided material support to terrorism by running an Internet network that sought to raise money and recruit fighters for holy war abroad. The FBI arrested Hussayen and Dhafir on the same day. Federal law enforcement sources had suggested a link between the men, who shared membership in the Islamic Assembly of North America, a charity with Web sites that extol radical struggles in Chechnya, Kosovo and the Palestinian territories. Prosecutors have declined to comment on the case, referring reporters to the voluminous document file. Still, many questions remain unanswered about Dhafir. He allegedly neither filed for a required tax exemption for his charity, Help the Needy, nor obtained a license to send donations to Iraq. He is accused of using false Social Security numbers obtained in the names of several associates to open charity bank accounts, and of siphoning money from the charity to buy real estate in the United States. Dhafir aroused suspicions by sometimes writing apparent coded e-mails to associates in the Middle East, according to government papers. An affidavit filed by U.S. Attorney Glenn T. Suddaby cites a particularly mysterious example. In December 2002, Dhafir sent an e-mail to a friend in England, inviting him to attend his daughter's wedding in Drumlin Hall in England. Dhafir signed the e-mail "Uncle Ralph." Dhafir does not have a daughter, and no wedding was scheduled that day in Drumlin Hall. Cannick, Dhafir's attorney, said much of the government's case will fall apart. Confusion inevitably arises, he said, when key evidence is written in Arabic. Others argue that Dhafir was taking precautions to avoid Saddam Hussein's secret police in Iraq. Dhafir risked missing his own trial by refusing as a matter of religious faith to consent to strip searches before leaving the county lockup. On Monday, a judge waived that requirement….. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43278-2004Oct18.html The Seattle Times – November 22, 2004 A terrorism case that went awry By Maureen O'Hagan Yet al-Hussayen, a 34-year-old doctoral candidate at the University of Idaho, didn't exactly fit the profile when he was arrested in February 2003 and likened in court documents to Osama bin Laden. Instead, al-Hussayen's alleged crimes occurred at his keyboard in Moscow, Idaho, where he volunteered his computer skills to run Web sites for a Muslim charity. While the charity on its face was geared toward peaceful religious teachings, prosecutors alleged that buried deep within the Web sites were a handful of violent messages — written by others — encouraging attacks on the United States and donations to terrorist organizations. Al-Hussayen was charged under a law prohibiting "material support" to terrorism, a provision that has been used routinely in alleged terrorist cases since 2001. But al-Hussayen's case was nothing like the rest. There was no evidence the Web sites recruited terrorists, or, for that matter, that he even believed their hateful message. And even if he did, the First Amendment would protect his right to speak his mind, as long as there was no imminent threat of violence. Law enforcement used the Patriot Act, the sweeping anti-terrorism law hurriedly passed in October 2001, to get around some of those hurdles. Al-Hussayen was charged under a clause that expanded the definition of "material support" to include those who provide "expert advice or assistance" to terrorists' cause. He was the first person ever to be charged under that provision, which Congress has considered expanding. Prosecutors say his arrest alone disrupted terrorist fund-raising. "His fingerprints were intricately involved in the building of Web sites that called on young people to go and kill themselves" and to make donations for attacks, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Derden. "Can you call on people to donate money to attack America? That's where we were going with our prosecution." But jurors, who considered the charges in U.S. District Court in Idaho in June, didn't buy it. "There was not a word spoken that indicated he supported terrorism," said juror John Steger, a retired federal employee. "It was a real stretch." Al-Hussayen's case, along with the proposed legislation, indicates a shift in the way the laws are being enforced…. Born in Saudi Arabia to a well-to-do family, he began studying in the United States in 1994. He got a master's degree from Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., and in 1999 came to Moscow to study for his doctorate in computer science. By the time of his arrest, he was nearly done…… Authorities were suspicious enough to want to tap al-Hussayen's phones, but Nevin said they didn't have the required "probable cause" to believe a crime had been committed and therefore couldn't get a typical search warrant. To get around that Fourth Amendment requirement, they turned instead to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was created in the 1970s so government could spy on spies. That court, which is conducted in secret, doesn't have the strict "probable cause" requirement. And under the Patriot Act, its jurisdiction was expanded, and it has increasingly been used in cases that don't involve spies. In spring 2002, the court granted a government request to record all of al-Hussayen's phone calls and e-mail. All told, some 20,000 e-mails and 9,000 phone calls were captured over the course of about a year. In addition to the wiretaps, as many as 20 local, state and federal law-enforcement officers began tailing al-Hussayen, according to his lawyer, recording his daily activities around campus and elsewhere. Essentially, the government vacuumed every corner of al-Hussayen's life looking for crumbs of terrorist activity. After nearly a year of investigating, the FBI was ready to pounce. On Feb. 26, 2003, Moscow awoke to find the university's day-care parking lot blocked by a swarm of federal, state and local officers. They were there primarily to grab al-Hussayen, who lived in university housing near the center. But the officers also were armed with a list of Arab students and began knocking on their doors about 5 a.m.… In a news conference after the raid, authorities trumpeted the arrest and described al-Hussayen as a money man for terrorist operations. Some agents even told reporters that the case could show how attacks such as those on the World Trade Center were funded. Before terrorism charges were filed, al-Hussayen was held in jail for months for alleged immigration infractions. Despite all the hoopla, the charges filed against al-Hussayen had nothing to do with terrorism. Instead, he was charged with 11 counts of visa fraud and making false statements for filling out his immigration forms wrong. There were two basic problems that he repeated on several forms. First, he swore he had entered the country "for the sole purpose" of study, and not to work. He broke that promise by volunteering for the Web sites, prosecutors said. He also ran afoul of a post-9/11 requirement that males entering the country provide a list of organizations to which they belong. Al-Hussayen did not list the Islamic Assembly of North America. It was the first time anyone had been charged with a crime for failing to disclose volunteer charity work to the U.S. government, according to immigration lawyer Robert Pauw, who represented al-Hussayen. In fact, one of the prosecution's own witnesses, who was from Iraq, held a paying job in violation of her own visa, but she was never charged. At al-Hussayen's bail hearing, the judge was skeptical. Saying there was no evidence al-Hussayen was dangerous, he denied prosecutors' request that al-Hussayen be jailed until trial. But prosecutors had another plan. Turning to immigration court, where it's easier to keep a suspect locked up until trial, they filed separate charges alleging al-Hussayen had earned about $300 over his five years of volunteering for the charity. The immigration judge, trumping the previous judge, ruled al-Hussayen would be held behind bars until all the charges were resolved. All told, he would spend about 1½ years in jail. After about a year, prosecutors filed terrorism charges. They alleged he was supporting terrorists in Israel, Chechnya and other places through the Web sites. "It was a type of prosecution that had not been tried before," prosecutor Derden said, noting that the U.S. Department of Justice made the case "a priority." In opening statements, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kim Lindquist told the jury al-Hussayen had a "dual persona. One face to the public and a private face of extreme jihad." "When he [Lindquist] got done," recalled juror Steger, "I thought, this guy's going to be in jail for life." But soon, Steger and the others began to have doubts. Weeks into the trial, Lindquist hadn't presented any evidence of terrorism. During week four, prosecutors began to show the jury those alleged connections. On al-Hussayen's Web pages, prosecutors argued, you could click on links that would allow you to donate to Hamas, which the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization. Not so fast, the defense replied. Those links were removed from the site before al-Hussayen became Webmaster. The links might be hidden, prosecutors countered, but al-Hussayen was still funneling potential donors to Hamas. That's because a would-be terrorist could still donate via al-Hussayen's Web sites if he knew what to type into the address bar. Ridiculous, the defense replied. "If you really want to have a page that will allow people to make donations to Hamas, it makes no sense to hide it," said Nevin, al-Hussayen's attorney. But how to explain the Islamic edicts, or fatwas, the prosecution countered? One of the edicts, written by a radical sheik and posted months before 9/11, advocated "suicide operations" and "bringing down an airplane on an important location." Surely, a devoted Muslim reading that statement could be incited to violence. However, as the defense pointed out, another prosecution witness, Reuven Paz, admitted he had much of the same material posted on his Web site, as did the BBC. Throughout the trial, Nevin held fast to the argument that al-Hussayen was a peace-loving student, not a terrorist. "These are not Sami's opinions," Nevin said. "It's not right to hold him responsible for what someone else said." Under the law, Lindquist countered, it didn't matter if al-Hussayen intended to aid terrorists. All he needed to prove material support was to show that al-Hussayen knew his Web sites attracted donations or recruits. Changing rules To understand the uniqueness of al-Hussayen's case, it's helpful to look at how terrorism prosecution has changed over the years and how his case compares to the rest. The first "material support" of terrorism law was passed in 1994; under it, the government had to show a connection between the support and a terrorist act. It also had to prove that the person providing material support intended to aid terrorists. For example, if someone donated to Hamas intending to provide humanitarian aid to Palestinians, he could not be prosecuted. "Unless I could show how Hamas used that money — something you could never show as a practical matter — this law was doing no good to cut off funding," said Robert Chesney, a law professor at Wake Forest University. In 1996, after the Oklahoma City bombing, Congress expanded the material-support law to address those concerns. Then came 9/11. Six weeks after the attacks, Congress passed the Patriot Act, which added a clause to the material-support law outlawing "expert advice or assistance" to terrorist organizations. It did not define the term, however. Since 9/11, the material-support law has been used against 52 defendants, Chesney noted, but none but al-Hussayen's case raised this thorny issue. He favors the Patriot Act's material-support provision, saying when concerns such as this arise, they should be considered case-by-case. Others disagree, saying the law is too broad. "It has become the linchpin of [outgoing Attorney General John] Ashcroft's war on terrorism precisely because it doesn't require proof that an individual engaged in any sort of terrorist act or even supported any terrorist activity," said David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University. "It is to my mind a resurrection of the principle of guilt by association." That's what happened when Japanese Americans were rounded up during World War II and when communists were persecuted and prosecuted, Cole said. Unanimous verdict on terrorism charges derails government's case Initially, the jury in the al-Hussayen case focused on the immigration violations. After six days, arguments and tears, al-Hussayen was acquitted of three of them. The jurors deadlocked on the other eight, unable to agree whether he intentionally misled immigration officials or whether the forms simply weren't clear. Finally, they considered the terrorism charges. "In two or three hours," juror Steger recalled, "we voted him not guilty on all three." "There was no direct connection in the evidence they gave us — and we had boxes and boxes to go through — between Sami [al-Hussayen] and terrorism," said juror Clair Ingraham. A yearlong investigation, the work of scores of officers, the promise of finding out how al-Qaida funds operations. It had all evaporated with a resounding "not guilty." Al-Hussayen reached an agreement with the U.S. government and flew back to Saudi Arabia in July…. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002097570_sami22m.html |