Posted on 05/28/2006 1:05:53 PM PDT by Graybeard58
INDIANAPOLIS -- An Indiana truck driver was sentenced Friday to more than 13 years in prison for what prosecutors said was a plot to sell U.S. intelligence secrets to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime.
"I am not a bad man," Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban told U.S. District Court Judge John D. Tinder during his sentencing hearing. "I help this country a lot. ... I came to live in peace."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sharon Jackson said Shaaban was putting up a front in maintaining his innocence.
"This defendant is a man without a conscience. Mr. Shaaban has no allegiance to this country," she said. "He acquires and discards citizenship like some people acquire and discard shoes."
A jury in January convicted Shaaban, 54, on six charges, including acting as an unregistered foreign agent and violating sanctions against Iraq.
Prosecutors said Shaaban, who is Palestinian, traveled to Baghdad in late 2002 and agreed to sell U.S. intelligence secrets to Iraq for $3 million.
Shaaban, who represented himself during his 11-day trial, argued that he was mistaken for a dead twin brother who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Shaaban said he was on a mission for the CIA when he traveled to the Middle East in late 2002, but maintains he never entered Iraq because he was detained by Syrian authorities.
During the trial, a former high-ranking Iraqi intelligence official identified Shaaban as the man who offered to sell him the names of U.S. agents.
in the country. Prosecutors never alleged that Shaaban had names to sell.
Shaaban was living near Indianapolis when he was arrested in March 2005. FBI agents who raided his house said they found computer files praising Hussein and an unsigned contract proposing to recruit "human shields" to protect Iraq from the U.S. invasion. Authorities said he had seven passports.
Shaaban said the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks "put many Arabs and Muslims and innocents in bad positions. I am one of these -- I am a victim of 9/11."
Besides his 160-month sentence, Shaaban will lose his naturalization status. It was unclear where he would be deported after his jail term.
Great story line...true, or not. Maybe I'll get to use it sometime.
"I am not a bad man,"
You are VERY bad man.
It's unclear, to me at least, whether he will be alive at the end of his jail term. Jails are filled with very bad men who might think the world is better off without this POS.
LOL ...
That line would probably work better in a bar than a courtroom.
Get a rope.
But this can't be. Saddam had no connections to the WoT.
Despite the headline which makes it sound like a whitebread "real" American, I knew it would be a Middle Eastern transplant.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you to show leniancy, I have an idiot for a client..."
With all of the national attention over Plamegate, you'd think that the mass media would be interested in a trial over someone leaking the names of CIA agents. Then again, the national media is comprised of fellow Saddamites...
"Prosecutors said Shaaban, who is Palestinian"
Oh, right, this guy can be believed.
This must have been caused by lack of US aid, ie,Ggeorge W. Bush.
Remember when people pointed out how those Human Shields were useful idiots in Saddam's service?
Shaaban was living near Indianapolis when he was arrested in March 2005. FBI agents who raided his house said they found computer files praising Hussein and an unsigned contract proposing to recruit "human shields" to protect Iraq from the U.S. invasion.
Why was he even here?
Under what section of our current (bad) immigration system did he qualify for naturalization?
Why wasn't he tried for treason and the death penalty?
The answers to ALL these questions are held in the actions and decisions of government employees, who serve us poorly most of the time.
Makes me wonder what other info we found in Iraq, what the feds know, and who they're watching.
But the democRATS have convinced us that Saddam was a benign leader who kept the balanace of power in the middle east and buffered Syria and Iran. Saddam was not a Russian client. He had no weapons of mass destruction. He did not test chemical weapons on his citizens. He did not use gas on Iranians, Kurds or other Iraqis. He did not like bin Laden because he was too religious. His intelligence service did not fund or train al qaeda. His camp at Salman Pak did not train Islamic militants how to hijack an airliner using knives and the threat of bombs. Saddam had nothing at all to do with 9/11 or the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
Why is it impossible to believe democRATS? Because they told us the above, all of which are lies and mis-statements of the truth. Never trust an Islamic militant or a democrat.
Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban? A Hoosier? Like in the movies?
Yep. Just one of them go ol' Indiana boys. I'll bet he had a whole lot of John Cougar records racked up in his CD changer, and used the phrase "didn't it" when most of us would say "isn't it."
"Shaaban was living near Indianapolis when he was arrested in March 2005. FBI agents who raided his house said they found computer files praising Hussein and an unsigned contract proposing to recruit "human shields" to protect Iraq from the U.S. invasion."
We had a despicable couple who started attending our church right after 9/11. They participated in all types anti America marches and protests and in a church coffee hour praising the human shield recruiting.
Afterwards I asked them if they and the shields were being paid by Saddam. They glared at me, and I told them that if they were, they had better believe in God. That was the last we saw of them. They moved back New Hampshire or Maine to really protest the Iraqi war.
He's absolutely not bad. Certainly among those seven passports one of them was a good man.
See, that's the ticket (one way to Gaza).
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