Man Found Guilty of Plotting to Kill Bush By MATTHEW BARAKAT Associated Press March 30, 2006 ALEXANDRIA, Va. - An American Muslim convicted of joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate President Bush was sentenced to 30 years behind bars by a judge who compared him to "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh. Prosecutors had asked for the maximum - a life sentence - for Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a 25-year-old U.S. citizen who was born to a Jordanian father and raised in Falls Church. Authorities said Abu Ali went to Saudi Arabia in 2002 out of hatred for the United States. The Saudis arrested him in June 2003 as he was taking final exams at the Islamic University of Medina. "The facts of this case are still astonishing," prosecutor David Laufman said. "Barely a year after Sept. 11 the defendant joined the organization responsible for 3,000 deaths." But U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee said Wednesday that 30 years was sufficient punishment, pointing out that Lindh received a 20-year sentence. Abu Ali's actions "did not result in one single actual victim. That fact must be taken into account." Abu Ali, wearing a green prison jumpsuit, declined to speak before his sentence was imposed. Defense lawyers said they plan to appeal. He was convicted in November of conspiracy to assassinate the president, conspiracy to hijack aircraft and providing support to al-Qaida, among other crimes. The jury in the three-week trial saw a videotaped confession Abu Ali gave to the Saudis in which he said he joined al-Qaida because he hated the United States for its support of Israel. He claimed that the Saudis had extracted a confession from him through torture. Prosecutors denied he was mistreated. Abu Ali said he had the scars on his back that proved he was whipped or beaten by the Saudis. Pictures were taken of his back, and doctors for both the government and the defense examined him, coming to different conclusions. In February, defense lawyers asked for a review of the conviction in light of the disclosure that the Bush administration had eavesdropped on suspected terrorists' conversations without search warrants. Abu Ali's lawyers said they suspected, but had no firm evidence, that Abu Ali had been a target of the surveillance program. The government's response was not made public, but the judge decided to go ahead with the sentencing after receiving it. Comment: The comparison to Lindh is most interesting. See next article...

Flashback: The Real Story of John Walker Lindh By Frank Lindh AlterNet January 24, 2006 After years of almost total silence on his son's arrest and imprisonment, Frank Lindh sets the record straight about the 'American Taliban.' Editor's Note: The public has heard little about John Walker Lindh since the media frenzy over his capture in the winter of 2001. On January 19, John's father Frank Lindh delivered an address at The Commonwealth Club of California. Lindh explained that he and his family have avoided the press for nearly four years; he now wants the public to understand the truth about his son, who he says didn't stand a chance of getting a fair trial in the emotional days following 9/11. Immediately characterized as a "terrorist" by the press and politicians, Lindh faced a jury in Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Pentagon. The trial date scheduled by the judge was the anniversary of 9/11. Initially facing 11 criminal counts -- most relating to terrorism -- the only charge that John Lindh was found guilty of was violating economic sanctions by supporting the Taliban government, for which the 20-year-old was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The following is excerpted from Frank Lindh's speech. I believe the case of John Lindh is an important story and worthy of this audience's attention. In simple terms, this is the story of a decent and honorable young man, embarked on a spiritual quest, who became the focus of the grief and anger of an entire nation over an event in which he had no part. I refer to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. The reason I think this story is important is because our system broke down in the case of John Lindh. My goals today are first, just to tell you the story of John Lindh. Second, to ask you to reflect, based on the fact of John's case, on the importance and the fragility of the rights we enjoy under our Constitution. And my third point is to suggest that the so-called war on terrorism lacks a hearts and minds component. I want to begin by asking you to call to mind the September 11th terrorist attacks and the shock and horror they engendered in the hearts of everyone. On that awful day, a band of terrorists, who claimed Islam as their cause, hijacked four airplanes and flew three of them full of passengers into occupied buildings without warning -- the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. They crashed the fourth airplane, also filled with passengers, into a field in Pennsylvania. Three thousand innocent Americans lost their lives that day. But for those attacks, John's activities, which I will describe, would have been treated with indifference, or perhaps curiosity here in the United States. But, viewed through the prism of the September 11th attacks, those very same activities caused this young man to be vilified as a traitor and a terrorist. Childhood John was born in February 1981 in Washington, D.C., during a time when I was working for the federal government. He's the second of my three children. John was the kind of kid that any parent would want. From the time he was a baby, he was very centered, peaceful and content. Later, after he converted to Islam, I told John that I thought he had always been a Muslim, and he simply had to find it for himself. I'm a practicing Catholic myself, and we raised John as a Catholic. He attended Sunday school along with his brother in Washington. In 1991, when John was 10 years old, we moved from the D.C. area to the Bay Area. At age 12, John saw the movie "Malcolm X" by Spike Lee and became deeply interested in Islam. He later wrote in his autobiographical statement for the court, "I had first become interested in Islam during 1993, after becoming aware of the Hajj, in which thousands of Muslims all over the world gather at Mecca, a holy site in Saudi Arabia. I learned that all Muslims are required to make this religious journey at least once in their life. I was very moved by the image of thousands of people praying together. Perfectly equal and perfectly humble. I began to read all that I could about Islam." When he was 16, John formally converted to Islam at a mosque in Mill Valley in Marin County where we live. An elder at the Mill Valley mosque testified in John's case and wrote a statement for the court in which he said that in all of his experience in knowing Americans who had converted to Islam, "no one has come close to John in the embodiment of piety and of the true noble Islamic character." By the time he was 17, John was ready to embark on a course of studies overseas and he went to Yemen to study Arabic. Travels in the Middle East His first trip to Yemen lasted from July of 1998 to May of 1999, and then his visa expired, so he came home for a few months. Then, in February of 2000, just before his 19th birthday, John returned to Yemen to continue his study of classical Arabic and Islam at a school in Sanaa, Yemen. Again, he had visa trouble, so in November of 2000, John made a decision to go to Pakistan and to continue his Islamic study, memorizing the Koran. It's the goal of every scholarly Muslim to memorize the entire Koran verbatim, and John's goal was to become both fluent in Arabic and to memorize the Koran so that he could then go on and become a Muslim scholar. His goal was to attend the Islamic university at Medina in Saudi Arabia or a comparable world-class Islamic university. It is November of 2000 when John goes to Pakistan with my blessing. In late April of 2001, John wrote to me and his mother to say that he wanted to go up to the mountains of Pakistan to get away from the heat. That made sense. John never tolerated the heat in Washington, D.C. What he didn't tell us, what we didn't learn until later was that John was going over the mountains, into Afghanistan, intent on volunteering for military service in the army of Afghanistan. Civil war in Afghanistan The Soviet Union, as you know, invaded Afghanistan in 1979. They imposed a communist puppet government upon the country. From the time of that invasion, right up through 2001, Afghanistan was engulfed in constant war. After the Soviets withdrew, the country descended into a civil war among the factions -- many of whom had been funded by the United States in the war against the Soviets, and the consequent civil was resulted in terrible devastation in the country. Afghanistan had by far the largest refugee population in the world. Many of these refugees lived in terrible conditions in refugee camps in Pakistan, across the border. Eventually, the Taliban, which rose up out of those refugee camps, managed to consolidate power over most of the country. So by the year 2001, they had consolidated power over all except the Northeastern region of the country, which was still controlled by the Russian-backed Northern Alliance, a group of warlords. America's allegiance with the anti-Russian factions in Afghanistan extended not only through the presidency of Carter, Reagan and the first President Bush, but also to the current Bush administration. In the spring of 2001, roughly at the same time John went to Afghanistan, Secretary of State Colin Powell personally announced a grant of $43 million to the Taliban government for opium eradication, which the New York Times then refers to as "a first cautious step towards reducing the isolation of the Taliban incoming by the new Bush administration." Secretary of State Powell released a press release in which he said "we will continue to look for ways to provide more assistance to the Afghans." This is the context in which John goes to Afghanistan. When he did go into Afghanistan, John received infantry training at a government-run military training camp. But the training camp was funded by Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden really had two operations going on. One was to finance the Afghan army operations -- these training camps for infantry. But he also, as we all know now, had a terrorist organization under way, a highly secretive terrorist organization that we call al Qaeda. Twice in the course of his training there, John actually saw Osama bin Laden and met him on one occasion. He came away from those encounters very skeptical about bin Laden because John recognized instantly that bin Laden was not an authentic Islamic scholar based on what John himself knows. In the course of John's subsequent criminal cases, attorneys hired a professor named Rohan Gunaratna. He is the world's leading authority on al Qaeda and author of the book "Inside al Qaeda." Gunaratna has been employed by the U.N., but also by the government of the United States as an expert in al Qaeda, and he interviewed John extensively. After all these interviews, he made this following conclusion: "Those who, like Mr. Lindh, merely fought the Northern Alliance, cannot be deemed terrorists. Their motivation was to serve and to protect suffering Muslims in Afghanistan, not to kill civilians." U.S. in Afghanistan post-9/11 After the September 11th attacks, the United States goes to war with Afghanistan. There's a period of one month in which the United States attempts to negotiate the extradition of bin Laden and his terrorist group. Those negotiations failed, and so, in October, almost a month later, the United States begins an invasion. I wanted to introduce an important player in these events. It's a notorious Northern Alliance warlord named Abdul Rashid Dostum. Dostum had served as an officer in the Soviet-backed communist puppet government in Afghanistan. The New Yorker magazine last year said he was "perhaps Afghanistan's most notorious war lord," and he's viewed by most human rights organizations as among the worst war criminals in the country. Throughout the 1990s as well as during the U.S. invasion of 2001, Dostum was involved in numerous documented cases of torture and murder of prisoners of war. He dominates the area of North Central Afghanistan around the city of Masari Sharif. In the period in late 2001, Taliban forces in Northern Afghanistan were overrun by the Northern Alliance forces after an aerial bombing by the United States. The American strategy was to use Northern Alliance troops as a proxy rather than commit American troops to the ground. This may have been a sound military strategy; however, it appears that the American generals who planned this invasion made no provision for the handling of the prisoners of war. What happened as a consequence was the murder of thousands of Taliban prisoners by the Northern Alliance during the period of November and December of 2001, the same time when John's case comes to our attention. These war crimes have been documented by Physicians for Human Rights and in the mainstream media here in the United States, including a cover story in Newsweek magazine. Capture in Afghanistan Let us return now to the story of John. In early September, before the 11th, John arrived at the frontline in Tahar. The two armies there -- the Taliban army and the Northern Alliance army, were locked in an old-fashioned stalemate. John arrived, he was issued the standard rifle and two hand grenades and performed sentry duty there at the front. He never fired his weapons. After the American bombing campaign began in October, the line broke. Again, no American troops are here in Tahar, it's all Northern Alliance troops, but the American bombing happens. The frontline breaks, the Taliban soldiers retreat to the capital of Tahar -- Kunduz. It's a confused retreat. Many of them are killed. If they're captured by the Northern Alliance, they're killed. There's a chilling series of pictures in the New York Times of a prisoner as he's taken, castrated and then killed. This is what John faced. He was very desperate and near dead by the time he got to Kunduz. Then there's a deal made by General Dostum for safe passage of these prisoners from Kunduz to a city in the west called Herat, near the border of Iran. John is one of the 400 that are part of this deal with Dostum. They make this deal, and a large amount of money is given to Dostum in return for the safe passage. The only condition Dostum imposes is that the soldiers must give up their weapons before he'll allow them to pass through. So they give up the weapons and then immediately Dostum breaks the deal. He diverts the prisoners from their path into his fortress -- a place called Kuala Jungi. It's an old 15th- or 16th-century walled fortress near Mazari Sharif. And there all hell broke loose. The next morning, John was brought out along with these other prisoners, with their hands tied behind their backs for interrogation. There are no American troops present here, but there are two American CIA agents, and they're doing the interrogation of the prisoners as they're brought out of the basement. Their arms are tied behind their backs at the elbow, and they are being very brutally abused by Dostum's troops. All of them are afraid that they are going to be killed by Gen. Dostum given his reputation. John is struck in the back of the head with a rifle butt by one of the Northern Alliance troops as he's brought out of the basement just moments before some video was taken of John being interrogated by the two U.S. agents. They threatened John with death. John remained silent (Lindh believed the two agents were working for Dostum.) His only goal was to get to Herat so that he could get back to Pakistan. Moments after this video is shot, the last of the remaining 400 or 500 prisoners, as they're brought out of the basement, jumped Dostum's guards, seized their weapons, and a melee broke out. Dostum's troops panic and begin to shoot down all the prisoners in the yard, most of them, like John with their hands and arms tied behind their backs. Dozens and dozens of these Taliban prisoners are killed on the spot. John gets up and starts to run. He is shot immediately in the thigh. He lay on the ground there for 12 hours, pretending to be dead while the carnage continued around him. That night, some of the survivors managed to get back down into the basement of the building where they had been taken when they first were brought to the fortress. They went in among the dead and found the wounded and brought them down into the basement. John was one of them. In the days that followed, there was a deliberate effort by Dostum, supported by the United States Special Forces, to simply exterminate all of the Taliban prisoners in the fortress. By the end of that week, most of them were dead. John and a group of them were still holed up. They were unarmed, they were wounded, and they were in the basement of the fortress. They dropped hand grenades down, they poured burning oil down. At one point, they attempted to drop a 1,000-pound bomb on the building, but it was misdirected and actually killed some of Dostum's troops, so they stopped with the bombing, but they continued to try to exterminate these prisoners. There was a British journalist there named Luke Harding, and he wrote at the time that "Dostum's Northern Alliance and his British and American allies had only one plan: to kill all those in the compound." On Friday, the 30th of November, after six days, they flooded the basement with water from an irrigation stream and that killed many of the remaining soldiers down there in the basement. As Luke Harding wrote, "For those who had died, it had been a cold, terrifying, and squalid extinction." Harding wrote, "We had expected slaughter, but I was unprepared for its hellish scale." Media storm John was discovered among the 86 survivors of this massacre in the basement of the building, and he instantly became an international sensation. He was quickly dubbed the "American Taliban" in Newsweek magazine which initially broke the story. The coverage from the beginning was overwhelmingly negative and prejudicial, and falsely linked John with terrorism. After the prisoners emerged from the basement of the fortress, they were taken to Sheberghen -- a town nearby -- for medical treatment. They were all starving, they had nothing to eat the entire week. They were suffering from exposure, and pretty much all of them were wounded, including John. John had the AK-47 bullet in his thigh and numerous shrapnel wounds. He was very near death when he arrived at Sheberghen. As he's lifted onto a gurney by attending medics, a CNN cameraman named Robert Pelton began to film John. The tape shows John saying to Pelton, "Look, you don't have my permission to film me. If you're concerned about my welfare, don't film me." The ethical thing to do at that point would have been to turn off the camera. But Robert Pelton did not do the ethical thing. He kept the camera running and the microphone on as John was interviewed. The sensation that resulted from the CNN interview is difficult to describe. I think you probably all have seen it. The interesting thing about the CNN interview, from my perspective, is that it was completely exculpatory. He was injected with morphine, and of course then begins to talk, and he forgets about turning off the camera. He tells his story and it's completely exculpatory. He says everything that I've told you -- "I was in the Taliban army, I met bin Laden," and then all the terrible events around this massacre, but the effect in the United States at that time, given the post-9/11 mood, was just terrible. The effect of this video seemed to confirm people's suspicions that John was a terrorist. It wasn't just the television media that caused this prejudice, it was the print media as well. Newsweek magazine published a terrible cover story saying that John had supported the 9/11 attacks. The tabloid media was on to the case as well. The National Enquirer, which appeared at grocery store checkout lines throughout the country, featured a cover story with John's picture saying "America's traitor tells all." But even worse than this coverage by the tabloids, I believe, was the treatment that John received in the mainstream media including the New York Times. On Tuesday, the 11th of December 2001, the Times published a front page article above the fold featuring a very compelling photograph of the funeral of Mike Spann, the CIA agent who had been killed at Kuala Jungi at the uprising. The theme of the entire story was that John had fought against his country and had caused the death of Mike Spann. Interestingly, directly alongside of this incredible damaging article on page 1 of the New York Times, there appeared a leading article that same day about the widespread killing of the Taliban prisoners by General Dostum and the Northern Alliance. The byline of the article was Sheberghen, the very place where John had been taken and filmed by the CNN crew. But the New York Times overlooked the fact that this was the context in which John had been found, that John was the fortunate survivor of a mass killing of prisoners by the Northern Alliance. Mistreatment by the military Upon his capture, John was quickly transferred from Dostum's custody to the custody of the U.S. military. I would have thought at that point that John was in safe hands, and John himself thought the same thing because he said so in a brief letter that he dictated to the Red Cross who visited him that first day. But an order, emanating directly from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, instructed the U.S. military to "take the gloves off" in the questioning of John Lindh. Rumsfeld's order is documented in a letter that was provided to John's lawyers by the prosecutors, and it also has been reported as a front-page story in the L.A. Times. I do not want to dwell here on the military's mistreatment of my son, but I will say categorically that he was treated in a way that is shameful to our nation and its ideals. John's bullet wound was left festering and untreated; he was blindfolded and bound hand and foot with tight plastic strips that caused severe pain. He was stripped naked and duct-taped and, in this condition, blindfolded, bound naked to a stretcher and then left in the cold in an unheated metal shipping container on the desert floor in Afghanistan. After one initial visit, the Red Cross was denied any further access to John. The letters I wrote to John through the Red Cross were never delivered to him. All of this conduct was in violation of the Geneva Conventions of war. It was beyond what any civilized nation should tolerate. Yet, despite the fact that the torture and abuse of John Lindh was fully disclosed in the press, there was no outcry here in the United States, so strong was the emotion at that time against this young man. What I find most troubling about this treatment, however, was that it was completely gratuitous and unnecessary. John Lindh did not need to be tortured in order to tell American forces what he knew, where he had been and what he had seen. He was glad to be rescued, he had nothing to hide. I cannot fathom why the military would have felt it necessary to humiliate him in this way. Prejudicial commentary I would venture to say that never before in the history of this country has any criminal defendant been subject to anything approaching the kind of prejudicial statements made by officials in John's case. Interestingly, though, in the very beginning, when John was first captured, President Bush had a sympathetic response. He said, "I don't know what we're going to do with the poor fellow" in an interview with Barbara Walters. And he referred to him by name, he said, "John." Sen. John McCain had sympathetic words, and Sen. Orrin Hatch also said that he thought that John was on a spiritual quest. But after the CNN interview was aired, the whole mood shifted. It was both parties, Republicans and Democrats. All of these statements were broadcast and covered in the national media and came into everyone's home in the country. In an Oval Office interview on December 21st, President Bush said, "Obviously Walker is unique in that he is the first American al Qaeda fighter we have captured." John had never even heard of al Qaeda. Sen. Hillary Clinton, in a nationally televised interview on "Meet the Press," calls John a "traitor." Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld says, "John Lindh was captured by U.S. forces with an AK-47 in his hands." Imagine the prejudice to John from such a false and inflammatory statement. Secretary of State Colin Powell, the same Colin Powell who had sent the money to Afghanistan in April says, "John Walker Lindh has brought shame upon his family." Former President George Herbert Walker Bush says this: "He's just despicable. I thought of a unique penalty: Make him leave his hair the way it is and his face as dirty as it is, and let him go wandering around this country and see what kind of sympathy he would get." This was on Good Morning America, December 19th. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, said that John was a "terrorist" who belonged to "an organization that took American lives and came against the American Constitution." Sen. McCain says, "I'd like to take him to Ground Zero, and show him Ground Zero and see how he feels after that." Rudy Giuliani was the person of the year in Time magazine, and what does he do with that bully pulpit? He says, "When you commit treason against the United States of America, particularly at time when the U.S. is in peril of a further attack, I believe the death penalty is the appropriate remedy to consider." But the most prejudicial commentary of all came from Attorney General Ashcroft. He held two nationally televised press conferences in John's case. I have a copy of the New York Times, the page 1 article on the first of those conferences. This was on the 15th of February. Mind you, John is still overseas, still hasn't even had a chance to visit with his lawyer. He says, "We cannot overlook attacks on America when they come from United States citizens." This is announcing the criminal complaint against John. He's the leading prosecutor in the United States. The same day he says, "We may never know why he turned his back on our country and its values, but we cannot ignore that he did. Youth is not absolution for treachery, and personal self-discovery is not an excuse to take up arms against one's country." In the second of these conferences, announcing the indictment, the attorney general says, "The reasons for his choices may never be fully known to us, but the fact of those choices is clear. Americans who love their country do not dedicate themselves to killing Americans." As any lawyer would know, it is a breach of professional ethics for a prosecutor to make prejudicial comments about a criminal defendant who is awaiting trial. Criminal case Then we get to the criminal case which the Boston Globe refers to as a "collapsed terror case." Initially, the government charged John with 11 criminal counts, most of terrorism-related charges such as supporting al Qaeda. In the end, the government dropped all of the terrorism-related charges in a plea bargain. The one charge that John pleaded guilty to was providing assistance to the Taliban government in violation of the economic sanctions that President Clinton had imposed. I think it's clear that the government really had to stretch to find any criminal statute that John's conduct had actually violated. But for that one offense, and because he carried a weapon in the commission of the offense, John has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, and he's serving that sentence now in Southern California. On the basis of the inherent unfairness, and also the fact that John has been a model prisoner from the beginning, John's lawyers have filed a petition with President Bush asking that John's sentence be commuted, and that petition is currently pending with the president. Comment: We aren't going to hold our breath on this one... Conclusions Quickly, I have three conclusions that I have based on the facts of John's case. First, the rights we enjoy as citizens under the Constitution at times of war and national crisis, and they can be undermined by politicians and the media. Recall that every one of the government officials who I quoted took an oath of loyalty to the Constitution when they were sworn into office. And yet look how quick they were to disregard the Constitution in order to make rhetorical points about John Lindh. As I tell law students when I speak with them about John's case, the Constitution of the United States does not live in a vault at the National Archives, the Constitution lives in our hearts, and it's up to us as people to maintain the values embedded in the Constitution. We cannot trust the politicians and the media to do the job for us. I think I have to say, too, that it was only the intervention of a courageous legal team, headed by Jim Brosnahan, that literally saved my son's life. I cannot even contemplate what might have happened if these lawyers had not stepped up to defend John. I think it's clear that the United States really made a mistake in treating Taliban footsoldiers and the Afghan army as if they were al Qaeda terrorists. This was unjust in the eyes of the whole world, but especially among Muslims. And finally, I hope you will indulge me when I say that the mistreatment and the imprisonment of John Lindh was and is a human rights violation. It was based purely on an emotional response to the 9/11 attacks, and not on an objective assessment of John's case. Comment: "...[T]he mistreatment and the imprisonment of John Lindh was... based purely on an emotional response to the 9/11 attacks, and not on an objective assessment of John's case." That statement sums up the Bush administration's handling of the entire War on Terror pretty nicely, doesn't it?

US officials charged with lying in botched 2003 terrorism trial AFP Thu Mar 30, 1:13 AM ET CHICAGO - Two federal officials were charged with lying under oath and hiding evidence to win a conviction against four Moroccan men accused of running a Detroit "sleeper cell" in the days following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The charges highlight the zealousness with which investigators have pursued potential terrorists, critics said. "In this instance the prosecutor went so far as to warrant a criminal indictment, but his actions were reflective of a broader problem in the Justice Department," said David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University. "In the interest of notching up symbolic victories in the war on terror we've seen prosecutors forget their obligation is to do justice and instead overreach in their charges and engage in questionable - and in this case criminal - behavior." Thousands of Muslim and Arabic men were rounded up and questioned in the weeks and months following the September 11 attacks. The four arrested in Detroit were the first to be charged and the highly publicized 2003 conviction of two of the men on charges of providing material support to terrorists was hailed as a major victory. That conviction was thrown out a year later after an internal Justice Department probe found that the prosecution withheld evidence that would show that crude sketches and a videotape with images of Disneyland and other tourism destinations could be plausibly explained as something unrelated to terrorism activity. Several other high-profile cases have fallen apart, including an Oregon lawyer wrongly accused of participating in the Madrid bombing. Other cases have been compromised because of prosecutorial zeal, like the botched handling of witnesses in the sentencing trial of Al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. This was the first to result in felony charges against either a prosecutor or an investigator. "It's highly unusual - the Department of Justice is usually very protective," said Stephen Saltzburg, a law professor at George Washington University. "This case turned into a disaster and a public relations nightmare and it threatened to show that all the cases" were tarnished, he said in a telephone interview. "In the end this case won't fix that but it will send the message that the Department (of Justice) takes these cases seriously and that the war on terror can't be a war on justice at the same time." Former federal prosecutor Richard Convertino, 45, and State Department special agent Harry Raymond Smith, 49, were indicted Wednesday on charges of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making false declarations. "The object of the conspiracy was to present false evidence at trial and to conceal inconsistent and potentially damaging evidence from the defendants in the Koubriti trial in order to obtain criminal convictions," the indictment said. The charges focus on a sketch found in a day planner that was said to resemble a military hospital in Jordan. Smith testified during the 2003 trial that the sketch was an "exact" match to the area surrounding the hospital and Convertino later presented testimony that these sketches proved the men were casing the location for a potential terrorist attack. The defense team challenged those assumptions and asked prosecutors to produce photographs of the site for comparison. Smith allegedly lied under oath and said he could not take photos of a military site without permission from Jordanian authorities. In reality, the indictment said, he had to take several aerial photographs and had instructed a colleague to take several more, then had them sent to Convertino who failed to fulfill his duty to get copies to the defense team. Convertino, who was also charged with obstruction of justice in a narcotics case, faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a one-million-dollar fine. Smith faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and a 750,000-dollar fine.

Ex-lobbyist Abramoff gets 6 years CNN Thursday, March 30, 2006 Fraud in Florida casino deal will send him to federal prison MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- Jack Abramoff, the disgraced lobbyist at the center of a Washington corruption scandal, was sentenced Wednesday to nearly six years in prison for fraud in the purchase of a Florida casino cruise line. U.S. District Judge Paul C. Huck sentenced Abramoff and a former business partner to five years and 10 months in prison and ordered them to pay restitution of more than $21 million. The sentences were the minimum under their plea agreement in the case. Abramoff, 47, and Adam Kidan, 41, both pleaded guilty to conspiracy and wire fraud. They won't start their sentences for at least 90 days so they can continue cooperating in a Washington corruption investigation and a Florida probe into the murder of Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, owner of the SunCruz Casinos fleet they bought. In court, Abramoff said the case was "incredibly painful" for himself, his family and his friends. "In the past few years I have begun the process of becoming a new man," he said. Wearing a dark suit and tan, baseball-style cap, Abramoff arrived at the courthouse several hours early, avoiding the media. He and his lawyers did not speak to reporters as they left the courthouse. Before the hearing, more than 260 people -- including rabbis, military officers and even a professional hockey referee -- wrote letters on his behalf asking the federal judge for leniency. The letters put a new spin on the foibles and crimes of a man who became the face of Washington's latest corruption scandal. "Jack is a good person, who in his quest to be successful, lost sight of the rules," National Hockey League referee Dave Jackson wrote, describing the time Abramoff brought 14 youngsters to his dressing room before a game. Kidan, in his own letter to the judge, said he knew the SunCruz deal was wrong but said he "was very caught up in the fast paced world of my partner and the high profile that came along with it." He added, "I am not the horrible person that the media has written about." The two admitted concocting a fake $23 million wire transfer to make it appear they had made a large cash contribution to the $147.5 million SunCruz purchase. Based on that fake transfer, lenders provided the pair with $60 million in financing. The same week Abramoff pleaded guilty to the SunCruz fraud, he entered guilty pleas to three federal charges as part of a wide-ranging corruption probe that could involve up to 20 members of Congress and aides, including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican. No sentencing date has been set in that case. Abramoff and Kidan are expected to give statements in the investigation into the February 6, 2001, slaying of Boulis, who was gunned down at the wheel of his car amid a power struggle over the gambling fleet. Meanwhile, three men face murder charges, including one who worked for Kidan as a consultant at SunCruz and who allegedly has ties to New York's Gambino crime family. Both Abramoff and Kidan have repeatedly denied any role in or knowledge of the Boulis murder. But prosecutors say Kidan has not been ruled out as a suspect and defense attorneys say Abramoff could provide critical inside information about the dispute with Boulis, who also founded the Miami Subs restaurant chain. Ultimately, cooperation in those investigations could reduce Abramoff's and Kidan's sentences. Comment: Well, the Abramoff saga serves as a nice distraction from Bush's poor approval ratings, doesn't it?

Congressman Denies He Got Deal on House By SAM HANANEL Associated Press Wed Mar 29, 11:52 PM ET WASHINGTON - Rep. Jim Ryun on Wednesday denied allegations by Democrats that he received a "sweet real estate deal" when he purchased a town house from a nonprofit group with connections to lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The Kansas Republican bought the historic Capitol Hill town house for $410,000 on Dec. 15, 2000. That was $19,000 less than the U.S. Family Network paid for the home about two years earlier, in January 1999, despite a sharp rise in local real estate values during that time. He denies receiving any favorable treatment in the purchase. He declined to be interviewed but said in a written statement that he paid "fair market value" for the home. Ryun said he negotiated the sale price after a housing inspector found a structural problem that would require up to $20,000 to repair. He said the seller also saved money on the deal by not having to pay a real estate agent's commission. The home is currently assessed at $764,310 for tax year 2007, according to the city's Office of Tax and Revenue. Mike Gaughan, executive director of the Kansas Democratic Party, called it a "sweet real estate deal" and questioned how Ryun found a house that lost value over two years in one of the nation's hottest housing markets. The U.S. Family Network is a now-disbanded nonprofit advocacy group for conservative ideas that was founded by Ed Buckham, a former chief of staff to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. Buckham's lobbying firm rented office space in the town house from the group. The group was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to Abramoff. Federal investigators are now exploring whether DeLay offered favorable treatment to Abramoff clients that made payments to U.S. Family Network, the Washington Post reported this week. DeLay stepped down from his leadership post last fall after he was indicted in Texas on charges of laundering campaign money. Ryun has not been connected to the scandals involving Abramoff or DeLay. Spokeswoman Michelle Schroeder said Ryun "was not specifically lobbied by USFN" and that the group has not made any contributions to his campaign. Ryun said he heard news reports in the summer of 2000 that U.S. Family Network had zoning problems and might need to sell the house. Ryun said he asked Buckham for a contact and spoke to an attorney for the group in the fall of 2000. "We inquired about the house and then entered into negotiations to buy it, finally arriving at a purchase price we believed to be fair market value based on its overall condition, including a structural deficiency," Ryun said. A housing inspector found the upstairs master bathroom in the home was in danger of falling through the ceiling and told Ryun the bathtub should be removed and the living room ceiling needed to be reinforced, Ryun said. Ryun said he asked the U.S. Family Network to take those repairs into account in reaching the sale price. He also agreed not to use a real estate agent, saving the group a 6 percent sales commission of $24,600. To bolster his argument, Ryun's office released documents showing that another home on the same block was sold for $409,000 on the same day he bought his home. Property records show the other home is on a land area about half the size of Ryun's and is now assessed at $236,000 less than Ryun's home. Ryun's office also produced documents showing the congressman paid $54,500 to make a variety of repairs to the home, including the structural support problem. Buckham's attorney, Laura A. Miller, did not return a call seeking comment on the sale. Meanwhile, Abramoff was sentenced Wednesday in Miami to nearly six years in prison for committing fraud in the purchase of a fleet of gambling boats. He will remain free while helping prosecutors with a vast bribery investigation involving members of Congress. Abramoff, 47, and former business partner Adam Kidan, 41, received the minimum sentence under federal guidelines: five years and 10 months.

Fitzgerald Will Seek New White House Indictments By Jason Leopold It may seem as though it's been moving along at a snail's pace, but the second part of the federal investigation into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson is nearly complete, with attorneys and government officials who have remained close to the probe saying that a grand jury will likely return an indictment against one or two senior Bush administration officials. These sources work or worked at the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council. Some of these sources are attorneys close to the case. They requested anonymity because they were not permitted to speak publicly about the details of the investigation. In lengthy interviews over the weekend and on Monday, they said that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has started to prepare the paperwork to present to the grand jury seeking an indictment against White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove or National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Although the situation remains fluid, it's possible, these sources said, that Fitzgerald may seek to indict both Rove and Hadley, charging them with perjury, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy related to their roles in the leak of Plame Wilson's identity and their effort to cover up their involvement following a Justice Department investigation. The sources said late Monday that it may take more than a month before Fitzgerald presents the paperwork outlining the government's case against one or both of the officials and asks the grand jury to return an indictment, because he is currently juggling quite a few high-profile criminal cases and will need to carve out time to write up the indictment and prepare the evidence. In addition to responding to discovery requests from Libby's defense team and appearing in court with his attorneys, who are trying to obtain additional evidence, such as top-secret documents, from Fitzgerald's probe, the special prosecutor is also prosecuting Lord Conrad Black, the newspaper magnate, has recently charged numerous individuals in a child pornography ring, and is wrestling with other lawsuits in his home city of Chicago. Details about the latest stage of the investigation began to take shape a few weeks ago when the lead FBI investigator on the leak case, John C. Eckenrode, retired from the agency and indicated to several colleagues that the investigation is about to wrap up with indictments handed up by the grand jury against Rove or Hadley or both officials, the sources said. The Philadelphia-based Eckenrode is finished with his work on the case; however, he is expected to testify as a witness for the prosecution next year against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff who was indicted in October on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators regarding his role in the leak. Hadley and Rove remain under intense scrutiny, but sources said Fitzgerald has not yet decided whether to seek charges against one or both of them. Libby and other officials in Cheney's office used the information they obtained about Plame Wilson to undermine the credibility of her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Wilson was an outspoken critic of the Iraq war. He had alleged that President Bush misspoke when he said, in his January 2003 State of the Union address, that Iraq had tried to acquire yellow-cake uranium, the key component used to build a nuclear bomb, from Niger. The uranium claim was the silver bullet in getting Congress to support military action two months later. To date, no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, and the country barely had a functional weapons program, according to a report from the Iraq Survey Group. Wilson had traveled to Niger more than a year earlier to investigate the yellow-cake claims and reported back to the CIA that intelligence reports saying Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger were false. On Monday, though, attorneys close to the leak case confirmed that Fitzgerald had met with the grand jury half a dozen times since January and recently told the jurors that he planned to present them with the government's case against Rove or Hadley, which stems from an email Rove had sent to Hadley in July of 2003 indicating that he had a conversation about Plame Wilson with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper. Neither Hadley nor Rove disclosed the existence of the email when they were questioned by FBI investigators or when they testified before a grand jury, the sources said, adding that Rove testified he found out about Plame Wilson from reporters and Hadley testified that he recalled learning about Plame Wilson when her name was published in a newspaper column. Rove testified before the grand jury four times. He did not disclose the existence of the email during the three previous times he testified, claiming he simply forgot about it because he was enmeshed with the 2004 Presidential election, traveling around the country attending fundraisers and meetings, working more than 15 hours a day on the campaign, and just forgot that he spoke with Cooper three months earlier, sources familiar with his testimony said. But Rove and Libby had been the subject of dozens of news stories about the possibility that they played a role in the leak, and had faced dozens of questions as early as August 2003-one month after Plame Wilson was outed-about whether they were the administration officials responsible for leaking her identity. The story Rove and his attorney, Robert Luskin, provided to Fitzgerald in order to explain why Rove did not disclose the existence of the email is "less than satisfactory and entirely unconvincing to the special counsel," one of the attorneys close to the case said. Luskin did not return numerous calls for comment. A spokeswoman for the National Security Council said she could not comment on an ongoing investigation and has vehemently denied that Hadley was involved in the leak "because Mr. Hadley told us he wasn't involved." In December, Luskin made a desperate attempt to keep his client out of Fitzgerald's crosshairs. Luskin had revealed to Fitzgerald that Viveca Novak-a reporter working for Time magazine who wrote several stories about the Plame Wilson case-inadvertently tipped him off in early 2004 that her colleague at the magazine, Matt Cooper, would be forced to testify that Rove was his source who told him about Plame Wilson's CIA status. Novak-who bears no relation to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, the journalist who first published Plame Wilson's name and CIA status in a July 14, 2003, column -met Luskin in Washington DC in the summer of 2004, and over drinks, the two discussed Fitzgerald's investigation into the Plame Wilson leak. Luskin had assured Novak that Rove learned Plame Wilson's name and CIA status after it was published in news accounts and that only then did he phone other journalists to draw their attention to it. But Novak told Luskin that everyone in the Time newsroom knew Rove was Cooper's source and that he would testify to that in an upcoming grand jury appearance, these sources said. According to Luskin's account, after he met with Viveca Novak he contacted Rove and told him about his conversation with her. The two of them then began an exhaustive search through White House phone logs and emails for any evidence that proved that Rove had spoken with Cooper. Luskin said that during this search an email was found that Rove had sent to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley immediately after Rove's conversation with Cooper, and it was subsequently turned over to Fitzgerald. "I didn't take the bait," Rove wrote in the email to Hadley immediately following his conversation with Cooper on July 11, 2003. "Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare reform story coming. When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn't this damaging? Hasn't the president been hurt? I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this." Luskin wound up becoming a witness in the case and testified about his conversation with Viveca Novak that Luskin said would prove his client didn't knowingly lie to FBI investigators when he was questioned about the leak in October 2003, just three months after Rove told Cooper that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. The email Rove sent to Hadley, which Luskin said he found, helped Rove recall his conversation with Cooper a year earlier. Rove then returned to the grand jury to clarify his previous testimonies in which he did not disclose that he spoke with journalists. Still, Rove's account of his conversation with Cooper went nothing like he had described in his email to Hadley, according to an email Cooper sent to his editor at Time magazine following his conversation with Rove in July 2003. "It was, KR said, [former Ambassador Joseph] Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized [Wilson's] trip," Cooper's July 11, 2003, email to his editor said. "Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The email characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger... " It is unclear whether Rove was misleading Hadley about his conversation with Cooper, perhaps, because White House officials told their staff not to engage reporters in any questions posed about Wilson's Niger claims. But Fitzgerald's investigation has turned up additional evidence over the past few months that convinced him that Luskin's eleventh-hour revelation about the chain of events that led to the discovery of the email is not credible. Fitzgerald believes that Rove changed his story once it became clear that Cooper would be compelled to testify about the source-Rove-who revealed Plame Wilson's CIA status to him, sources close to the case said. If any of the people named in this story believe they have been unfairly portrayed or that what was written in this story is untrue, they will have an opportunity to respond in this space.

Ball In The Supreme's Court By William Fisher 29 March, 2006 Countercurrents.org The U.S. Supreme Court this week heard arguments in what will almost certainly be one of the landmark cases of the past fifty years. Their decision will determine whether the Supreme Court will continue to assert its authority to review and check the executive's power to detain and try individuals caught up in the "war on terror." The case is called Hamdan versus Rumsfeld. The Hamdan is Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who has been a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2002. The Rumsfeld is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose department has jurisdiction over all detainees held at U.S.-controlled military prisons. Since the Court agreed to hear Hamdan's case, the administration of President George W. Bush filed an extraordinary motion to dismiss it. The government argues that a law passed by Congress late last year was intended to deny the right of habeas corpus to all prisoners in U.S. custody -- including not only new cases, but those that were pending at the time Congress acted. The Bush administration contends that Congress intended to strip the high court of its jurisdiction to hear any challenge arising out of the detentions at Guantanamo Bay. But according to Deborah Perlstein, an attorney with legal advocacy group Human Rights First, "Apart from the weakness of the Administration's case on the merits, the statute passed by Congress last year makes clear its intent to apply only to cases arising after Hamdan's." Perlstein told us, "It's hard to see even this new Court accepting that kind of frontal assault on its own power." Two new Justices have been appointed to sit on the Supreme Court in the past few months. John Roberts has become chief justice, replacing William Renquist, who died. And Samuel J. Alito Jr. has joined the court, replacing Sandra Day O'Connor, who resigned after 24 years as an associate justice. Even if the justices resolve the court-stripping issue, it will be left to decide two other weighty questions: Does the President have the authority to convene military commissions to try alleged terrorists and ignore the procedural protections that Congress and the Constitution have long afforded those facing U.S. military trials? And are the Geneva Conventions – the laws of war that the United States long ago ratified and made part of U.S. law – enforceable by individuals in federal court? According to Perlstein, "Either one of these questions is generational in nature. Taken together, they give Hamdan the potential to be one of the most important cases the Supreme Court has heard on the issue of presidential power in the past half-century." To complicate matters further, Chief Justice Roberts has recused himself from the Hamdan case because he participated in ruling on it in a lower court before his recent appointment. That means eight justices will hear the arguments, thus eliminating the possibility of the 5-4 decision often made by this court in contentious cases. But, says Perlstein, "More significant than the absence of Chief Justice Roberts, is the absence of Justice Rehnquist and O'Connor in this kind of case. Those justices had for the past nearly 30 years been at the leading edge of the Court's assertion of its own power, above Congress and the Executive, as a co-equal branch of government. Whether the absence of their voices will have left a court more reluctant to weigh in on matters of individual rights in the face of government power remains to be seen." The Hamdan case has been bouncing around the U.S. justice system for several years, beginning in 2004, when the DOD Formally referred charges against the 34-year-old Yemeni national, one of six Guantánamo detainees who were designated by President Bush in July 2003 as subject to trial by military commission under the President's Order of November 13, 2001. Hamdan was captured by Afghan forces and handed over to the U.S. military in Afghanistan in late 2001. The government accuses Hamdan of serving as Osama Bin Laden's bodyguard and personal driver, delivering weapons to al Qaeda members and purchasing vehicles for Bin Laden's security detail. He is formally charged with conspiracy to attack civilians, attack civilian objects, murder, destruction of property, and terrorism. Held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, since early 2002, Mr. Hamdan is currently represented by Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, who brought suit in 2004 seeking Hamdan's release from solitary confinement and declaring the commissions unconstitutional. Documents unsealed in early August reveal allegations that Hamdan was beaten, threatened, and kept in isolation for upwards of eight months. A military commission preliminary hearing began the week of August 23, 2004. In September 2004, the petition was re-filed in the federal district court for the District of Columbia, and, in November 2004, that court found the military commission unlawful because the process violated the laws of war and military law, and stayed the commission. In July 2005 the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reversed the district court and upheld the commission as lawful. Hamdan's lawyers appealed the ruling, and in November 2005 the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. In January 2006, the government filed a motion for the Supreme Court to dismiss the case on the ground that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (the Graham/Levin amendment) divested Hamdan of the right to seek habeas corpus in a federal court. That law entered congress as an amendment to a massive war-spending bill. It was introduced as a compromise by Sen. Lindsey Graham, a conservative Republican from South Carolina and a former military judge, and Sen. Carl Levin, a liberal Democrat from Michigan. HRF's Perlstein told us the Graham-Levin compromise was "a mistake". She says that she understands Senator Graham's motivation – "to try to address the uncertain legal status of those held in a U.S. detention system that includes thousands of people worldwide." However, she adds, "The great irony of Congress' action here was to guarantee that the question of the legal status of those stuck in limbo already for years would remain unresolved, and would continue to be litigated for some time to come. Apart from the Amendment's legal infirmities – trying to strip the federal courts of the power to enforce the Constitution against an executive branch strikingly uninterested in law – as a matter of security policy, it effectively made matters worse." Brian J. Foley, a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law, told us he was uncertain about whether the Graham-Levin measure "clearly supports an argument that it is prospective only. Legislative history may say otherwise, but courts might not consider legislative history if they think the text is clear. It will be up to the courts" However, he adds, "Congress did make clear that it doesn't want to give these prisoners a way to 'complain' about conditions of confinement, including torture. Congress made clear that it doesn't want to give them a way to 'complain' that they are not being given a hearing, or that getting a decision in a hearing is taking too long. Congress was foolish to pass this law, because these enormous presidential powers can so easily be turned against US citizens. What if a US citizen is rounded up and never given a hearing to test whether he's an enemy combatant -- or even a US citizen? Well, he can't access the courts, thanks to this statute. The only hope is that the Constitution's right to habeas corpus transcends this statute. That will ultimately be a major issue in the Supreme Court, and we can only hope that the justices don't simply side with the Administration." The High Court's decision will not be public until July. Meanwhile, American citizens ought to be pondering whether it wants to become a monarchy, ruled by a president. They also ought to give some serious thought to the kind of message indefinite detention of prisoners sends to the rest of the world.

New Orleans Officers Indicted in Beating By MARY FOSTER Associated Press March 30, 2006 NEW ORLEANS - Two former New Orleans police officers who were caught on videotape beating a retired teacher were indicted on felony charges that could send them to prison for years. The officers - Robert Evangelist and Lance Schilling - were fired after the Oct. 8 beating of Robert Davis, 64, was captured on video by an Associated Press Television News crew covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Evangelist, 36, faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of false imprisonment while armed with a dangerous weapon and second-degree battery. Schilling, 29, could spend five years behind bars if convicted of second-degree battery. "I hope this will result in something good for our city," said Davis, who spent more than an hour Wednesday testifying about the beating, which left him lying on the street, hands cuffed and blood flowing from his head and face. A third officer, Stewart Smith, 50, was charged with simple battery. If convicted, he faces up to 6 months in jail and a $500 fine. Smith was suspended for 120 days but remains on the force. Evangelist and Schilling were charged with battery against Davis, and Smith was charged with battery against a reporter. A telephone call Wednesday to an attorney representing Evangelist, Schilling and Smith for comment was not returned. Police Superintendent Warren Riley said in a statement late Wednesday that Smith would be reassigned to desk duty pending the outcome of his trial. After the grand jury appearance, Davis told reporters that he still has headaches and back problems. He had to interrupt his testimony to take medicine. The retired elementary school teacher said he had returned to the storm-struck city to check on his property and was looking for a place to buy cigarettes in the French Quarter when police grabbed him. The videotape shows an officer hitting Davis at least four times on the head. Davis twisted and flailed as he was dragged to the ground. One officer kneed Davis and punched him twice. Smith had ordered APTN producer Rich Matthews and the cameraman to stop recording. When Matthews held up his credentials, the officer grabbed him, jabbed him in the stomach and delivered a profanity-laced tirade. The video also shows two FBI agents joining the police in subduing Davis. Their role is being investigated by federal officials. A federal civil rights investigation also was launched. "Without this videotape, I'm sure this case would be swept under the rug," said Davis' attorney, Joseph Bruno. District Attorney Eddie Jordan agreed the videotape was important. "Any time you have strong evidence, and I consider a videotape strong evidence, it helps your case," he said. When asked if the false imprisonment charge meant that Davis should not have been arrested, Jordan said, "I think that's a fair inference." Davis has pleaded not guilty to municipal charges of public intoxication, resisting arrest, battery on a police officer and public intimidation. His lawyer said this week he expects the charges will be dropped.