Posted on 04/30/2002 9:54:01 PM PDT by Spar
No Case Vs. Man Who Knew Hijackers
Tue Apr 30,12:29 PM ET
By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - A federal judge threw out a perjury indictment Tuesday against a Jordanian college student who knew two alleged Sept. 11 hijackers, citing errors made when investigators applied for an arrest warrant.
U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin dismissed the indictment after concluding that Osama Awadallah, 21, was unlawfully arrested after he was taken from his San Diego home several days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"Awadallah was effectively seized," she wrote.
Scheindlin said that federal statute does not authorize the detention of material witnesses for a grand jury investigation. It was not immediately clear what effect such a ruling could have on dozens of material witnesses held since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (news - web sites).
"We believe the court's opinions are wrong on the fact and the law and we are reviewing our appellate options," U.S. Attorney James B. Comey said in a statement.
A message left with a lawyer for Awadallah was not immediately returned.
The judge also threw out evidence seized after Awadallah, a student at Grossmont College in El Cajon, Calif., was taken into custody on Sept. 21. The evidence included videotapes and a picture of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).
The judge cited several factors showing that Awadallah's consent to go with FBI (news - web sites) agents to their office and later submit to a lie detector test was the "product of duress or coercion."
She said the agents repeatedly made a show of force by telling him he could not drive his own car, frisking him, refusing to let him inside his apartment and ordering him to keep a door open as he urinated. Moreover, she said, one agent threatened to "tear up" the apartment if he did get a warrant.
Agents also failed to tell Awadallah he had a constitutional right to refuse any searches when they asked him to sign a form consenting to a search, the judge said.
Awadallah was charged with perjury for allegedly lying about his knowledge of one of the men blamed for the suicide attack on the Pentagon.
In grand jury appearances, Awadallah admitted meeting alleged hijacker Nawaf al-Hazmi 30 to 40 times but denied knowing associate Khalid al-Mihdhar. Confronted with an exam booklet in which he had written the name Khalid, he later admitted he knew both of them.
If convicted, Awadallah could have faced up to 10 years in prison.
WWII was about retaliation against a KNOWN PARTICULAR NATION(S) for waging war against the US.
If you cannot see the difference between a known, guilty entity and a diffuse band of terroists, then you need to grow up.
What we are experiencing is a new form of warfare where states do not attack with national emblams painted on their wings.
It is warfare none the less.
But don't worry, we will defend the weaklings and cowards and pacifists and stupid along with the rest of Americans.
Just asking.
How about after we lose a city and 100,000 citizens after the next attack? Will you reconsider then?
How about after a million dead?
The above explains everything.
No matter how religiously the police followed provedure, the end results would have been the same.
Dale Bumpers asked the question during the impeachment hearings when, so said the news media, the American people did not want their president impeached,"...What harm can he do?"
Well, we have a destroyer damaged and a few funerals and several thousand people were burned alive in the World Trade Towers, some were killed when the airplane was deliberately crashed into the Pentagon and others when the plane crashed in Pa. while enroute to another target. All these can be attribated to clinton. There is still Red China and the price we are going to pay, again, in blood and dead bodies, because clinton sold our top military secrets to the Red Chinese.
So, to answer Mr.Bumpers question, "...What harm can he do?", Who knows? The actions of the president that the American people did not want impeached will still be affecting them adversly 50 years from now.
Not only did I want him impeached I also wanted him removed form office and into a prison cell.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Robin Baker said Awadallah, ``by lying to the grand jury ... promoted terrorism.''
She said the agents repeatedly made a show of force by telling him he could not drive his own car, frisking him, refusing to let him inside his apartment and ordering him to keep a door open as he urinated. Moreover, she said, one agent threatened to "tear up" the apartment if he did get a warrant.The bolded example of jack-booted thuggism should be enough to make the search illegal in and of itself. The agent who made the threat should be fired and blacklisted.
We can't be tossing aside our constitutional protections out of fear, justified or not. All that ensures is that the JBTs will endeavor to keep us scared, and therefore under control.
-Eric
There are other choices lying in the continuum between "shoot him on the spot" and "give him a key to the city and send him on his way" ;)
In such a situation, I would have treated him as an agent of the enemy, and held him as a prisoner of war, rather than trying to take advantage of the criminal justice system. If they had good evidence that this guy was involved in such a thing, then he should be treated an agent of the enemy and a prisoner of war, same as in Quirin, and should have been on the next flight to Gitmo. But regardless of what we do with him, the ends cannot be used to justify the means.
I pose this question also to the sexually confused, self proclaimed constitutional scholar, Rowdee.
Say, where do you dig up these fools who speak nothing but worn cliches as if they had invented them themselves and present them as if the rest of us had never heard these things? Straw man, indeed (the fool himself!) And then he tells us all to "move to China or Cuba" What about Russia? Can we all move to Communist Russia? (That's the country to use in standard cliche!)
A fool because he cannot see the difference between guilt and innocence and what he calls "sloppy police work" and what we call outrageous technicality. The police officer sneezed while reading the suspect his Mirand arights. Case dismissed! F. Lee Bailey once wrote a book on hot to beat any rap after having been arrested for DUI, dead drunk, and beating it. ('Course things caught up with F. Lee too in the end.) In fact, given the very nature of it all police work is, or rather can be easily proven, as Bailey had demonstrated, to be "sloppy."
You assert. Obviously, the judge felt there was evidence that he was, in fact, held against his will. That's hardly "freely" talking to them.
You can't throw out an unrelated perjury charge based on police conduct that had nothing to do with his charge before the court!
I ask again, what does this "sloppy" police work that have to do with the crime he was charged with? Perjury of his grand jury testimony?
No difference at all?
Please read #45 and answer the same questions.
Hang the murderers and slap the cops on the wrist for sloppy work. Instead we punish the police officers (Mark Fuhrman) and reward the murderers (O.J. Simpson.) To quote the latter "the system works!" And the gullible defenders of this intellectually bankrupt system are quoting us the Constitution ad nauseam! Sheesh!
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