Posted on 11/22/2004 11:07:43 AM PST by JohnathanRGalt
He is lucky I was not on that jury.
"the First Amendment would protect his right to speak his mind, as long as there was no imminent threat of violence."
Isn't their ANY way we can line up the liberal community in the front row of any terrorist attack on the US?
Maureen O'Hagan is probably a member of GIM. See the link below and my tagline explaining GIM members who are out in force with any story to try and embarrass GW and of course the evil Ashcroft.
http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=Maureen%20O'Hagan%20Gay
The liberal judge in the case carefully instructed the jury that it's OK to incite people to murder other people -- just as long as people aren't immediately murdered. I suppose you could justify child porn on the internet with the same logic.
The link to Maureen O'Hagan's support of the gay cause didn't work. Try this instead: Maureen O'Hagan Gay
How is the system supposed to work if the Judge won't let the jurors see the evidence?
[In a ruling that bolstered Mr. Hussayen's case on Monday, Judge Edward J. Lodge of Federal District Court in Idaho would not let prosecutors show the jury a Web page that encourages suicide bombings. The judge said the government must prove that Mr. Hussayen created the page or endorsed its contents.]Does that sound like a 'clear minded' jury to you? Sounds to me like the system worked as well as it did on the O.J. trial.
The problem was the money. That's a lot of cash to be moving around, (although a number of the Saudi students really are that rich) and I'm sure it raised all sorts of flags. The real problem is that money sent to "perfectly legitimate" Islamic charities really does end up in terrorist hands. That's the principal reason we're in a war with radical Islam at the moment. Where "moderate" Muslims have failed is in allowing the tremendous financial resources of Islam to be directed that way, and it is completely out of control and looks to stay that way.
The author definitely underestimates the resentment and suspicion the Ruby Ridge case generated throughout this area (that was about 150 miles north of UI), not because Weaver was a local but because the nature of the case against him was so completely trumped up and the feds essentially got away with it scot-free. Three hours to a "not-guilty" on all accounts will tell you all you need to know about this case as it was presented to the jury.
Bump
Ping
Of course, I wasn't on the jury, but from what I've read, there is nothing suspicious about this exclusion at all. He was a webmaster on a system that allowed others to post -- not unlike FreeRepublic in that regard. This man wouldn't be any more responsible for what others posted there than the owners/operators of FreeRepublic would be for what I post here. The judge is allowed to exclude this type of evidence, and I believe he was right to do so in this case.
I'm as eager as anybody for terrorists to be caught and prosecuted. But I'm not ready to join the lynch mob and string up everyone with an Arab name and a beard.
Actually, the sites were "Terror Central". Al-Hussayen, as webmaster and moderator was directly responsable for the content of the sites and forums. He approved of the content and uploaded / posted it:
Court told of ties to Web group
Postings on the e-mail group called "Qoqaz" urged Muslim support for a violent jihad -- or holy war -- in the Middle East, Chechnya and elsewhere in the non-Muslim world, according to an indictment against Al-Hussayen.Two days before Al-Hussayen's arrest last year, an "urgent appeal" was posted on the e-mail group urging Muslims to identify and supply information about U.S. military targets in the Middle East.
Al-Hussayen is on trial in U.S. District Court on charges of providing material support to terrorists, using his computer expertise to develop and maintain Web sites for Islamic extremists and lying to U.S. immigration officials to gain a student visa.
Bobby Lee, an engineering manager for Yahoo Groups, testified Wednesday, using voluminous computer records obtained from Yahoo with a federal subpoena.
Those records indicate Al-Hussayen opened two e-mail accounts, now controlled by Yahoo, using his University of Idaho e-mail address as an alternate to two Yahoo accounts....
... The federal prosecutor asked Lee about Yahoo records, which showed Al-Hussayen approved a Qoqaz posting on June 7, 2000, using his University of Idaho e-mail address.
The witness did not discuss the specific posting or indicate its contents.
Hinnen then asked Lee about another Qoqaz posting that Al-Hussayen, acting as a group moderator, deleted from the group's site two months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. ...
although any website specializing in Arab language content is going to be easier to exploit than ones in English. It's really difficult to make a webmaster responsible for the activities of transient users - look, for example, at the sort of stuff that gets posted to FR from time to time.
The moderator/webmaster is certainly responsable for what appears. Assume, for the sake of arguement, that a moderator on FR allowed, and sometimes openly encouraged posts calling for illegal activites such as murder or violent jehad. If the moderator refused to remove the offending posts can we assume that moderator would be as responsable for the posts as the original poster? Would FR be held responsable (in the public mind if not the court) if it allowed the postings to continue?
Al-Hussayen was the webmaster and moderator. He approved of what was said and posted. He physically uploaded the content to the websites using his admin password. If someone posts the things on FreeRepublic that Al-Hussayen approved of they'd be quickly banned and their posts would be immediately deleted.
The judge blinded the jury by disallowing important evidence. The judge then re-defined the English language by telling them that incitement isn't really incitement if it doesn't incite to a crime within a short period of time.
I'm as eager as anybody for terrorists to be caught and prosecuted. But I'm not ready to join the lynch mob and string up everyone with an Arab name and a beard.
And I say we can't excuse people for their violent speech and actions because they have an Arab name and a beard.
More likely in Idaho a Libertarian-leaning jury...
I saw nothing to support these assertions in the article. He probably was the moderator, but the possiblity that he simply did a sloppy job of that isn't enough to convict him, in my mind. Besides, the guy has a history of protesting terrorism; certainly not the usual tactics of a terrorism lover. Those were the ones cheering on 9/11, but not this guy. Also, I saw nothing to indicate that he had to personally approve everything that was posted, nor did I see anything about his "admin password". Where did you come up with that?
Well, actually that sort of thing did happen in FR's early days, often put-up jobs by people who were attempting to smear the site. Links to StormFront, that sort of thing. Nasty stuff. FR Didn't have Mods, and JimRob's gotta sleep sometime.
That aside, the case hinged on what this guy actually did as opposed to what people did on sites and email groups he set up, and the prosecutors failed to link the two.
Again, my point is not that he's innocent, but that most of what he did himself is peripheral and hence it is extremely difficult to prove criminality. Directing charity contributions, for example, is perfectly legal - try proving that legal charity is siphoning money to terrorists. Everyone knows that it is, but try proving it. And that's the real problem.
In the very first post I asked the question: "Is the Seattle Times author, Maureen O'Hagan, glossing over many of Hussayen's terrorist connections in order to paint a false picture in favor of Muslim webmasters who produce terror websites?"
Of course you didn't see it in the article. Those assertions weren't there because Maureen O'Hagan selectively left them out in order to paint a false picture.
If you want to find out what's really happening you have to dig a little deeper than what the liberal media will allow you to see. IANA (The Islamic Assembly of North America) has been the discussion topic on FreeRepublic several times in connection with terrorist activities over the past several years. Consider this discussion:
Besides, the guy has a history of protesting terrorism; certainly not the usual tactics of a terrorism lover. Those were the ones cheering on 9/11, but not this guy.Upstate charity tied to illegal Iraqi cash: Feds say N.Y. group laundered millions
... Probers exploring a possible terror connection have focused on Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a 34-year-old computer scientist and doctoral candidate who was researching cyber-intrusion techniques at the University of Idaho in Moscow.
Saudi-born Al-Hussayen ran two of Help the Needy's Web sites and is listed as having registered Web addresses for a dozen sites linked to or belonging to the Islamic Assembly of North America, according to court documents and the Internet Council of Registrars in Geneva.
The Islamic assembly sites were the ones that allegedly posted fatwas in Arabic from two radical Saudi clerics allied with Bin Laden - Salman Al-Awdah and Safar Al-Hawali - that advocated suicide attacks against the U.S. The sites also provided religious justification for Al Qaeda's "martyrdom operations."
Chilling pre-9/11 words
The Web sites Al-Hussayen ran for Help the Needy posted no such materials. But a site he operated for the assembly posted an article, "Provision of Suicide Operations," on June 19, 2001, that included this chilling excerpt, which the government quoted in court filings:
"The mujahid [or warrior] must kill himself if he knows this will lead to killing a great number of the enemies ... or demolishing a center vital to the enemy or its military forces. ...
"In this new era, this can be accomplished with the modern means of bombing or bringing down an airplane on an important location that will cause the enemy great losses."
After 9/11 we saw CAIR also making public denouncements of terrorism. It's important to dig deeper to find out what people actually believe and promote.
Also, I saw nothing to indicate that he had to personally approve everything that was posted, nor did I see anything about his "admin password". Where did you come up with that?
Webmasters, ISP administrators, and moderators have admin passwords. Nothing goes onto a website site without their tacit approval. All content on the web exists because someone with an admin password allows it to exist.
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