ACLU discusses Saudi?s trial
Defense attorney lambastes terrorism charge against UI student
By GREG MOORE
Express Staff Writer
Overzealous prosecution of a Saudi student at the University of Idaho, acquitted in June of federal terrorism charges, has harmed the image of the United States in the Middle East, the student?s attorney said last week.
David Nevin, who defended Sami Al-Hussayen in federal court in Boise, spoke Wednesday, Sept. 15, at a local event sponsored by the Idaho chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Nevin told a group of about 40 people at the home of attorney Andy Parnes that following the verdict, he was contacted by the press from Saudi Arabia and neighboring countries.
?This (acquittal) represents the best about America,? Nevin said he told the reporters. ?But there?s another view. An innocent guy who didn?t do anything wrong spent 511 days in jail, in solitary confinement. Why? Because he?s a Muslim? Because he?s an Arab? Because it was right after Sept. 11? That story resonates in the Middle East, too.?
Al-Hussayen, then a 34-year-old UI graduate student in computer science, was arrested at his home in Moscow in February 2003. He was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of providing material support to terrorists. The indictment alleged that he had created Web sites used to recruit and raise funds for violent jihad in Israel, Chechnya and elsewhere. The Idaho U.S. Attorney?s Office presented a case that included recordings of 10,000 phone calls and 20,000 e-mails.
But following six weeks of evidence presented by the prosecution, and only one witness presented by the defense, a jury found Al-Hussayen not guilty of all three terrorism-related charges. In interviews with the Idaho Statesman, two jurors said the prosecution had shown no links between Al-Hussayen and terrorist organizations.
?Ninety-five percent of the stuff (on the Web sites) was fine ? and the stuff that was inflammatory, by the First Amendment, he has the right to do that,? one juror told the paper.
During last week?s talk, Nevin said Al-Hussayen had created Web sites containing thousands of news articles of interest to Muslims. Among those items, he said were four ?fatwas? from radical clerics supporting suicide bombings. However, Nevin said, those were not the views of Al-Hussayen, who, after the Sept. 11 attacks, sent out a press release from the Islamic Center of North America, based in Detroit, condemning the attacks and organized a candlelight vigil and blood drive.
Al-Hussayen was also charged with 11 counts of visa and immigration fraud, which alleged that volunteer work he did for the Islamic Center violated a condition that he come to the Unites States ?solely? to study. The jury found him not guilty on two of those charges and deadlocked on the remaining eight. In order to avoid a second trial on those charges, Al-Hussayen agreed to return to Saudi Arabia, where he now lives.
In an assessment of the case, Nevin contended that the usual process of first determining that a crime had been committed, then looking for the criminals, had been inverted.
?Here, I don?t think a crime had been committed. They just rounded up the usual suspects, then looked for something to charge them with,? he said.
Asked to speculate on the motives of the Idaho U.S. Attorney?s Office in proceeding with such a weak case, Nevin said, ?I think there?s a huge impetus to develop terrorism cases. It?s the path of upward mobility.?
The U.S. attorney?s office in Boise did not return phone calls seeking comment on the case.
Since Sept. 11, the government has had mixed success in prosecuting terrorism cases. Successful prosecutions include:
· Guilty pleas by six Yemeni Americans living in Lackawanna, N.Y., to providing support to terrorists by training at an al-Qaeda training base in Afghanistan during the spring and summer of 2001. Their motives for attending the camp, however, remain unclear.
· Guilty pleas by six people in Portland, Ore., to having tried to go to Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001, to help the Taliban.
·The convictions of nine people in northern Virginia for having ties to a violent Islamic group linked to al- Qaeda.
· The conviction in Seattle of James Ujaama for conspiring to provide goods and services to the Taliban.
But other terrorism cases, like the Al Hussayen indictment, have fallen apart:
· On Sept. 2, a federal judge in Detroit threw out the convictions of two men on charges of belonging to a terrorist ?sleeper cell.? The judge?s decision was made at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice, which admitted widespread prosecutorial misconduct in the case. The Detroit convictions had been the government?s most vaunted U.S. anti-terrorism case.
· In August, an FBI sting operation in Albany, which had created a fake terrorism-related money-laundering scheme, began to come apart after federal prosecutors announced that a key word in a notebook belonging to one of the defendants had been mistranslated.
· In May, the FBI admitted to having misidentified a fingerprint that connected a Portland, Ore., attorney, who had converted to Islam, to the March train bombing in Madrid. The blunder led to the 37-year-old man?s imprisonment for two weeks.
Prosecutions for allegedly aiding terrorists have been based primarily on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, passed in response to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. But they have been aided by changes made to that law by the USA Patriot Act. The Patriot Act added ?expert advice or assistance? as one of the proscribed means of aiding terrorists. But in January, a federal judge in Los Angeles struck down that portion of the act. A related case that will affect that decision is now under review by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
?It?s vague and overbroad,? contended Jack Van Valkenburgh, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho. ?We don?t think it?s appropriate or constitutional to bring charges against Web masters for speech that is not their own.?
Van Valkenburgh said the ACLU supports the proposed Security and Freedom Ensured Act, introduced in Congress by, among others, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Rep. Butch Otter, R-Idaho. The act would tighten up some of the police powers granted by the Patriot Act, including those allowing police to conduct searches of library records and to conduct searches of homes without telling the owners they had been there?so-called ?sneak-and-peek? searches.
?We aren?t attacking all of the Patriot Act,? Van Valkenburgh said, ?but only those provisions that give the executive branch authority to trample on the rights of innocent people.?
Attorney General John Ashcroft has opposed the legislation, stating that changing the Patriot Act would weaken the government?s ability to fight terrorism.
