Posted on 10/24/2005 5:07:44 PM PDT by Valin
A federal judge on Monday denied a request by a U.S. citizen, who has been charged with plotting to kill President George W. Bush, to throw out confessions he signed while in Saudi custody where he claims he was tortured. U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee issued brief orders denying requests by Ahmed Abu Ali, 24, to throw out the confessions he signed and to dismiss the case. Lee said he would explain his ruling at a later date. The ruling comes the day before jury selection is due to begin.
Abu Ali was arrested in June 2003 while taking a final exam in a Saudi university. He has pleaded not guilty to a nine-count indictment charging him with conspiring to kill Bush and with providing support and resources to al Qaeda. No date or year for the plot was specified in the indictment. Abu Ali testified last week that he was arrested in Medina, Saudi Arabia and said that the day after his arrest, officers from the Saudi domestic security police chained him to the floor, blindfolded him and whipped him to make him talk. After begging them to stop, Abu Ali said he agreed to cooperate and began making confessions which continued after he was transferred to a prison near Riyadh, where he was held for 20 months.
The Saudi government has denied torturing Abu Ali. U.S. prosecutors, who have based much of their case against Abu Ali on his confessions and other statements made in Saudi Arabia, said there was no evidence that he had been mistreated. Federal prosecutors said last week that Abu Ali was making up the story that he was tortured.
In the hearings to determine whether the confessions were able to be used at trial, doctors and psychiatrists gave conflicting testimony on whether there was physical or mental evidence of torture. Witnesses hired by the defense said Abu Ali had marks on his back that show where he was whipped, and they said he has post-traumatic stress disorder caused by the torture. Government witnesses disagreed, and said the marks on his back were just areas of hyper-pigmentation of his skin. A psychiatrist said Abu Ali did not have any mental illness.
So, he voted for Treason before he voted against it?
Bruce Lee? You just couldn't make this stuff up.
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